Consumer Product Claims Under Scrutiny: Navigating the 2026 FDA, FTC, State AG, NAD, and Class Action Landscape for Food, Supplements, and Personal Care

Lori B. Leskin, Partner | Arnold & Porter

Lori Leskin is a Partner in the New York office of Arnold & Porter and co-chair of the firm’s Consumer Products Practice Group. For more than 30 years she has represented consumer product and pharmaceutical companies as national, strategic, and trial counsel in mass and class actions, directing litigation strategy in complex nationwide and multidistrict litigations involving consumer electronics, cosmetics, personal care, food and beverage, and pharmaceutical products. The National Law Journal named her a “Trailblazer” for representing Coty, Shiseido, and McDonald’s in the first wave of PFAS cases brought against the cosmetics and fast-food industries — the very theories now driving a significant share of food and personal care class actions — and she currently serves as national counsel for Bayer Corporation and Pfizer Inc. in several ongoing product liability matters.

• Education & Credentials

Ms. Leskin earned her J.D. with highest honors from Rutgers Law School in 1992, where she was elected to the Order of the Coif and received the Anthony Englebrecht Prize, and her B.A. magna cum laude from American University in 1988, where she graduated with University honors with high distinction and was elected to Phi Kappa Phi. She is admitted to practice in New York, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia, before the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second, Eighth, and Ninth Circuits, the Supreme Court of New Jersey, and the U.S. District Courts for the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York and the District of New Jersey.

• Recognition & Leadership

Ms. Leskin has been ranked by Best Lawyers in Mass Tort Litigation/Class Actions (Defendants) and Product Liability Litigation (Defendants) in New York every year from 2009 through 2027, and was named its “Lawyer of the Year” in Mass Tort Litigation/Class Actions (Defendants) for both 2022 and 2024. She is a “Life Sciences Star” in the LMG Life Sciences Guide (Product Liability, 2017–2025; Non-IP Litigation, 2012–2016), a “Recommended Lawyer” in The Legal 500 US for Consumer Products Product Liability, Mass Tort and Class Action (2013–2026), and a New York Super Lawyer in Products Liability, Class Action & Mass Torts, and Civil Litigation (2006–2025). The National Law Journal named her a Class Action/Mass Tort Litigation “Trailblazer” in 2023, Lexology Index (formerly Who’s Who Legal) named her a “Thought Leader” in Product Liability Defense for 2026, and she received the Euromoney LMG Americas Women in Business Law Award for Litigation in 2013. Her gas stove emissions class action win with her Arnold & Porter colleagues was featured in The Am Law Litigation Daily in May 2025, and in August 2026 she was quoted by the Associated Press on the emerging wave of consumer tariff refund class actions.

• Professional Involvement

Ms. Leskin co-chairs Arnold & Porter’s Consumer Products Practice Group, where she shapes the firm’s defense strategy across the cosmetics, personal care, food and beverage, and consumer electronics sectors. She is also deeply committed to pro bono work: she has represented death row inmates in challenges to their convictions and sentences, including securing the commutation of Virginia inmate Percy Levar Walton’s sentence to life without parole on mental incompetence grounds, and was one of four firm recipients of the Thurgood Marshall Award for Capital Representation from the Association of the Bar of the City of New York’s Committee on Capital Punishment.

