Legal basis of statement by British Food Standards Agency that companies may label as &quot;sunflower oil&quot; what is not sunflower oil? Recently in Britain the Food Standards Agency issued advice that food items may be offered for sale labelled as &quot;sunflower oil&quot; (a product that has become scarcer owing to the Russo-Ukrainian war) which do not actually contain any sunflower oil . See for example this notice at food.gov.uk. What statutory or prerogative authority is the FSA exercising when it allows such false labelling? What public good is served? (I am not asking for opinions. Obviously if a statutory agency sets aside the usual labelling rules - and in particular, the requirement of truth - it must only do so in the public good. What public good is supposed to be being served here? It is stated that allowing items to be labelled &quot;sunflower oil&quot; that contain no sunflower oil &quot;[maintains] the supply of certain food products&quot;, but this is nonsensical because replacing a product with another product does not maintain its supply, regardless of whether the replacement product is labelled accurately or falsely. Labelling the replacement as being the product it replaced appears to maintain its supply, but it doesn't actually maintain its supply. That is fact rather than opinion.)
What statutory or prerogative authority is the FSA exercising when it allows such false labelling? As other answers have noted, they have executive discretion to &quot;turn a blind eye&quot; to what would normally be a violation of food safety laws and just decide that, right now, their government-mandated priorities are better served by not enforcing that particular letter of the law in these particular circumstances. In theory, someone could probably challenge that decision and take them to court over it, claiming that they were derelict in their duties or not acting impartially and in the public interest. However, in this case they'd probably have a pretty good defense against and such claims, both due to having explicit authority to make such decisions in emergencies (as also noted in other answers), and also because the decision itself seems pretty fair (it applies to all producers using sunflower oil in their products) and justified by the circumstances (more on that below). What public good is supposed to be being served here? It is stated that allowing items to be labelled &quot;sunflower oil&quot; that contain no sunflower oil &quot;[maintains] the supply of certain food products&quot;, but this is nonsensical because replacing a product with another product does not maintain its supply, regardless of whether the replacement product is labelled accurately or falsely. Labelling the replacement as being the product it replaced appears to maintain its supply, but it doesn't actually maintain its supply. That is fact rather than opinion. You seem to be assuming that this advice by the FAS is about allowing someone to sell bottles of &quot;sunflower oil&quot; that actually contain rapeseed oil. It's not. It's not even really about products like crisps (potato chips, for those not in the UK) or pesto sauce or margarine that might contain sunflower oil as a major ingredient. For those products, the news page you linked indicates there are separate rules that apparently require, at a minimum, applying a sticker to notify consumers about the substitution: &quot;where sunflower oil is a key ingredient, such as crisps, retailers will imprint information on substitute oil onto existing labels.&quot; However, think about all the other foodstuffs sold in stores that might include sunflower oil as a minor ingredient, like, say, granola, mustard sauce, instant noodles, mashed potato powder, microwave popcorn, frozen pizza, bolognese pasta sauce or just plain white bread. (If you're wondering where the random list of products above comes from, I just looked quickly around in my kitchen for products that had sunflower oil, rapeseed oil or some other neutral vegetable oil listed as a minor ingredient. There are surprisingly many.) I assume you would agree that all of these products would still be substantially the same product regardless of which kind of vegetable oil was used in them. The companies making all those products, and many others besides, typically order their product packaging in bulk, often from overseas, getting a new shipment of boxes or wrappers or labels maybe every few months or years. And of course those will all have the ingredients list printed on them, as mandated by law. If they want to change the ingredients, that means they have to send a new design to the company that makes the packaging and wait however many days or weeks or months it takes for the packaging company to make and ship the new packaging with the updated ingredients list to them. Normally that's not much of a problem, because normally food manufacturers don't tend to change ingredients in a hurry. Usually they'd plan such changes months in advance, order the new packaging well ahead of time and probably use up all of the old packaging they have in stock before actually making the switch so that they don't have to throw it away. (Companies that do need to frequently switch ingredients, e.g. due to seasonal or unpredictable availability, usually plan for that in advance e.g. by making their labels generic enough to accommodate the change or, where that's not allowed, finding workarounds like indicating the exact type or origin of the ingredients in codes that are stamped on the packaging late in the manufacturing process. That's why you occasionally see stuff in ingredients lists like &quot;vegetable oils (rapeseed, sunflower