The bipartisan voice for the nation’s state legislatures has expressed new confidence in the federal Food and Drug Administration for food safety. It is supporting adequate Congressional funding for FDA’s new Human Food program. The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), now led by Utah Senate President Pro Temp Wayne Harper, Republican, has approved a policy resolution reaffirming the FDA’s authority as a federal body to regulate food safety nationwide.
The policy resolution is an apparent response to state bills during the past two legislative seasons that sought to ban certain food additives approved nationally by the FDA. The most prominent of these have come in California. The California Legislature in 2023 passed and the governor signed a law banning brominated vegetable oil, potassium bromate, propylparaben, titanium dioxide and Red dye No.
3 from food. Under that new law, it will be illegal in California after Jan. 1, 2027, to manufacture, sell, deliver, distribute, hold, or offer for sale any food product for human consumption that contains any of the four products.
This year, The California Assembly has put the state’s $1.6 billion school lunch program off limits to a list of additives that it views as harmful to children, including Red Dye No. 40, Yellow Dye No.
5, Yellow Dye No. 6, Blue Dye No. 1, Blue Dye No.
2, and Green Dye No. 3, and the food additive titanium dioxide . While California is often a legislative leader among the states, the cam.