• Experience

Ms. Leskin’s record in the exact categories of litigation this program examines is unmatched. In the PFAS and “forever chemicals” arena, she served as lead counsel for Coty Inc. in consumer fraud class actions over PFAS in cosmetics — winning motions to dismiss in every court — as lead counsel for Ornua Foods North America in a PFAS consumer fraud class action over Kerrygold butter in the Eastern District of New York, as co-lead counsel for McDonald’s in Illinois federal class actions over alleged PFAS in food packaging, and for Shiseido Americas in defeating PFAS allegations over bareMinerals products. In labeling and consumer fraud cases, she was lead counsel for Hain Celestial defending organic labeling claims over Earth’s Best baby food (Segedie v. Hain Celestial, S.D.N.Y.) and for Avon in a consumer fraud class action over anti-aging skin care products (In re: Avon Anti-Aging Skincare Creams, S.D.N.Y.), and she has served as lead or national counsel for IKEA (Dukich v. IKEA, E.D. Pa.), Samsung, and Britax in consumer class actions. On the mass tort side she is national counsel for Pfizer defending nationwide claims that its talc was contaminated with asbestos and in Viagra® injury litigation, lead counsel for Bayer in the fluoroquinolone antibiotics MDL in the District of Minnesota, and lead counsel for Strength of Nature in the hair relaxer MDL in the Northern District of Illinois. Having built the defense playbook for the first PFAS cosmetics and food-packaging cases, she is ideally placed to explain how plaintiffs’ theories against food, supplement, and personal care brands are evolving — and how to beat them at the pleading stage.

Raqiyyah Pippins, Partner | Arnold & Porter

Raqiyyah Pippins is a Partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Arnold & Porter, where she co-leads the firm’s Consumer Products Practice Group and its Consumer Products & Retail Industry Team. She represents companies that develop, market, import, and export consumer products — including FDAregulated foods, dietary supplements, cosmetics, drugs, and devices, as well as apparel and appliances — across every stage of a product claim’s life: FDA regulation of direct-to-consumer products, FTC and state marketing rules, National Advertising Division (NAD) challenges, consumer class actions, and investigations by the FDA, the FTC, and state agencies. Her practice sits squarely at the intersection of every enforcement channel this program addresses, and clients describe her as “excellent at crafting solutions that ensure regulatory compliance within the business context.”

• Education & Credentials

Ms. Pippins earned her J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law in 2006 and her B.A. from Stanford University in 2003. She is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia and Virginia.

• Recognition & Leadership

Ms. Pippins is ranked by Chambers USA in Advertising: NAD Proceedings (2025–2026), Advertising: Transactional & Regulatory (2019–2026), and Food & Beverages: Regulatory & Litigation (2024–2026), having first been singled out as “Up and Coming” in Food & Beverages in 2023. Best Lawyers has recognized her in FDA Law in Washington, D.C. every year from 2019 through 2027, Thomson Reuters named her a “Stand-Out” Lawyer for 2026, and The Legal 500 U.S. has recommended her in Advertising & Marketing: Transactional and Regulatory (2023–2024) and Cannabis (2021, 2025). Earlier honors include the National Law Journal’s DC Rising Stars (2021), the Washington Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 (2021), Washington, DC Super Lawyers’ Rising Star in Food and Drugs, Consumer Law, and Media and Advertising (2019–2021), DCA Live’s “Rising Stars of Law” 40 Under 40 (2018), The Network Journal’s “Top 40 Under Forty Achievers” (2015), and Ebony Magazine’s “Top 30 Under Thirty” (2006). In addition to co-leading the firm’s consumer products practice and industry team, she has served as Vice Chair of the ABA Antitrust Section’s Advertising Disputes and Litigation Committee (2021–2022).

• Professional Involvement

Ms. Pippins is a member of the National Bar Association’s Commercial Law Section, a Fellow of the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity (LCLD), Past National Chair of the National Black Law Students Association, and a member of the Federal City Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. In her practice she advises on health, performance, and sourcing claims; OTC monograph compliance; Rx-to-OTC switches; and the design of clinical and sensory substantiation studies that underpin advertising claims. She also engages with trade associations on FDA rulemaking affecting product safety and labeling, and her practice group’s 2026 “Keeping Pace With Modern Marketing” programming on claim substantiation and legal risk in the age of AI and influencers reflects the issues at the core of her day-to-day work.