or soybean)&quot; or &quot;produced in EU and non-EU countries&quot; or &quot;see last letter of expiration code for country of origin: A = Spain, B = Morocco, C = Israel, D = China&quot;.) In this particular case, however, a lot of companies that had been using sunflower oil in their products, and expected it to remain easily available, were caught short when the war in Ukraine broke out and the price of sunflower oil suddenly went way up, as companies selling the oil realized that there probably wouldn't be much sunflower oil exported from Ukraine this year. At that point, the companies that had been using sunflower oil as a generic cooking oil in their products would normally have a limited number of options, none of them particularly good (for either the companies or consumers): Keep using sunflower oil at whatever cost and transfer the increased cost to consumer prices. (To make things worse, the more companies do this, the higher the price of sunflower oil will rise, as they're basically competing for a limited supply.) Switch to a different type of oil and order new packaging ASAP, hoping that it will arrive before your existing stock of sunflower oil runs out. (This might take longer than usual, since presumably other companies are also in the same situation, so the packaging makers are probably swamped with sudden orders. Also, your stock of old packaging is now useless, and you might have to throw it out.) Order the new packaging immediately and pay extra for expedited delivery. Again, you'd be competing with lots of other companies who also really want to be the first to get their new packaging, so premiums for fast delivery are likely to be high if you can get it at all. All of that extra cost will also likely transfer into consumer prices. Use the existing packaging but apply stickers with updated ingredients lists on top of the old ones. That's not nearly as easy and cheap as it sounds, not only because you still have to get the stickers printed (and the printing companies are probably also swamped with orders), but also because you'll have to apply them to every single box or bag or carton, likely by hand. That's a lot of expensive manual labor that will, again, likely increase consumer prices. Just halt production until you can get new, updated packaging (or more sunflower oil at a reasonable price). That's probably the worst option for both the manufacturers and the consumers, since it results in lots of lost income for the manufacturers and product shortages for the consumers. Still, if all the other options are even more expensive, some manufacturers might be forced to do this. The exceptional decision by the FAS to selectively enforce the food labeling requirements in this particular case basically offers these food manufacturers one more option: switch to an alternative type of oil now, but keep using the old packaging until you can replace it. Practically speaking that's probably the best outcome for almost everyone. There's really very little difference between sunflower and rapeseed oil — both are neutral, mostly flavorless vegetable oils suitable for generic cooking purposes — and most people probably can't really tell them apart, especially not when they're used as minor ingredients among many others. Of course, there may still be people who really don't like the taste of rapeseed oil (assuming they can taste it) or are allergic to it (which, as the news article you linked notes, is very rare) or have some ethical or religious objection to consuming it (not that I'm aware of any, but I'm sure someone out there has one). Hence the news release, so that those people who might be affected by the substitution can find about it in advance.
The legal standard, evaluated on a case by case basis, when one firm uses a trademark that is similar to another firm's trademarks to market its goods or services in the same industry is whether the trademark is &quot;confusingly similar&quot; and in some cases whether it &quot;dilutes&quot; the first in time famous trademark. Many people writing fictional media, or making academic hypotheticals, make changes to an existing famous mark along the lines of those described in the question, in the hope of making a popular culture reference, while avoiding a feared exposure to trademark infringement and defamation liability. But that fear is mostly misguided. A trademark is not a right to have monopoly use of the mark in writing or other media. &quot;Nominative use&quot; of a mark is legal and does not expose the person making nominative use of a mark to liability. What is prohibited is using the protected mark to market goods or services in commerce, in a market where the trademark one fears being infringed currently exists and is being used to market goods or services of that trademark owner, to give the false impression of an association, affiliation, or endorsement by the trademark owner. The gravamen of a trademark infringement lawsuit is fraud and deception perpetrated on consumers to the detriment of the trademark owner. This is almost never a real risk in a fictional work. To the extent that there is a legal concern at all about distinguishing a fictional firm from a real one, the bigger legal exposure is to defamation liability. In other words, the bigger concern is the risk that the fictional work is viewed as making a thinly veiled false factual statement about the real world firm that damages its reputation (e.g. if it were to depict a fictional analogy of the real world firm &quot;Taco Bell&quot; making tacos out of horse meat as the real world firm has often, falsely, been accused of doing in real life because its prices are so low).
