POM Wonderful loses bid to tout health benefits in drink ads

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pomegranate juice maker POM Wonderful cannot advertise that its pomegranate drinks treat or prevent heart disease or other ailments unless it has proof, a U.S. appeals court said Friday, upholding an order by the Federal Trade Commission. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit largely upheld a 2010 order by the Federal Trade Commission, which found that POM Wonderful's advertising was misleading in claiming its products would treat or reduce the risk of diseases ranging from heart disease to prostate cancer to erectile dysfunction. The advertisements that the FTC challenged appeared in Parade, Fitness and Prevention magazines, as well as online, and on product tags, the FTC said. "Many of those ads mischaracterized the scientific evidence concerning the health benefits of POM's products with regard to those diseases. The FTC Act proscribes — and the First Amendment does not protect — deceptive and misleading advertisements," the court said in its ruling. But the appeals court said the FTC went too far in requiring two human clinical trial studies to support any health claims in advertising, saying there was "inadequate justification" for that demand. POM said it was pleased with this portion of the decision. "We are grateful that the court substantially reduced the requirement that the FTC tried to enforce on us to conduct multiple double-blind, placebo-controlled studies," the company said in a statement. The FTC said the decision was a victory for consumers. "It is in keeping with established law that advertisers who market products for serious health conditions must have rigorous science to back up those claims," wrote FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez in a statement. "The court specifically recognized that this applies to food and dietary supplement marketers such as POM." The advertisements that most concerned the FTC were discontinued in 2005 and others were halted in 2007, said lawyer Thomas Goldstein when he argued for POM Wonderful before the judges in May 2014. The case is in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. It is POM Wonderful, LLC v. Federal Trade Commission and is No. 13-1060. (Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Matthew Lewis and Bernadette Baum)