• Experience

Ms. Pippins’ representative work reads like a map of the 2026 enforcement landscape. She has defended FDA-regulated consumer companies against class actions grounded in state food and drug laws, and responded to FTC and state attorney general advertising inquiries and NAD challenges on behalf of Fortune 500 companies. She has reviewed more than 600 generic-brand labels for a major U.S. drugstore chain, managed the international legal review of a front-of-pack labeling system for a confectionery company across 24 countries, and advised manufacturers on promotion across labels, websites, television, social media, and mobile platforms. She has developed marketing strategies for food, supplement, and cosmetic brands — including natural, organic, and performance claims — counseled on the use of consumer-generated content and compliance with the FTC’s Green Guides, the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act, and textile and wool labeling rules, and guided clients through FDA adverse event reporting, voluntary recalls, and related Privacy Act and FOIA issues. On the OTC side, she has helped launch allergy campaigns including a first-in-class Rx-to-OTC intranasal corticosteroid. Few practitioners have worked every lane — FDA, FTC, state AG, NAD, and the class action bar — on the same products, which makes her uniquely positioned to explain how those regimes now interact for food, supplement, and personal care marketers.

E. Alex Beroukhim, Partner | Arnold & Porter

Alex Beroukhim is a Partner in the Los Angeles office of Arnold & Porter and co-chair of the firm’s Consumer Products & Retail Industry Group. A trial lawyer first and foremost, he concentrates on complex litigation — consumer class actions, products liability, and environmental litigation — and has disposed of many actions at the pleading stage and on summary judgment. He is also one of the rare defense lawyers who has tried consumer deception cases to verdict: in a certified class action trial he defeated all claims against Puritan’s Pride, a Nestlé subsidiary, over its “Buy One Get One Free” advertising, and he defended a national retailer in a multi-billion-dollar false advertising trial brought by the Los Angeles City Attorney, a result that earned him the Daily Journal’s “Top Trial Verdicts” award. That combination of pleading-stage dismissals and courtroom wins is precisely the vantage point this program needs on where the 2026 class action wave is heading.

• Education & Credentials

Mr. Beroukhim earned his J.D. from the University of California, Davis School of Law in 2001, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif, and his B.A. from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1998. Following law school he clerked for the Honorable Alan B. Johnson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming. He is admitted to practice in California.

• Recognition & Leadership

Mr. Beroukhim was named to the Daily Journal’s “Top Trial Verdicts” (2022) and to the Los Angeles

Business Journal’s “Leaders of Influence: Litigators & Trial Lawyers” (2025), and was recognized as a Southern California Super Lawyers “Rising Star” from 2013 through 2016. He co-chairs Arnold & Porter’s Consumer Products & Retail Industry Group and is a regular voice on consumer litigation trends: his recent programs include the “Serving up Sales Practices Litigation Roundtable” and “The Circular Sustainability Maze” at the Consumer Brands Association’s 2026 CPG Legal Forum, the firm’s “2025 Year in Review:

Litigation and Regulatory Developments Impacting U.S. Consumer Products & Retail in 2026 and Beyond,” “The Defendant Strikes Back: Using a Motion to Strike to Narrow Putative Class Claims at the Pleading Stage,” and the firm’s inaugural Consumer Products, Retail & Tech Forum in Seattle.

• Professional Involvement

Mr. Beroukhim is a former Board Member of the Western Center on Law & Poverty and maintains an active pro bono practice, including securing asylum and Convention Against Torture relief for clients and representing individuals in financial elder abuse matters. His recent commentary tracks the fast-moving state consumer protection landscape, including analyses of Washington State’s 2026 amendment to its Commercial Electronic Mail Act (“A Speedbump, Not a Roadblock”) and the accelerating state right-torepair regime following John Deere’s $99 million settlement.

