Adios to Synthetic Colors in Food?

Our good friends Virginia and West Virginia have become the first states in the nation to restrict the availability of foods containing certain synthetic colors (or in FDA parlance, certain colors subject to certification). You can read more about the particulars here and here. Although the states cited concerns over safety, FDA had continued to stand behind the safety of synthetic colors  – including the recently banned Red No. 3, which fell victim to the Delaney clause. (You can read up on that decidedly unscientific standard here.)

No matter. FDA’s stance on the safety of synthetic colors no longer seems determinative. A couple of weeks ago, Politico reported on a meeting between HHS Secretary Kennedy and food industry executives in which the Secretary pressed for discontinuance of synthetic colors. The state bans – and there are more looming – add considerable fuel to that fire.

Lost in the face of this onslaught is the fact that the FD&C Act lays out a deliberate process for revocation of the approval of a color additive. That could prompt one to explore legal theories in support of a challenge to these bans, but that presumes that a worthy challenger would be willing to step forward. In the current environment, such a challenger would need a mighty thick skin. The more realistic question left to ponder is which ingredients or classes of ingredients will be targeted next.