Kennedy rattles food companies with vow to rid food of artificial dyes

In his first meeting with top executives from PepsiCo, WK Kellogg, General Mills and other large companies, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, bluntly told them that a top priority would be eliminating artificial dyes from the nation’s food supply.

At the Monday meeting, Kennedy emphasized that it was a “strong desire and urgent priority” of the new Trump administration to rid the food system of artificial colorings.

In addition, he warned the companies that they should anticipate significant change as a result of his quest for “getting the worst ingredients out” of food, according to a letter from the Consumer Brands Association, a trade group. The New York Times reviewed a copy that was sent to the group’s members after the meeting.

And while Kennedy said in the meeting that he wanted to work with the industry, he also “made clear his intention to take action unless the industry is willing to be proactive with solutions,” the association wrote.

“But to underscore, decision time is imminent,” Melissa Hockstad, who attended the meeting and is the group’s president, wrote in the letter.

Later on Monday, Kennedy issued a directive that would also affect food companies nationwide. He ordered the Food and Drug Administration to revise a long-standing policy that allowed companies — independent of any regulatory review — to decide that a new ingredient in the food supply was safe. Put in place decades ago, the policy was aimed at ingredients like vinegar or salt that are widely considered to be well-understood and benign. But the designation, known as GRAS, or “generally recognized as safe,” has since grown to include a far broader array of natural and synthetic additives.

Kennedy had vowed to upend the food system as a way to address growing rates of chronic disease and other health concerns even before his appointment as the head of the Department of Health and Human Services. He now oversees the FDA, the federal regulator for about 80% of the nation’s food supply.

Many food companies rely on artificial dyes to make breakfast cereals and candies dazzling shades of pink and blue, for instance, or beverages neon orange. Some have tried to adapt natural ingredients, like carrot or blueberry juice, for coloring, particularly for products sold in international markets, like Canada. But the companies have said that consumer demand had weakened in the United States because of dissatisfaction with less appealing or vivid colors in snacks and drinks.

Steven Williams, the CEO of PepsiCo’s North America division, attended the meeting with Kennedy, but the company said he would not comment. In an email, a PepsiCo spokesperson said that the company viewed the meeting as a “productive first step” and added that it was focused on providing consumers “more options with natural ingredients, no synthetic colors and reductions in sugar, fat and sodium.”

Stacy Flathau, the chief corporate affairs officer for WK Kellogg, said in an emailed statement that the company looked forward to working with the new administration.

While the industry memo expressed alarm about the plan to remove synthetic colors, it did not address Kennedy’s additional proposal targeting some food ingredients deemed safe.

Advocates for food safety have criticized the existing GRAS policy as a loophole that enables food companies to introduce untested ingredients that in some cases have proved hazardous. About 1,000 ingredients deemed safe have been reviewed by the FDA, but Kennedy targeted the ones that companies deem acceptable with no government oversight.

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