• Experience

Mr. Beroukhim’s docket is a cross-section of the claims under scrutiny in 2026. In 2026 alone he secured the dismissal with prejudice of a putative nationwide class action against Joybird and the dismissal of a consumer class action against Stanley drinkware. He has defended a vitamin and mineral seller, a wine and spirits seller, online retailers, a product manufacturer, a global energy company, and national department store chains in consumer class actions; represented a national department store in a public civil penalty enforcement action; and handled PFAS litigation and threatened PFAS litigation for an infant formula manufacturer and a butter manufacturer. His broader practice includes product defect and failure-to-warn cases for pharmaceutical companies, multistate products liability actions, toxic exposure suits involving more than 100 plaintiffs, groundwater contamination cases, trade secret and fiduciary duty litigation, and post-acquisition earn-out disputes. Having tried a certified consumer class action to a defense verdict and beaten back a city attorney’s multi-billion-dollar false advertising case, he brings a trial lawyer’s judgment to the question every marketer now faces: which claims will survive a motion to dismiss, which will get certified, and which are worth taking to a jury.

Brandon W. Neuschafer, Partner | Arnold & Porter

Brandon Neuschafer is a Partner in the Chicago office of Arnold & Porter, where he advises clients on the operational, regulatory, and environmental health and safety issues that arise across the life cycle of food and beverages, dietary supplements, agricultural products, and industrial and consumer chemicals. He represents clients before the FDA, the USDA, the EPA, OSHA, and their state counterparts, and he has served some clients as their de facto in-house counsel under long-term arrangements. His counseling spans regulatory pathways for novel and conventional ingredients, manufacturing and Food Safety Modernization Act compliance, and marketing claims, labeling, and advertising — the front end of the claim pipeline that ultimately lands before the FTC, state attorneys general, the NAD, and the class action bar.

• Education & Credentials

Mr. Neuschafer earned his J.D. from Washington University School of Law in 2001 and his B.A. summa cum laude in Foreign Languages and Political Science from Washburn University in 1998. He is admitted to practice in Illinois and Missouri and before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri.

• Recognition & Leadership

Mr. Neuschafer has been ranked by Chambers USA in Environment: Mainly Transactional (Illinois) every year from 2017 through 2026, recognized by Best Lawyers in Environmental Law (Illinois, 2024–2027) and Litigation – Environmental (Illinois, 2025–2027), and named a “Recommended Lawyer” by The Legal 500 US in Environment: Regulatory (2025). He is a sought-after voice on food and consumer product regulation: in September 2026 he was interviewed by Corporate Counsel on California’s new nonultraprocessed food seal, and his recent speaking engagements include the National Retail Federation’s 2026 Retail Law Summit, DRI’s 2026 Product Liability Conference, and Arnold & Porter’s 2026 consumer products webinar series.

• Professional Involvement

Mr. Neuschafer is President and a Board Member of the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (2018–present), Vice Chair and Former President of the ABA Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources’ Agricultural Management Committee (2021–present), a Board Member of the Foundation for Innovation in Healthy Food (2024–present), an Advisory Board Member of the Minor Use Foundation (2021–present), and a Board Member of the Central Institute for the Deaf (2014–present). He has handled pesticide, fertilizer, and agricultural chemical regulation under FIFRA and analogous state laws for roughly two decades, and he closely follows FDA’s evolving ingredient framework, including the agency’s 2026 proposal to make GRAS notification mandatory.

• Experience

Mr. Neuschafer’s representative engagements track the full arc of a product claim from formulation to enforcement. He serves a global food and dietary supplement ingredient company on product, packaging, and safety regulation, marketing claims, investigations, recalls, and EHS matters; a private label food manufacturer on regulatory approvals, labeling, packaging, and FDA enforcement; a consumer product brand owner and retailer on regulatory requirements, advertising claims, and substantiation; and manufacturers of sanitizers, disinfectants, and “clean” products on the registration and claims rules that govern them. He has advised dozens of food and consumer products companies on PFAS in products and packaging, reporting obligations, and supply chain communications; multiple companies on avoiding and defending greenwashing and related ESG claims; and hundreds of companies on EHS, food, supplement, pesticide, and consumer product issues in M&A and commercial agreements. He has extensive experience with incident response, government inspections and enforcement, adulteration and misbranding investigations, response planning, and recall management, along with the customer, supplier, and insurer issues that follow. That end-to-end perspective — from ingredient approval to “natural,” “clean,” and sustainability claims to the recall and enforcement response — equips him to show marketers of food, supplements, and personal care products where the 2026 regulatory landscape creates risk before a complaint is ever filed.