It is legal to be wrong, it is legal to say false things in public (leaving out defamation), and it is legal to buy and manufacture signs that say false things. Moreover, the sign does not make a false statement, in that legal liability is distinct from moral responsibility. In fact, the sign helps to decrease their legal liability. Via this sign, you have been put on notice that the truck may spray a bit of gravel, so by following too closely, you are negligently contributing to the damage. This is what also underlies those disclaimer signs with "not responsible for theft from your auto". There is nothing "official in appearance" about this sign (a legal citation of a statute might have such an appearance).
Unless there is a law or regulation against it, it is legal. However in a big government it can be practically impossible to determine whether something is legal. For example, nobody even knows how many criminal statutes have been promulgated by the U.S. federal government. And that's nothing compared to the volume of executive regulation and judicial case-law that determines whether something is illegal. I.e., in practice determining that something is legal is a bit like proving a negative. Furthermore, if you look long enough some argue that you can probably find some law under which almost any action could be considered illegal. Note also that even if it is not against the law, it could be proscribed by contract (read your Terms and Conditions!), and breach of contract is in general &ndash; but with an astonishing number of exceptions! &ndash; illegal.
Given that this is a UK based company, the most applicable Act would be the Unsolicited Goods and Services Act 1971 A person who, not having reasonable cause to believe there is a right to payment, in the course of any trade or business makes a demand for payment, or asserts a present or prospective right to payment, for what he knows are unsolicited goods sent (after the commencement of this Act) to another person with a view to his acquiring them [for the purposes of his trade or business], shall be guilty of an offence and on summary conviction shall be liable to a fine not exceeding level 4 on the standard scale. This law specifically refers to [unsolicited] charges for entries in directories. You also mentioned that they're misrepresenting that a company is already a customer and sending out invoices on that basis. That would be a breach of the Fraud Act 2006 A person is in breach of this section if he dishonestly makes a false representation As to their enforceability, that answer is no. If this came before an actual judge, the judge would throw it out in a heartbeat. No agreement was made to provide a service in return for a payment and these companies rely on sending threatening letters via (seeming) third-parties precisely because they wish to avoid that level of scrutiny.
It is legal and quite common. Your choice as consumer is at the point of selecting insurance company. If you dislike ES enough, that would be a reason to select a different insurance company. It would be surprising if your ES contract disallows pharmacy pick-up, but even if it did, that would also be legal. This does not mean that the government doesn't have the power to break up Express Scripts, under anti-trust laws. There is no clear rule regarding how successful a company can be in attracting customers.
The U.S. FTC gave extensive guidance on this subject in March 2013. (You may have noticed shortly thereafter that conspicuous disclosures of free samples and compensation started popping up in reviews and posts around the web.) The FTC's FAQ covers this question in such detail I would just encourage people to visit it directly. However, as is the custom on Stack Exchange, I will reproduce the most salient content here: If an endorser is acting on behalf of an advertiser, what she or he is saying is usually going to be commercial speech – and commercial speech violates the FTC Act if it’s deceptive. The FTC (ironically?) refers to 16 CFR §255 as "the Guides." The Guides, at their core, reflect the basic truth-in-advertising principle that endorsements must be honest and not misleading. An endorsement must reflect the honest opinion of the endorser and can’t be used to make a claim that the product’s marketer couldn’t legally make. In addition, the Guides say if there’s a connection between an endorser and the marketer that consumers would not expect and it would affect how consumers evaluate the endorsement, that connection should be disclosed. For example, if an ad features an endorser who’s a relative or employee of the marketer, the ad is misleading unless the connection is made clear. The same is usually true if the endorser has been paid or given something of value to tout the product. The reason is obvious: Knowing about the connection is important information for anyone evaluating the endorsement.
Could a phrase &quot;Don't buy from X&quot; with indirectly implied material be considered defamatory? No. The phrase is only an order, wish, or instruction, which is different from making a direct or veiled statement of fact. Even in jurisdictions where a statement of opinion could be actionable, a stated wish of that sort cannot be construed as defamatory. anyone that reads the marketing material would indirectly have a false picture about company X. It depends on the contents of the marketing material, on which you did not elaborate. Persuading the customers on the basis of truthful representations as to why X's product is better than A's does not mean that people have a false image about X. The context and exact wording of someone's statements could amount to omitting and/or juxtaposing facts in a way that conveys some falsity, but your description gives no indications of that being the case here.