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- Texas Governor Greg Abbott will decide whether to enact a bill requiring food manufacturers to add warning labels to products if they contain ingredients like dyes that have been banned or restricted by other countries. Major food conglomerates have opposed the bill, arguing it would add greater uncertainty for consumers in a time of economic unpredictability.
A Texas bill on the brink of becoming law would crack down on major food manufacturers, requiring them to label products with warnings about ingredients “not recommended for human consumption,” under the standards of countries other than the U.S.
Senate Bill 25 would require U.S. food manufacturers to, beginning in 2027, clearly mark products sold in Texas with warning labels that the foods contain certain ingredients like bleached flour and synthetic food dyes that other countries have prohibited or required warnings for. The legislation would impact major food manufacturers like General Mills, whose brands Pillsbury Toaster Strudel contain bleached flour, as well as PepsiCo, the conglomerate behind Doritos and Mountain Dew, which contain dyes.
The bill also outlines requirements for physical education and nutrition education in schools. The legislation reached the desk of Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Sunday.
Supported by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the bill’s enactment would notch a victory for Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement. The HHS secretary, as part of his MAHA efforts, has advocated for the banning of dyes, additives, and seed oils, arguing the ingredients increase the risk of cancer, hyperactivity in children, inflammatory bowel diseases, and allergic reactions.
The bipartisan bill’s enactment would also mark a departure from Texas’s history of being a deep red state with a light touch with regulations. Texas is the second-largest state in the U.S. by population, with more than 31 million residents in 2024.
A spokesperson for Abbott did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment, but press secretary Andrew Mahaleris said in a statement to Bloomberg that, “Governor Abbott will continue to work with the legislature to ensure Texans have access to healthy foods to care for themselves and their families and will thoughtfully review any legislation they send to his desk.”
The HHS did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
Big Food bites back
In response to the bill, dozens of food manufacturers and distributors wrote a letter on May 19 to the Texas legislature asking it to remove the section of the legislation regarding warning labels.
“As currently written, the food labeling provision in this bill casts an incredibly wide net—triggering warning labels on everyday grocery items based on assertions that foreign governments have banned such items, rather than on standards established by Texas regulators or by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration,” the letter said.
The companies argued in the letter that Texas is outpacing national food labeling standards, and the enactment of the bill would “destabilize local and regional economies” and limit access to foods in times of economic uncertainty.
According to John Hewitt, senior vice president of state affairs at Consumer Brands Association, which represents several major U.S. food manufacturers, the food industry is committed to tools that increase ingredient transparency, but urged Abbott to veto the bill.
“The ingredients used in the U.S. food supply are safe and have been rigorously studied following an objective science and risk-based evaluation process,” Hewitt told Fortune in a statement. “The labeling requirements of SB 25 mandate inaccurate warning language, create legal risks for brands and drive consumer confusion and higher costs.”
Consumer Brands Association did not respond to Fortune’s inquiry about what component of the warning language was inaccurate.
How Big Food has responded to past legislation
In the past following the enactment of food labeling legislation, food manufacturers have had to make sweeping changes to packaging to abide by the laws, according to Jura Liaukonyte, professor of marketing and applied economics at Cornell University’s SC Johnson College of Business.
Her research includes analyzing the ramifications of the passage of a Vermont law regarding labels for genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Following the law’s enactment, several large food companies changed their labeling at the national level, finding it inefficient to only update labels for products in one state. A national law around GMO labels passed about 30 days later, essentially rewarding the companies’ strategy.
Christina Roberto, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Food and Nutrition Policy, told Fortune that in other cases, food manufacturers resist the legislation by taking legal action.
“The industry tends to not want to do something different, not want to do something that’s going to incur costs,” Roberto said. “And certainly this kind of legislation—where it’s trying to warn consumers about the harms of aspects of the product—it’s very unlikely that any manufacturer would be on board.”
Invoking foreign food standards
Liaukonyte noted another potential layer of uncertainty for food manufacturers is the bill’s invocation of foreign food standards on U.S. products. Liaukonyte said the labeling mandate would highlight the disparities between food safety standards in the U.S. versus other parts of the world.
“There is a very different principle of how food and cosmetics safety is regulated in [the European Union] and in the U.S.,” she said.
The EU uses the precautionary principle for food and cosmetics safety that requires rigorous testing, essentially that products are automatically deemed risky until proven safe. Meanwhile, the U.S. generally has a looser framework around safety. Companies can include additives to a product without explicit approval from the Food and Drug Administration, for example, if those additives are “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS), meaning qualified experts deem the product safe based on past research and use.
Kennedy has advocated for greater scrutiny of the GRAS framework. New York is considering a law that would require the disclosure of evidence for products that are GRAS.
Why deep-red Texas is regulating food labels
Republican support for increased labeling of ingredients largely marks a departure of a decades-old trend of opposing food regulation. Liaukonyte speculated Kennedy’s MAHA efforts have championed a naturalist movement that equates health decisions with individual rights.
“There is a little bit of reframing health as a conservative value,” she said. “Reframing the labeling initiative: It’s an issue of parental rights, personal responsibility, and it’s sort of like making your own decisions conditional on being informed.”
While Kennedy’s claims around vaccines causing autism have been proven false and his recent “MAHA report” misinterpreted and omitted citations, public health experts agree tighter regulation of labels, particularly to align with more stringent European standards, is good news for public health.
For Roberto, her qualm with the legislation in question isn’t that it isn’t supported by scientific research or oversteps boundaries with food companies, but that it doesn’t go far enough in setting standards to protect public health. She would like to see legislation advocating for warnings about salt, sugar, and saturated fats in certain foods, as well as taxing or banning them from schools.
“It actually is an exciting time,” Roberto said. “But I think a lot of these policies could go further to support children’s health by coupling it with other types of policies that we know work.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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Sasha Rogelberg
