Growing up on a Lee County farm, Lauren Waldrip Ward never thought she’d have to define the word rice. Back then, she could simply point to the grains growing in her family’s fields.
But boiling down the meaning of rice was exactly Ward’s task heading into the current session of the Arkansas Legislature, and on Monday morning she harvested her reward: Act 501, which creates a fine for labeling any product as rice if it isn’t a product of the swamp grass cultivated for grain around the world.
“Cauliflower rice?” Sorry, it’s not rice, says Ward, executive director of the Arkansas Rice Federation and spouse of Arkansas Secretary of Agriculture Wes Ward. And under the law signed this week by Gov. Asa Hutchinson, labeling non-rice as rice in food packaging will make companies liable for a $1,000 fine for each violation.
The legislation, led by Rep. David Hillman, R-Almyra, also regulates the labeling of foods as meat when they are made from plants or created with protein cells grown in laboratories. The idea came from farming communities worried that shoppers are buying “meat” that isn’t from an animal, “milk” that’s not from an udder and “rice” that never lived in a paddy.
“We’re looking forward to the implementation of Act 501,” Ward told Arkansas Business on Wednesday. The new law will go into effect three months after the session closes.
“Let me be clear,” Ward said. “This bill has nothing to do with the rice industry and everything to do with protecting consumers who have a right to know what they’re purchasing. It imposes no undue burden on companies, but simply requires them to tell the truth.”
She described it as an aid to Arkansas consumers and “a benchmark for other states” while encouraging the federal Food & Drug Administration to “develop a standard identity for rice using the common understanding of the term ‘rice’ as defined in the bill.”
A native of tiny Moro, Ward was raised on a rice, soybean and corn farm. She notes that rice is a $6 billion-a-year economic driver that provides more than 25,000 jobs across the state.
Skeptics of the law argue that it defies First Amendment rights to free speech.
“It’s bad public policy,” Jessica Almy of the Good Food Institute, a Washington nonprofit supporting cell-based and plant-based “meat” products, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. People clearly understand that “almond milk” is made from almonds and is not “milk” from a cow, she said.
But Hillman, the bill’s sponsor, disagreed.
“The opposition to this bill would say it imposes on First Amendment rights,” he said in a statement for Arkansas Business. “The First Amendment protects the right to free speech. It does not protect these companies’ right to lie to consumers.”
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