2024 Legal & Regulatory Conference – Agenda
2024 Legal & Regulatory Conference – Agenda
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Agenda
June 5, 2024
Opening Remarks
Product Liability and Consumer Class Actions
This panel will examine the crossover between products liability and consumer class actions and explain how these issues overlap from a legal and scientific perspective.


Personal Care Branding: Advertising Issues, Challenges and Litigation Trends - 2024 and Beyond
The advertising landscape continues to evolve rapidly, and the only constant is the importance of keeping up with shifting regulatory and legal landscapes. As companies consider labeling and advertising claims for their cosmetics and personal care products, it is imperative to understand the contemporary legal issues and challenges brought by regulators, competitors, and the plaintiffs’ bar. This session will address current advertising-related challenges and litigation, including governmental authority actions, NAD challenges and plaintiff’s claims; provide insight on future trends; and discuss marketing compliance strategies to reduce the risk of consumer class actions, competitor challenges and regulatory enforcement.



Networking Break
Brought to you buy Faegre Drinker
MoCRA: Preparing for Regulatory Development in 2024 and Beyond
The implementation of the Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act is likely the most significant force shaping the future of our industry. Remaining engaged in this process is imperative not only to ensure your company’s compliance today, but also to understand how our industry will operate tomorrow. MoCRA has come a long way even since the first provisions took effect late last year, and there is also a great deal still coming down the pike. This session will break down what we’ve seen thus far from the FDA and the insights we’ve picked up along the way. The session will also discuss what’s on the horizon and what to expect in the coming months.

Influencers, Tweens and Key Issues in Social Media
This session will explore hot topics relating to advertising through influencers and social media, with a particular focus on state legislation targeting advertising to children, best practices for and obligations relating to influencers and other endorsements, and what to expect in the coming year on these issues.

Lunch & Fireside Chat with Attorney General Kwame Raoul and Antonio Dias


AI in Personal Care: Managing the Risks
Artificial intelligence (AI) brings new opportunities to how personal care products companies can effectively conduct business, engage with consumers, and develop and market products. This session will highlight key legal and regulatory considerations for personal care products companies when deploying AI throughout their operations, including relevant consumer protection laws, the need for transparency, potential liability for malfunctioning AI, ethical standards and the continued importance of protecting privacy and intellectual property rights.

State of the States
As the proliferation of laws and regulations that impact the personal care industry continues in the Golden State, this session will provide a comprehensive update on important developments under California law, as well as related litigation. The topics to be covered include Prop 65 trends, PFAS laws, Safe Cosmetic Program updates and recycling claims/EPR issues. Because California law continues to be the lowest common denominator on many important product regulations, the session will also forecast what may be future significant legal issues coming out of the state.

PFAS
Every week, the PFAS litigation and regulatory landscape changes dramatically. The EPA presses forward full steam ahead with numerous PFAS regulations, while the states have proposed hundreds of pieces of legislation related to PFAS in the last three years. Meanwhile, class action litigation, environmental pollution litigation, and greenwashing litigation are filed at dramatically increasing numbers year after year against companies. This discussion will provide the latest on all regulatory and litigation issues related to PFAS and how they will impact the PCPC community. The session will also touch on other business risks related to PFAS (e.g., consumer demands, competition, supply chain issues, etc.) and legal perspectives on how to navigate them.

Welcome Reception
June 6, 2024
Junk Science Journey - How to Maneuver the Perilous Path of Personal Care Litigation
In recent times, the personal care industry has been rattled by the emergence of independent labs that have sparked controversy with dubious scientific methodologies and controversial business practices. These practices, often undertaken in collaboration with the plaintiffs’ bar, have raised eyebrows and prompted concerns within the legal, regulatory and scientific communities.
Shook, renowned for its acumen in scientific litigation, has taken a pivotal role as the science and discovery counsel in this evolving landscape. Through meticulous examination and strategic utilization of third-party, expert insights and complex litigation counsel, Shook has endeavored to counter these questionable testing methodologies in litigation settings.



Global Trends Towards Digital Labeling



Networking Break
Brought to you buy Faegre Drinker
Extended Producer Responsibility: Threat or Opportunity?
To shift the expense of packaging waste from taxpayers to consumer product manufacturers, four states covering 50 million consumers are implementing EPR regimes, with more sure to follow. California’s program requires manufacturers, collectively as a Producer Responsibility Organization (PRO), to achieve aggressive targets for recyclable and compostable packaging, and to fund $500 million on top of funding improvements in waste collection and recycling infrastructure to achieve these targets. As a result, almost every package on retailers’ shelves will either change or face “eco-modulated” fees in the coming years. This panel will explain the unique structure of these laws and related laws regulating terms such as “recyclable” or “compostable,” as well as options for personal care product companies to confront this challenge.


Retailer Perspectives: Insights from Target on the Current Legal Landscape
Retailers are challenged by the dramatic growth in the past five years of organized retail crime (ORC). ORC is the large-scale theft of merchandise with the intent to resell items for financial gain. Organized criminal syndicates operate groups of criminals that have multiple lines of illegal business and are national in scale, often moving between local and state jurisdictions, moving along interstates and stealing from multiple retailers. Beauty and personal care products are a primary category thieves are stealing. Target is facing this challenge along with other retailers and will share how they are changing their methods to prevent theft and how they are working with policymakers at all levels of government to change the understanding of property theft and change existing laws to curtail property crime and educate PCPC ways they can collaborate with retailers to combat organized retail crime.


Grab and Go Lunch
Reception and BBQ
Brought to you by Patterson Belknap
June 7, 2024
Preventing Contamination and Suppliers Issues
Perspectives on Navigating Increasing Cosmetic Contaminant Risk: More than ever, regulators, consumers, and plaintiff’s attorneys are focused on identifying trace elements in cosmetics linked, often very loosely, to human health. Risks deemed acceptable, even trivial, a decade ago are giving rise to class action lawsuits and other mass torts. Already, the plaintiff’s bar and their allies are searching for the next PFAS, and laws governing barely detectible contaminants and impurities are proliferating at an unprecedented rate. This panel will present insights and perspectives from industry insiders and leading consultants with hands-on experience, ranging from redesigned testing protocols, hazard analyses and legal strategies.




MoCRA and the Litigation Landscape
The Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act (MoCRA) of 2022 marks a significant shift for the personal care products industry. While it strengthens safety regulations, MoCRA also changes the landscape for litigation. This session will cover strategies that personal care companies should implement in preparation for the defense of MoCRA-related litigation. We’ll discuss the importance of strong compliance programs, updating documentation and recordkeeping policies, and how to navigate this evolving regulatory landscape.


Networking Break
Brought to you buy Faegre Drinker
FDA Surveillance in a Post-MoCRA World
Predictions and recommendations on GMP expectations, facility inspections, examinations on import and more.
Our panelists will discuss FDA surveillance of cosmetics manufacturers and processors post MoCRA, including the coming good manufacturing practice requirements, what to expect from a GMP inspection, how to prepare for facility inspections, how the Agency is likely to prioritize examinations and sampling at the border, as well as the role of online advertisement review, potential use of undercover operations and more.