Opinion ID: 194573
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: food for thought

Text: The Seventh Circuit has recently grappled with a factually similar case presenting this very issue. See United States v. Two Plastic Drums, Etc., F.2d (7th Cir. 1993) [No. 92-1172]. Employing a perspicacious analysis of the Act's text and legislative history, the court rejected the FDA's notion that all components of a substance are necessarily food additives. The court observed that the 'or otherwise' phrase contained in the statutory definition of a food additive targets only those components that have the purpose or effect of altering a food's characteristics. Id. at [slip op. at 6- 7]. The subsequent enumeration of sample food additives, describing each substance by its function or by [its] effect on food, makes it clear that an additive must stimulate some change in a food to which it is added. Id. at [slip op. at 6]. Turning to the legislative history, the court observed that the FDA's broad definition of a food additive, which would apply to all components, even a substance which comprises the only active ingredient of the whole, subverts congressional purpose. Blurring the distinction between food additives and food in this way would permit the agency to tilt a delicately balanced 8 statutory scheme that allocates the burden of proving an additive's safety to the processors while leaving the burden of establishing a food's safety with the FDA. See id. at [slip op. at 8-9]. The Seventh Circuit also recognized the incongruity of categorizing a food's single active component as an additive. Because that single component does not affect the characteristics of the food in question rather, it constitutes the food, id. at [slip op. at 7], it has no place within the common understanding of an additive, defined by Webster as 'a substance added to another . . . to impart or improve desirable properties or suppress undesirable properties.' Id. at n.3 [slip op. at 7 n.3] (citation omitted). Thus, in order to qualify as a food additive, a component must be added to a food in order to change that food's properties. See id. at [slip op. at 7-8]. On that basis, pure BCO, in capsule form, is not a food additive. See id. at [slip op. at 11]. Judges should hesitate to write lengthy opinions merely for the sake of committing their own prose to posterity. Given the existence of a cogent, well-reasoned, eminently correct opinion closely on point, we embrace it. We will, therefore, affirm the judgment below for substantially the reasons elucidated in Two Plastic Drums. We pause, nevertheless, to essay a few additional observations. First: We are reluctant to believe that Congress First: traffics in absurdities. Since it defies common sense to say 9 that a substance can be a food additive when there is no (other) food to which it is added, we think that the FDA's reading of the Act is nonsensical, and, hence, must be incorrect. Moreover, classifying BCO as a component merely because it is combined with two totally inert substances serving collectively as a carrier medium would itself create a bizarre paradox: as the Seventh Circuit noted, to hold that BCO is a component of the dietary supplement would be to find that BCO is a component of itself. Two Plastic Drums, F.2d at [slip op. at 5]. Second: In the FDA's estimation, a processor's Second: subjective intent that only one of a product's components constitutes the food is irrelevant because it is the objective intended use, i.e., the intent to combine two or more components, that counts. Appellant's Brief at 11. But, this harangue misses the mark. We fully agree that a processor's subjective determination of what constitutes a food is not determinative in cases of this stripe but neither is the naked fact that more than one component has been combined. In the final analysis, what counts is the use of an ingredient for its effect on food. Here, from an objective standpoint, BCO is not being used for its effect on gelatin and glycerine. Thus, contrary to the FDA's loudly expressed fears, eschewing its rendition of the statutory text will not supplant objectivity with subjectivity.4 4Moreover, if the FDA worries that processors may muck the statutory classifications with convenient recitals of subjective intent, we question the agency's espousal of a rule that would arbitrarily classify a substance as either food or food additive by how it is marketed rather than by the nature and use of the 10 Third: The FDA also maintains that because the Third: ingredients of multi-ingredient food products, such as cake mixes, indisputably fall within the food additive definition, the statute could not possibly contain a requirement that a substance must be added to a preexisting food, which it must be shown actually to affect. Appellant's Brief at 9. We disagree. Cake mixes are foods composed of many interacting food additives, each with its particular effect on the whole.5 Absent any one ingredient, the concoction remains a cake mix, albeit one that may be short on sweetness or lumpy in texture. In that sense, cake mixes and products of that ilk are a far cry from a dietary supplement composed of a single active ingredient. What differentiates this case is that, if the BCO is removed, one is left with nothing but an empty capsule. Fourth: We think it advisable to mention the FDA's Fourth: insistence, citing Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. NRDC, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 843 (1984), that we must obey its interpretation of the Act. In our estimation, the purely legal question facing us in this case presents no occasion for deference. In this realm of judicial expertise, the courts, not the agency, have the last substance itself. Two Plastic Drums, F.2d at [slip op. at 9]. In the words of Sir Francis Bacon, the FDA's suggested remedy is worse than the disease. 5We do not quarrel with those courts that have held, when confronted with multi-ingredient products containing two or more active ingredients, that each active ingredient is potentially a food additive. See, e.g., United States v. 45/194 Kg. Drums, Etc., 961 F.2d 808, 812 n.3 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 113 S. Ct. 375 (1992); FoodScience, 678 F.2d at 738; United States v. 41 Cases, Etc., 420 F.2d 1126, 1130 (5th Cir. 1970). 11 word. See id. at 843 n.9 (The judiciary is the final authority on issues of statutory construction . . . .); BATF v. FLRA, 464 U.S. 89, 98 n.8 (1983) (observing that deciding what a statute means is the quintessential judicial function); FTC v. Colgate-Palmolive Co., 380 U.S. 374, 385 (1965) (holding that legal standard[s] . . . must get their final meaning from judicial construction); Wilcox v. Ives, 864 F.2d 915, 924 (1st Cir. 1988) (quoting BATF v. FLRA, supra). At any rate, the true measure of a court's willingness to defer to an agency's interpretation of a statute depends, in the last analysis, on the persuasiveness of the interpretation, given all the attendant circumstances. Massachusetts Dep't of Educ. v. United States Dep't of Educ., 837 F.2d 536, 541 (1st Cir. 1988). The simple fact that the agency has a position, in and of itself, is of only marginal significance. Mayburg v. Secretary of HHS, 740 F.2d 100, 106 (1st Cir. 1984). When, as now, a court is persuaded neither by the validity of [the agency's] reasoning, nor by the interpretive fit between the agency's rendition, on the one hand, and the language and structure of the statute, on the other hand, a court should not defer.6 Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U.S. 134, 140 (1944). 6The longevity of an agency's position is often significant in assaying the degree of deference owed to it. See Bowen v. Georgetown Univ. Hosp., 488 U.S. 204, 212 (1988) (refusing to apply Chevron deference to agency litigating positions that are wholly unsupported by regulations, rulings, or administrative practice); Skidmore, 323 U.S. at 140 (acknowledging the value of consistency in respect to gauging persuasiveness). Here, the FDA's position is of recent vintage. Indeed, the original complaint in this action pinned food additive status not on BCO but on gamma linolenic acid, BCO's fatty acid constituent. And, in a prior case involving blue-green algae in gelatin capsule form, the FDA argued that the blue-green algae was an additive 12