Food Company Challenges Classification
POSTED: 1:34 pm EDT June 15, 2004
WASHINGTON -- Batter-coated french fries are a fresh vegetable,
according to the Agriculture Department, which has a federal
judge's ruling to back it up.
But the department said Tuesday
that the classification applies only
to rules of commerce, not
nutrition, and it doesn't consider
an order of fries the same as an
apple in school lunches.
The ruling last week by federal
District Judge Richard Schell in
Beaumont, Texas, allowed
batter-coated french fries to be
considered fresh vegetables under the Perishable Agricultural
Commodities Act. Most other frozen fries had been on the list since
1996.
Regulations under the law help to assure buyers of commodities
such as french fries that they are getting what they ordered, said
George Chartier, a spokesman for the department's Agricultural
Marketing Service. Frozen fries are fresh simply because they don't
meet the standard necessary for them to be listed as processed,
and adding batter to the fries does not change the classification,
he said.
The commodities act does not apply to nutrition, where
batter-coated french fries are still considered processed food.
The department does not plan to repeat its experience in trying to
classify ketchup as a vegetable in school lunches, Chartier said.
The ketchup-as-vegetable proposal was put forward in the Reagan
administration, and the department dropped the idea after it found
itself not only opposed but laughed at.
The department's proposal to list batter-coated fries as fresh under
the commodities act provisions was challenged by a Dallas-area
food distributor, Fleming Companies. The company is in Chapter 11
bankruptcy reorganization, and the law requires creditors who sold
fresh fruits and vegetables to be paid in full, while other creditors
might get partial payment, said Fleming Companies' lawyer, Tim
Elliott of Chicago.
Fleming Companies plans to appeal, Elliott said. The law was
intended to protect growers of fruits and vegetables, especially
small farmers, and the ruling misconstrues the act's intent, he said.
"It's unfathomable to me that, when Congress passed this law in
1930 and used the term 'fresh vegetable,' they ever could have
conceived that large food-processing companies could have
convinced USDA that a frozen battered french fry fell into that
definition," Elliott said.
Although Fleming Companies sold the fries to supermarkets, most
are eaten in fast food restaurants, Elliott said. The coating makes
the fry crunchy and adds flavor, he said.
Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
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