The panel voted 10-4 on Dec. 2 to recommend adding DHA to the list of approved ingredients. A final decision rests with Vilsack.
Miles McEvoy, the current deputy administrator of the National Organic Program, was unavailable to comment on the DHA controversy.
Mark Kastel, executive director of the Cornucopia Institute, an organic food advocacy group, said that the Agriculture Department should have required the removal of DHA from organic products following the 2010 ruling.
'Last Refuge'
"Parents are seeking out organic as the last refuge without synthetic components," said Kastel, whose Cornucopia, Wisconsin-based group filed the FTC complaint against Dean's marketing claims for DHA. "Now somebody with a test tube and a factory is going to compete when there's no scientific evidence that the nutrition is commensurate with a natural product."
The FTC said that Horizon's advertising suggested that consuming DHA-enriched milk boosted intelligence or cognitive function. The agency said in a Dec. 13, 2011 letter to Dean Foods that "the staff encourages WhiteWave to exercise caution in future advertising when describing the certainty of the supporting science or characterizing the extent of any benefits of DHA beyond the support of normal brain and eye development or function in children over the age of two."
FTC Investigation
Because the company had already changed its radio, television and web ads, the agency closed its investigation without taking enforcement action.
Dean spokeswoman Loveday said that while Dean Foods disagreed with the substance of the FTC requests, "we opted to cooperate by agreeing to minor changes."
Mary Engle, associate director of the FTC's division of advertising practices, declined to comment on Dean's use of Kris-Etherton's work.
The consumer lawsuits filed against Dean allege that the company's brain health claims on the milk carton and in other advertising are "false, misleading and reasonably likely to deceive the public," according to a filing by the plaintiffs seeking to consolidate the complaints in federal court in Miami.