USDA Calls French Fries Fresh Vegetables; Texas Judge Agrees.

Publication: Chicago Tribune (Chicago, Illinois) (via Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News)

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COPYRIGHT 2004 Chicago Tribune

Byline: Andrew Martin

Jun. 15--WASHINGTON -- French fries may be the bane of low-carb diets and obesity foes, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a federal judge in Texas have another name for the popular food: fresh vegetable.

U.S. District Judge Richard Schell last week endorsed little-noticed changes by the USDA to federal regulations that govern what defines a fresh vegetable. The changes were made at the behest of the french-fry industry, which has spent the past five decades pushing for revisions to the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act.

Known as PACA, the law was passed by Congress in 1930 to protect fruit and vegetable farmers in the event that their customers went out of business without paying for their produce.

Under an obscure USDA rule, most frozen french fries have been considered fresh vegetables since 1996. Now they all are, under a revision last year that added batter-coated, frozen french fries to the list of fresh produce.

In his ruling last week in a lawsuit that challenged the designation, Schell sided with the USDA argument that the PACA law is so ambiguous on the definition...

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