Opinion ID: 2597548
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Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Relevant federal law in the early 20th century: A failed wine statute; adoption of the Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906; administrative food standards; and Food Inspection Decisions

Text: Far from supplanting these early efforts by the states, Congress in 1906 at first attempted but failed to enact a federal wine labeling statute similar to those adopted by the states. [27] As explained below, later in the same session Congress did enact a general pure food and beverage statute, but the resulting federal scheme produced no enforceable wine labeling regulation. Congress's 1906 federal Pure Food and Drugs Act (Pub.L. No. 59-384 (June 30, 1906) 34 Stat. 768 (hereafter sometimes the 1906 Act)) borrowed substantially from the preceding state food and beverage legislation. Like the earlier New York statute described above ( ante, pt. II.B.1.a), the federal act defined as misbranded  and illegal  any food or beverage package . . . or label that bore any statement, design, or device regarding . . . the ingredients or the substances contained therein, which [is] false or misleading in any particular, and [ ] any food or drug product which is falsely branded as to the State, Territory, or country in which it is manufactured or produced. (Pub.L. No. 59-384, § 8 (June 30, 1906) 34 Stat. 770.) Also like the previous general pure food and beverage laws of the states, the 1906 federal Act applied to food and drink (Pub.L. No. 59-384, § 6 (June 30, 1906) 34 Stat. 769), which in turn was construed to include wine. (See United States v. Sweet Valley Wine Co. (N.D.Ohio 1913) 208 F. 85, 87 ( Sweet Valley ).) The 1906 Act directed three department secretaries  the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Agriculture, and the Secretary of Commerce and Labor  jointly to adopt regulations for carrying out the provisions of this Act. (Pub.L. No. 59-384, § 3 (June 30, 1906) 34 Stat. 768-769.) As commanded by Congress, in October 1906 the three department secretaries jointly adopted a set of regulations under the 1906 Act. (See U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Circular No. 21, reprinted as amended through 1909 in Thornton, The Law of Pure Food and Drugs, National and State (1912), pp. 843-860 (Law of Pure Food and Drugs); see generally Hayes & Ruff, The Administration of the Federal Food and Drugs Act (1933) 1 Law & Contemp. Probs. 16, 20 ( Administration of the Federal Food and Drugs Act ).) One provision of those regulations governed the labeling of foods and beverages and prohibited, among other things, false or misleading statements concerning a product's place [of] origin. (Circular No. 21, supra, Reg. 17(d), reprinted in Law of Pure Food and Drugs, supra, at p. 851.) Implicitly acknowledging, as it must, that [p]rior to the repeal of Prohibition, no agency of the Federal Government was provided with statutory authority to regulate the labeling . . . of alcoholic beverages specifically (Russell, Controls Over Labeling and Advertising of Alcoholic Beverages (1940) 7 Law Contemp. Probs. 645, 645 ( Controls Over Labeling )), Bronco's supplemental brief points to (i) separate food standards (including wine standards) adopted solely by the Secretary of Agriculture in the two years prior to enactment of the 1906 federal Pure Food and Drugs Act, and (ii) two Food Inspection Decisions (hereafter sometimes F.I.D.), one issued solely by the Secretary of Agriculture and the other issued jointly by the three secretaries. (See Standards of Purity for Food Products (June 26, 1906), Circular No. 19, reprinted in Westervelt, American Pure Food and Drug Laws (1912), pp. 61, 78-79 (American Pure Food and Drug Laws); F.I.D. No. 109 (Aug. 21, 1909); & F.I.D. No. 120 (May 13, 1910), both reprinted in American Pure Food and Drug Laws, supra, at pp. 212-214.) As explained below, under federal law the cited food standards (including the wine standards) were merely advisory, and not legally binding, and with respect to the cited Food Inspection Decisions, the first was nonbinding and the second, even if binding, did not demonstrate federal control over the labeling of wines. The cited food standards had been created at the behest of Congress, which in 1902 and 1903 directed the Secretary of Agriculture to undertake numerous projects, including one to establish standards for purity of food products and determine what are regarded as adulterations therein, for the guidance of the officials of the various States and of the courts of justice. . . . (Pub.L. No. 57-1008 (Mar. 3, 1903) 32 Stat. 1147, 1158, italics added; see also Pub.L. No. 57-139 (June 3, 1902) 32 Stat. 286, 296.) The resulting detailed food standards addressed more than 200 categories of food items, including salted meats, oatmeal, lemon and vanilla extracts, olive oil, coffee, and  in part II.F.a.3 of the secretary's food standards  what Bronco characterizes as detailed and comprehensive standards for wine, dry wine, fortified dry wine, sweet wine, fortified sweet wine, sparkling wine, modified wine (a low-alcohol product made by the addition of sugar), and raisin wine (a product made from pomace  dried, evaporated, or previously crushed grapes). Contrary to Bronco's suggestions and representations, the Secretary of Agriculture's food standards (and hence the wine standards contained therein) were not enforceable under the 1906 federal Pure Food and Drugs Act (which, as noted, required that enforcing regulations be adopted by all three named secretaries), or indeed under federal law at all. (See United States v. St. Louis Coffee & Spice Mills (E.D.Mo.1909) 189 F. 191 [finding the food standards relating to vanilla extract unenforceable under the 1906 Act].) In view of the 1906 Act's three secretaries requirements for regulations and the resulting case law, the food standards proclaimed by the Secretary of Agriculture acting alone have been described by authoritative commentators as merely advisory and as being for the guidance of officials and the trade but not having the force and effect of [ federal ] law.  (Salthe, State Food, Drug and Cosmetic Legislation and its Administration (1939) 6 Law & Contemp. Probs. 165, 167, italics added; see also Lee, Legislative and Interpretative Regulations (1940) 29 Georgetown L.J. 1, 4-17 ( Interpretative Regulations ) [noting that despite many congressional attempts in the course of three decades to make the food standards enforceable, manufacturers `could take' em or leave `em' without legal consequences under federal law]; Alcoholic Beverage Control Before Repeal, supra, 7 Law & Contemp. Probs. 544, 553; cf. Administration of the Federal Food and Drugs Act, supra, 1 Law & Contemp. Probs. 16, 32, fn. 71.) Indeed, even the treatise upon which Bronco relies concurred on this point, characterizing those same food standards as not controlling under federal law. (American Pure Food and Drug Laws, supra, at p. 60.) In view of this history, we must reject Bronco's suggestion that the cited food standards, and the wine standards contained therein, constituted enforceable federal regulations under the 1906 Act or were otherwise enforceable as a matter of federal law. We reach similar conclusions with respect to the two Food Inspection Decisions cited by Bronco, issued in 1909 and 1910, respectively. The first Food Inspection Decision, approved by the Secretary of Agriculture acting alone, stated that Missouri and Ohio wines, which typically were produced by adding substantial amounts of sugar, would properly be called a `sugar wine'  and that when made by the mixture of pomace, sugar, water, colorings and preservatives, such products should be called `imitation wine.' (F.I.D. No. 109, reprinted in American Pure Food and Drug Laws, supra, at p. 212.) The second cited Food Inspection Decision, issued under the signatures of the three department secretaries, essentially retreated from and modified the first and stated that in light of (and apparently in deference to) the fairly lax Ohio wine statute (see ante, fn. 24), which had long permitted the use of sugar in wine production, such sugared wines properly could be called `Ohio Wine,' or `Missouri Wine,' respectively, without further qualification. (F.I.D. No. 120, reprinted in American Pure Food and Drug Laws, supra, at p. 213.) Moreover, the decision stated, Ohio and Missouri imitation wines could be labeled as `Ohio Pomace Wine,' or `Missouri Pomace Wine.' ( Id., at p. 214.) These decisions reveal that the federal agency, far from exercising federal authority to control state practices by requiring adherence to the detailed and comprehensive wine provisions of the food standards cited by Bronco, instead completely ignored those federal standards and, in the second decision, actually deferred to the applicable state wine statute, which in turn codified long-standing and lenient regional winemaking practices. In any event, contrary to Bronco's suggestion that these Food Inspection Decisions evinced federal control, the first cited decision, No. 109 (approved by the Secretary of Agriculture acting alone), did not constitute a regulation under the 1906 Act and was merely advisory. [28] Because the second cited Food Inspection Decision, No. 120, was signed by all three secretaries it arguably qualified as an enforceable federal regulation under the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act. (See American Pure Food and Drug Laws, supra, at p. 17.) As noted above, however, in substance this assumed regulation merely acquiesced in and adopted fairly lax state (Ohio) law. It does not, therefore, support Bronco's implicit argument that federal regulatory authorities during this period exercised power to control wine labels in a manner different from that of the states. For these reasons we reject Bronco's suggestion that the Secretary of Agriculture's food standards, including the detailed and comprehensive wine standards, constituted enforceable federal law, that Food Inspection Decision No. 109 constituted an enforceable federal wine labeling regulation, or that No. 120 evinced anything more than federal acquiescence in state law. Based upon the material cited to us, we conclude that whatever federal regulation of wine labeling existed between the first decade of the 20th century and the advent of Prohibition was achieved only indirectly, on a case-by-case basis, through prosecutions under the general misbranding provisions of the 1906 federal Pure Food and Drugs Act. [29] That relatively limited federal activity, however, neither erased nor eclipsed the previous quarter-century of state regulation described above. ( Ante, pt. II.B.1.a & b.) Moreover, at the same time federal activity in this area was commencing, state activity was continuing and at least keeping pace. By 1906, nearly all of the states had exercised their traditional police powers to enact pure food and beverage laws, almost all of which covered drinks, including wine. [30] Even more importantly, as explained below, within a few years of 1906 the Secretary of Agriculture's food standards (including the detailed and comprehensive wine standards)  although remaining merely advisory and unenforceable under federal law  specifically were adopted as part of the general food laws of most states (including California). The perhaps ironic result was that the Secretary of Agriculture's wine standards were to become enforceable substantive law in most states under state law, even while they remained unenforceable as a matter of federal law.