Nutrition facts label
Additionally, there is a requirement for ingredients to be listed in order from highest to lowest quantity, according to their weight.
The label was mandated for most food products under the provisions of the 1990 Nutrition Labeling and Education Act (NLEA), per the recommendations of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It was one of several controversial actions taken during the tenure of FDA Commissioner Dr. David Kessler. The law required food companies to begin using the new food label on packaged foods beginning May 8, 1994. (Meat and poultry products were not covered by NLEA, though the U.S. Department of Agriculture proposed similar regulations for voluntary labeling of raw meat and poultry.) Foods labeled before that day could use the old label. This appeared on all products in 1995. The old label was titled "Nutrition Information Per Serving" or simply, "Nutrition Information".
Guidances for statistics in regulatory affairs
Regulation in the USA started in 1906 with the Food and Drugs Act and further USA regulation came in 1938 with the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act following the deaths due to Elixir sulfanilamide in 1937. Further tragedies resulted from the use of Thalidomide that was marketed in 1957, Germany, without adequate testing. The Thalidomide catastrophe tightened the regulatory pressure in the US with the Kefauver Harris Amendment (1962) to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and the European regulation appeared with UK's "Medicines Act 1968". Further developments lead to a large volume and variety of regulatory “guidances” by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the USA and “guidelines” by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in Europe. Also, other regions of the world issued regulatory guidance, for example, Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency (PMDA) in Japan. In 1989 a plan for harmonization of guidance across Europe, Japan and the USA was started and the first meeting of International Conference on Harmonisation of Technical Requirements for Registration of Pharmaceuticals for Human Use (ICH) was held in 1990, Brussels.