FDA Finally Bans Ingredient Used in Sodas, After Potential for Adverse Health Effects First Identified in 1970
Questions arise about FDA’s ability to prioritize safety and incentivize innovation.
Last fall, California passed “The Food Safety Act,” one of the myriad rules and regulations Sacramento generates while it fails to resolve immigration, crime, and infrastructure issues. The rules banned four chemicals from foods, including brominated vegetable oils (BVOs).
The legislation, also known as Assembly Bill 418 (AB 418), specifically prohibits the sale of food containing red dye 3, potassium bromate, brominated vegetable oil, and propylparaben. California Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel (D-46), the original author of AB 418, and Governor Newsom cited the EU’s ban of the four chemicals in their reasoning for introducing and signing the bill into law, respectively.
Studies have suggested the additives may be linked to serious health harms, such as cancer, reproductive issues, and childhood behavioral and developmental problems.
BVO is mainly used in fruit-flavored drinks to keep flavor oils in suspension and give the product a cloudy appearance. Now, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is following California’s example and banning the use of this substance.
The rule takes effect next month, and manufacturers have another year to reformulate, relabel, and deplete their inventories of BVO-containing products before the agency starts enforcing its ban.
However, many beverage makers have already removed the ingredient from their formulations due to data collected in 1970.
The FDA announced its ban eight months after the agency proposed it, citing studies on animals that showed the ingredient may have adverse health effects in humans.
The FDA determined in 1970 that BVO was not generally recognized as safe, with many beverage makers in the ensuing decades swapping out the ingredient with alternatives. As things stand, few beverages in the U.S. today contain BVO, according to the agency.
A spokesperson for Keurig Dr Pepper told CBS MoneyWatch in November that the beverage maker was reformulating its Sun Drop soda to no longer include the ingredient.
BVO was banned in the United Kingdom in 1970, followed by the European Union in 2008. Over a decade ago, some of the bigger names in beverage-making removed the substance from their products.
PepsiCo agreed in 2013 to remove BVO from Gatorade, and in 2014 both Coca-Cola and PepsiCo announced they would remove the ingredient from all their beverages.
While the ingredient remained in Mountain Dew for a few years after 2014, USA TODAY confirmed in a 2020 fact check that PepsiCo no longer uses the ingredient in the drink.
Given the limited number of beverages in this country using the ingredient, one has to wonder just exactly how effective this bureaucracy is and what its priorities are.
In April, House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) oversaw a hearing entitled “Oversight of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.” In his remarks, the congressman expressed concern about the agency’s ability to prioritize safety and incentivize innovation.
. . . FDA is charged with regulatory oversight of the food and drug industries.
Industries that ensure Americans have food on the table by innovating safer and more stable crops.
Industries that provide Americans new medications to treat debilitating diseases.
Industries that create cutting-edge medical devices that can keep your heart pumping or help replace a knee.
These industries are vital to keep Americans safe, healthy, and happy.
These industries provide millions of jobs and nearly $3 trillion in economic value.
Congress must ensure the FDA is prioritizing safety and effectiveness but also incentivizing innovation.
Unfortunately, the FDA under President Biden is suffering from dysfunction and is failing to do the bare minimum to carry out its core mission—make certain our nation’s food and drug products are safe and effective.
If only the FDA could perhaps ensure that infant formulas were safe and plentiful and that cold medications worked as they should!
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Comments
So, they are banning something that has already been voluntarily removed from the vast majority of products impacted?
It was ‘voluntarily’ removed after being banned by the EU for years.
Given how distributed the manufacturing is, different recipes for different markets is standard operating procedure for these companies.
Contrary to the video, it is not in most drinks, but just in a few low cost beverages in discount retailers.
This has triggered the looting of mini marts in CA, as these beverages were popular with “the community”.
Now do frankensugar.
And we need a review of the safety of many vegetable oils given the convoluted manner in which some vegetable oils are made
Only one of the soda labels is nationally distributed, and that distribution is not widespread.
The failure of the agency to do what is right is another example of agencies being run by businesses and money. The ability of government workers being able to earn money off of businesses while serving is totally wrong. The ability of these employees to become consultants and lobbyists is wrong.
Sometimes the conflict is not apparent. For example, when the EPA shuts down a coal mine, it is not for the benefit of the public. It is for the benefit of a competing business and the agency personnel expect rich individual monetary rewards.
Yep, crony capitalism is as dangerous as socialism. It is essentially an oligarchy.
Also, the low usage is noted but it needs to be regulated out to prevent new startups products from including them.
Not sure you can put this on Biden (as Comer is trying to do) considering the NGRAS designation came in 1970
The FDA can certainly be blamed but that’s a lot of executive branch officers doing nothing for 50 years.
Oh there were doing other more important things. Firstly the bureaucracy was ensuring it was collecting an ever increasing pay + benefits package while expanding the number of their fellow bureaucrats. Then they looked the other way to take care of more important things, like writing tens of thousands of additional pages of regulations to be complied with….and which need more bureaucracy to ensure that compliance. It’s really a question of priorities and doggone it, those Amish Farmers offering dangerous products like unpasteurized milk for sale had to be stopped….we can’t have adult Citizens making those sorts of decisions for themselves.
Illegal aliens coming across the border are more dangerous than any ingredient used in sodas. More than 10 million illegal aliens have entered the country under Biden. If everybody in the country was forced to drink sodas with BVO for forty years it wouldn’t be as bad as what Biden has done to this country in 4 years.
wonder if the fda will remove the toxic ingredient in the wh
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