The U.S. Department of Agriculture (“USDA”) announced late last month that it will be taking measures to support the enforcement of the Packers and Stockyards Act (“P&S Act”), a 100-year-old law designed to protect “poultry farmers, hog farmers, and cattle ranchers from unfair, deceptive and anti-competitive practices within the meat markets.” The proposed revisions involve additional changes to the unlawful conduct provisions of Title II of the P&S Act as well as a menu of grant and loan programs to address problems throughout the food supply chain.

In the weeks that followed a ransomware attack on a domestic pipeline company, the federal government’s efforts to shore up the cybersecurity posture of America’s critical infrastructure and supply chains, including the oil and gas industry, have garnered increased attention.  Historically, the oil and gas sector has not been subject to mandatory cybersecurity regulations, but rather was encouraged to follow voluntary security guidelines that were initially published by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in 2011 and revised in 2018. Yet, the industry sector’s geographic size, number of operators/stakeholders within the sector, and its importance to the national economy make the oil and gas industry an attractive target for cyberattacks.

Each of these factors begs the question whether voluntary cybersecurity measures are sufficient to protect this critical infrastructure component? Based on the TSA’s decision to publish the very first Pipeline Security Directive (“Directive”) three weeks after Colonial Pipeline was victimized by a ransomware attack, the answer to this rhetorical question appears to be an emphatic “No.”

Starting in 2024, U.S. consumers are going to start seeing new formulations of yogurt on supermarket shelves. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has released an amended standard of identity for yogurt as part of its Nutrition Innovation Strategy. According to the FDA, the new, modernized standard of identity for yogurt allows for greater innovation and technical advances in yogurt production while maintaining yogurt’s basic nature and essential characteristics.

Senior Associate Megan McLean has published “Biden Administration Promises to Double Down on Environmental Justice” in Rock Products Magazine. 

In the article, Megan outlines President Biden’s stance on environmental justice, the actions the EPA is taking to address environmental justice, and what companies need to do to mitigate foreseeable risks.

Read the article here.

Senior Counsel Coty Hopinks-Baul has published an article in Coal Age titled “CWA’s Permit Shield Spans SMRCA”.

In the article, Coty details a recent decision in the case of Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards v. Red River Coal Co. Inc., where the Fourth Circuit upheld a district court’s dismissal of a citizen suit to enforce…

Recently, President Biden signed the Food Allergy Safety, Treatment, Education and Research (FASTER) Act. The law adds sesame to the list of major allergens, requiring its disclosure on food labels as an allergen.  Food manufacturers have until January 1, 2023 to add sesame allergen statements to their labels.

Current food labeling regulation allows sesame to be declared as a “natural flavor” or “natural spice.”  This creates uncertainty for consumers allergic to sesame when they review product labels at their local grocery stores.

Last summer the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) proposed to amend Proposition 65, also known as the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, to create an exception from the warning requirement for listed chemicals that are formed when food is cooked or heat processed. In essence the proposed rule would treat food products that contain acrylamide as a result of cooking or heating as “naturally occurring” thereby relieving manufacturers of the duty to warn consumers about the presence of acrylamide as long as the levels present are below the OEHHA proposed thresholds.

FAA Changes Would Have Disrupted Financing of Wind Development Projects Nationwide

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently released a new action plan designed to further reduce exposure to toxic elements, including heavy metals, from foods for infants and young children. This represents the latest development concerning the widespread focus on the levels of heavy metals in baby food. The action plan, titled “Closer to Zero” highlights four steps that the FDA will take over the next three years to reduce exposure to toxic elements “to as low as possible.”

In the wake of winter storm Uri, ERCOT market participants are grappling with the resulting financial fallout. Many are now familiar with actions the Texas Public Utility Commission took during the February weather event with the intent to bring and maintain as much generation online as possible – notably ordering ERCOT to implement a temporary adjustment to the scarcity pricing mechanism designed to result in real time prices reaching the system-wide high offer cap at the statutory maximum of $9,000/mWh during the height of the generation forced outages.

Now, more than two months removed from the storm, the resulting financial impacts are having serious repercussions across the ERCOT market. Several retail electric providers have filed for bankruptcy, lawsuits are underway against a wide swath of market participants and regulators (ERCOT, the Public Utility Commission, generators, REPs, gas utilities, etc.), and countless market participants are faced with paying record-high bills for a range of reasons, including the need to procure energy in the real-time market during scarcity conditions, to obtain high priced gas supplies, to cover positions when their resources incurred outages, or exposure to uplift of default amounts owed to ERCOT. Complicating that, ERCOT has failed to pay many who did perform during the storm due to the short payment of some market participants, which means those who performed may not soon realize revenue associated with that performance. Additionally, the higher prices for power and ancillary services prompted ERCOT to substantially increase Counter-Party collateral requirements. Last month, the Public Utility Commission issued an order in Docket 51812 extending the deadline to dispute ERCOT invoices related to the winter event from 10 business days (under the current ERCOT Protocols) to six months. Since this order, the Commission has taken no additional action to address issues related to settlement invoices resulting from the storm.