Texas Mandates Warning Labels on Foods With Harmful Additives
AUSTIN, Texas — A bill signed into law by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Sunday could have sweeping implications for the nation’s food industry.
The first-of-its-kind legislation requires manufacturers of processed foods and drinks to put warning labels on products containing any one of 44 different food additives or dyes believed to be harmful to human health.
More than 31 million Americans live in Texas, consequently the law is expected to have an enormous impact on the food industry.
Food manufacturers will now have to decide whether to reformulate their products and exclude the additives, accept the label or stop selling their goods in Texas altogether.
The new policy aligns closely with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again movement, which targets chronic illness and childhood obesity.
Food policy experts believe the legislation will inspire a wave of similar bills around the country.
“When a state as big as Texas requires a warning, that will have an impact on the entire marketplace. No question,” Scott Faber, a senior vice president at the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit advocating for stronger food safety policies, told The Washington Post.
Unlike many other countries, the United States does not have warning labels on food. In the final days of the Biden administration, the Food and Drug Administration released a proposal to require warning labels when a food or drink product contains low, medium or high levels of sodium, added sugars or saturated fats.
But some nutrition experts have called for stronger warnings, like the stop sign–inspired warnings used in Mexico, Chile and Peru.
This Texas law requires that all additives — including bleached flour, red dye 40 and yellow 5 — be labeled in a “prominent and reasonably visible spot,” stating, “WARNING: This product contains an ingredient that is not recommended for human consumption by the appropriate authority in Australia, Canada, the European Union, or the United Kingdom.”
The food industry lobbied against the legislation, claiming that all additives have been appropriately tested and are safe for consumption. They also worry that the new warning labels can be misleading.
“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,” the Consumer Brands Association, a food industry trade group, wrote in a June letter to Abbott urging him to veto the bill. “The labeling requirements of SB 25 mandate inaccurate warning language, create legal risks for brands, and drive consumer confusion and higher costs.”
The new law will require labeling of any food “developed or copyrighted” on or after Jan.1, 2027.
According to Republican state Rep. Lacey Hull, a primary sponsor of the bill in the House, this means that a food will only need to be relabelled if its ingredients or packaging change after the deadline.
The question now is, what will happen next? Some believe manufacturers could pursue legal action to prevent the law from being enforced while they devise a longer-term strategy.
In the meantime, a number of major players in the food sector, including Kraft and Tyson, have signaled their intention to eliminate dyes and additives from their products to avoid potential bans and warning labels.
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