– OPINION –
We tend to think of public policy as one that benefits “the public.” Yet few policies, even within the realm of food safety, focus so much on protecting a hypothetical “average consumer” as they seek to prevent harm to vulnerable populations or individuals. In some cases, a policy may impose too great a burden on “most” of us to justify protecting “some” of us, but either way, policymakers must act transparently, based on the best available, unbiased data , or risk losing the trust of their voters.
Unfortunately, policymakers all too often fall short of achieving this ideal. We got another example this past week when the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) refused a 2022 petition calling for a warning label on foods containing synthetic food dyes. My organization, Consumer Federation of America, joined the Center for Science in the Public Interest and other consumer groups in filing the petition, in part because California EPA scientists concluded in a comprehensive report of more than 300 pages a year earlier, that synthetic food colorings “may cause or worsen neurobehavioral problems in some children,” and that “the neurological effects of synthetic food colorings in children should be recognized and steps should be taken to reduce exposure to these substances’. these dyes in children.” Requiring a warning label on foods with dyes, as the EU has done since 2010, would achieve that exposure reduction goal by giving parents more information and hopefully creating an incentive for many food manufacturers to reformulate.
But CDPH saw it differently. The agency’s three-page denial letter provides few details, but in challenging the evidence linking dyes to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and other pathologies, the agency has chosen to emphasize that the dyes appear to affect only some children. Because the link is not “universal,” the agency reasoned, “food label warnings may be ineffective, may be counterproductive, and/or may cause unnecessary fear and anxiety.”
No one knows for sure how many children are affected by food dyes, and to what extent. But as the California EPA’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) report points out, the percentage of children in the U.S. diagnosed with ADHD has increased from about 6.1 percent to 10.2 percent over the past two decades. Factors other than food dyes likely contributed to this increase, but given the OEHHA’s conclusion that “multiple streams of evidence” indicate that “synthetic food dyes may influence neurobehavior,” a warning label seems sensible. Last month, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the California School Food Safety Act, which bans food colorings in school meals.
Steps to protect vulnerable children from food dyes also make sense because going without these chemicals poses little burden to the rest of us. Even if food manufacturers responded to a warning label by removing artificial colors from foods altogether, all but the most obsessive consumers would adapt to the blander palate of the ultra-processed foods on offer. Other government policies pose more difficult ethical dilemmas. Vaccines, for example, justify regulators in approving greater risks to vulnerable populations with the prospect of outsized benefits, such as herd immunity against polio, which we certainly do not want. always agreed was a good thing. By comparison, a warning requirement for food dyes should be a slam dunk.
But again: transparency is key. The CDPH has indicated that a warning requirement will have costs that outweigh any benefits of reducing food coloring consumption, such as fewer and less severe cases of ADHD. But it offers little explanation as to why. How would warning labels be ‘counterproductive’? What is the cost of “unnecessary fear and anxiety” that the agency is referring to? How were they calculated? Who provided the data and did they have a financial interest in one policy or the other? Sometimes some of us have to go without protection for the greater good. Not everywhere is a peanut-free zone. But a full explanation of why some of us do not deserve protection is essential to maintaining trust in public institutions among us all.
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