House Republicans Want the FDA—Not States—to Regulate Food Dyes

Members of the House Appropriations Committee are also asking the agency to submit its review of food additives.

June 20, 2025

June 20, 2025 – Since his confirmation as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has enthusiastically supported state laws banning artificial food dyes. In March, for example, he traveled to West Virginia to celebrate the first state bill eliminating the dyes from all foods (starting in 2028).

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Now, some Republicans in Congress are quietly pushing back on those efforts.

The House Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee responsible for funding the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) submitted a report to explain decisions made in their draft funding bill earlier this month.

“The Committee is concerned that state legislative activity to ban FDA-approved food and color additives threatens both the FDA’s unified, science-based federal food safety system and the interstate commerce of agricultural, food, and beverage goods,” they wrote on page 83 of the report.

The committee members said they were reaffirming “the essential role FDA plays in determining the safety of food and color additives in the nation’s food and beverage supply.” They also requested that the agency provide a report to the committee detailing the additives FDA is reviewing, including safety concerns.

The language suggests that there may be tension within the party around how exactly the regulation of food dyes should happen, which could impact whether Kennedy is able to eventually get the additives out of the food supply.

While Kennedy has made the issue one of the FDA’s top priorities, his recent announcement on the phaseout of food dyes depends entirely on companies voluntarily removing the dyes from their products. Since then, a handful of companies have committed to doing so. Kraft Heinz announced this week it will remove artificial dyes from its products, including Jell-O and Kool-Aid, and General Mills agreed to remove dyes from its products by 2027. However, many companies who made similar commitments about a decade ago, when attention to food dyes’ health impacts was similarly high, reneged on those promises once attention waned.

Because the FDA has declined to outright ban the dyes—with the exception of Red Dye No. 3, which the Biden administration banned—states have moved to fill the gap with their own laws.

In April, in response to the agency’s announcement asking industry to voluntarily remove the dyes, Consumer Brands, the trade organization that represents the country’s biggest food companies, issued a statement defending the additives’ safety. The statement also included many of the same points included in the Appropriations Committee report, including concerns about a “state patchwork” of different laws. “Consumer Brands has long asked HHS and FDA to reestablish themselves as the country’s leading regulatory authority, and we appreciate that the administration has reasserted their leadership in response to the myriad of state activity in the food regulation space,” it read. (Link to this post.)

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Lisa Held is Civil Eats’ senior staff reporter and contributing editor. Read more >