But for about the first half of the April 22 press conference I was giddy with the assumption that common sense and urgency had suddenly gripped one of the most bureaucratic of federal agencies.
No more thousands of inconclusive studies. No more publications in the Federal Register that interested parties had six months to comment on something the FDA would spend another six years contemplating. No hundred-page legal descriptions of the intended action. And definitely no highly partisan Congressional hearings where both sides ask inflammatory questions just to embarrass the invited guests and to create sound bites.
Just "We've been kicking this subject around for years, so enough is enough. Stop using these six color additives by the end of this year. Period."
Then I came to my senses.
After three decades of writing about the food & beverage industry, you'd think I'd be a little less naive. I know product redevelopment, even simple ingredient substitution, takes time. And I've drunk enough of the food industry's kool-aid in that time to believe things like this need to proceed slowly. But consider:
1. These ingredients have been questioned for decades; this isn't out of the blue.
2. There have been sizable protests against processors that use them. Hundreds appeared outside WK Kellogg Co’s Battle Creek, Mich., headquarters last October to protest the cereal company’s use of these dyes.
3. They add nothing nutritionally or functionally to the products.
4. There are substitutes, and the major companies already are using them in reformulated products for overseas markets.
And maybe the most telling point: A few months after they're gone, no one will miss them.
I am naive enough to suspect there are some well-intentioned -- but large and investor-beholden -- food & beverage companies that would like to have removed those colorants years ago but they didn't want to be the first. They didn't want their fruity-loopies to look dull compared to their competitors' neon fruity-loopies.
Could this have happened under the Biden administration? Probably not, although it should have. It’s a shame it took this kind of chief executive with a record of issuing executive orders without regard to the rule of law to get it done. Fear, especially of vindictiveness, should not be a motivator, but it has been.
We can't deport people without allowing them to defend themselves ... but we are. We can't fire workers without notice and justification ... but we do. We can't close down federal agencies without carefully considering the consequences ... but we have. And tariffs? Don't get me started.
So why can't we ban the use of six questionable color additives with the stroke of an autopen? If only the government worked that way – to our benefit.