Kelsie Sicinski, Senior Associate | Arnold & Porter

Kelsie Sicinski is a Senior Associate in the Washington, D.C. office of Arnold & Porter, where her practice centers on consumer products matters, including Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) regulatory compliance and enforcement, Federal Trade Commission matters, and state regulation of marketing and sales practices. She advises food, beverage, and consumer products companies on advertising and marketing claims — including FDA, FTC, and National Advertising Division (NAD) issues and the litigation risk that accompanies them — and helps retailers, manufacturers, and importers navigate CPSC compliance, reporting decisions, corrective action plans, and the avoidance of unnecessary recalls. She also assists U.S. importers of wood, wood products, and wildlife with Lacey Act and CITES compliance and enforcement, and she brings litigation experience in federal and state courts alongside an active pro bono practice.

• Education & Credentials

Ms. Sicinski earned her J.D. summa cum laude from William & Mary Law School in 2020, where she was elected to the Order of the Coif, served as a member of the William & Mary Law Review and as Chief Justice of the Law School Honor Council, and was a Legal Practice Program Fellow. During law school she externed for the Honorable John A. Gibney, Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, participated in the William & Mary Immigration Law Clinic, and interned with the Norfolk Public Defender’s Office. She earned her B.A. in Criminal Justice and Psychology with highest distinction from Indiana University Bloomington in 2014, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia and Illinois.

• Recognition & Leadership

Ms. Sicinski was named one of Chambers USA’s “Associates to Watch” in Product Liability: Regulatory (Nationwide) for 2026 and is “Recommended” by Lexology Index in Product Regulation: Non-Medical (2026) — distinctions rarely achieved at the associate level. She is a frequent contributor to Arnold & Porter’s Consumer Products and Retail Navigator and Environmental Edge publications, where her 2026 analyses include “A New Era in CPSC Enforcement: CPSC Invokes Section 12 for the First Time Since 1987,” “Court Grants Preliminary Injunction in California Truth in Recycling Law Challenge,” and a series tracking the state packaging extended producer responsibility (EPR) litigation in Oregon and the multistate challenge to packaging EPR laws.

• Professional Involvement

Ms. Sicinski works at the seam between product safety regulation and advertising law, counseling clients on how a labeling, environmental, or safety claim can simultaneously trigger CPSC, FTC, FDA, NAD, and state attorney general scrutiny. Her recent work on California’s Truth in Recycling law, state packaging EPR programs, and the CPSC’s first use of its Section 12 imminent-hazard authority in nearly four decades places her at the leading edge of the state and federal developments reshaping compliance obligations for food, beverage, and personal care marketers in 2026.

• Experience

Ms. Sicinski advises food, beverage, and consumer products companies on the substantiation and presentation of advertising and marketing claims, assessing FDA labeling requirements, FTC deception and substantiation standards, NAD precedent, and the class action exposure a claim may create before it reaches market. On the product safety side, she guides retailers, manufacturers, and importers through CPSC reporting decisions, corrective action plans, and the strategic question of when a recall is — and is not — required, and she represents importers in Lacey Act and CITES compliance and enforcement matters. Her litigation experience in federal and state courts informs her regulatory advice with a practical sense of how claims are attacked once challenged. With a practice that spans the CPSC, the FTC, the FDA, the NAD, and the state regulators driving the 2026 agenda, she is well positioned to help attendees understand how the compliance, enforcement, and litigation threads of this program come together in day-to-day practice.

E. Dean H. Porter, Senior Associate | Arnold & Porter

Dean Porter is a Senior Associate in the New York office of Arnold & Porter, where he concentrates his practice on consumer product litigation and regulatory compliance. He litigates complex commercial cases — including class action defense, product liability, commercial contract disputes, and business torts — and has extensive experience litigating consumer deception claims in state and federal courts under state consumer protection statutes, the very statutes that supply the cause of action in the overwhelming majority of food, supplement, and personal care class actions. He pairs that courtroom experience with regulatory counseling, advising clients in the food and beverage, cosmetics, and consumer products industries on compliance, marketing, and advertising so that claims are built to withstand challenge before they are ever made.

• Education & Credentials

Mr. Porter earned his J.D. from Fordham University School of Law in 2016, where he was a staff editor of the Fordham Journal of Corporate and Financial Law and received the Fordham University Public Interest Resource Center’s 2016 Student Leader of the Year award and the Archibald R. Murray Excellence in Public Service award. He earned his B.A. in English magna cum laude with honors from The Ohio State University in 2013. He is admitted to practice in New York and before the U.S. District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York.

• Recognition & Leadership

Mr. Porter is a regular presenter and author on the issues confronting consumer product companies. He spoke on the “Always and Forever: Managing PFAS” panel at the 2025 CPG Legal Forum Conference, presented Arnold & Porter’s 2026 webinar “Good Technology Gone Bad: When Innovation Meets Liability,” and authored “Supreme Court Sidesteps Key Class Certification Questions in Accessibility Suit” for the firm’s Consumer Products and Retail Navigator, analyzing the Supreme Court’s treatment of class certification standards that govern how consumer class actions are litigated today.

• Professional Involvement

Mr. Porter is a member of Arnold & Porter’s Class Actions, Consumer Protection & Advertising, Consumer Products & Retail, Food & Beverage, and Product Liability Litigation practices. He maintains an active pro bono practice and has guided multiple asylum seekers through proceedings before U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Executive Office for Immigration Review — a commitment to public service that dates to his law school recognition as Student Leader of the Year.

• Experience

Mr. Porter’s practice is built around the mechanics of the consumer class action. He has defended consumer deception claims brought under state consumer protection statutes in state and federal courts, litigated class certification and pleading-stage questions, and handled product liability, commercial contract, and business tort disputes for consumer product companies. On the counseling side, he advises food and beverage, cosmetics, and consumer products clients on regulatory compliance and on the marketing and advertising claims that most frequently draw FDA, FTC, state attorney general, NAD, and plaintiffs’ bar attention, including the PFAS and emerging-technology liability issues he has addressed in his recent presentations. That dual perspective — litigating the claims after they are challenged and structuring them before launch — makes him well suited to walk attendees through what the 2026 class action landscape looks like from inside the defense team.

SESSION 1 – The Regulatory Reset: What FDA and the States Are Changing, and What It Means for Your Labels | Raqiyyah Pippins, E. Alex Beroukhim, Lori B. Leskin, Brandon W. Neuschafer, Kelsie Sicinski & E. Dean H. Porter | 2:30pm – 3:30pm

This session walks through the federal and state regulatory changes reshaping food, supplement, and personal care products. Attendees will learn which initiatives are final, which are proposed or blocked in court, and how to make reformulation, labeling, and claims decisions while the rules are still moving.

BREAK | 3:30pm – 3:40pm

SESSION 2 – From Label to Lawsuit: FTC, State AG, NAD, and Class Action Risk for Health, Ingredient, and Pricing Claims | Raqiyyah Pippins, E. Alex Beroukhim, Lori B. Leskin, Brandon W. Neuschafer, Kelsie Sicinski & E. Dean H. Porter | 3:40pm – 4:40pm

This session turns to enforcement and disputes. Attendees will learn how regulators, competitors, and plaintiffs attack consumer product marketing, what substantiation holds up, and how to manage the growing scrutiny of pricing and promotions alongside traditional label claims.