Commissioner Marty Makary and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said food companies are eager to work with them on removing petroleum-based dyes from foods.
At a press conference today, Food & Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Marty Makary announced that the FDA is “effectively removing all petroleum-based food dyes from the U.S. food supply.”
Makary said his agency will work with the food industry to eliminate FD&C Green No. 3, FD&C Red No. 40, FD&C Yellow No. 5, FD&C Yellow No. 6, FD&C Blue No. 1, and FD&C Blue No. 23 from products, including by approving new natural dye replacements and establishing a national standard and timeline to help companies make the transition.
“There’s no one ingredient that accounts for the child chronic disease epidemic,” Makary said. “Taking petroleum-based food dyes out of the food supply is not a silver bullet that will instantly make America’s children healthy, but it is one important step. This administration is not interested in continuing down the path of doing the same old things as we watch our nation’s children get sicker. We need fresh new approaches.”
For decades, public health advocates have been pushing food companies, regulators, and lawmakers to end the use of the artificial dyes based on their links to behavioral and other health issues in children, especially hyperactivity. The United Kingdom and European Union restrict their use in foods, but the FDA has long maintained that they’re safe for most children. On their way out the door, Biden administration officials banned Red Dye No. 3 based on animal studies showing a link to cancer. California enacted the first state ban on artificial dyes in school foods in September of 2024, and other states have followed suit.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees the FDA, was the closer. Kennedy said while there are many issues he hopes to tackle on his MAHA agenda, “Food dye is just a no-brainer. We can act on that now.” While the FDA’s plan depends on companies’ willingness to work with the agencies, Kennedy said they had already demonstrated an eagerness to do so.
In conjunction with the announcement, the U.S. Department of Agriculture sent out a statement celebrating a commitment from the International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) to remove artificial dyes from milk, cheese, and yogurt served in school meals by July 2026. In its announcement, the IDFA said the vast majority of dairy products are already free of the dyes but that some reformulation would be required.
The president of the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), Peter Lurie, who has been driving work on the issue for years, said in a statement that the dyes are completely unnecessary and the harms to children’s health are real. “We don’t need synthetic dyes in the food supply, and no one will be harmed by their absence,” he said.
However, he was critical of the fact that the plan relies on “voluntary food industry compliance” and no major regulatory changes were proposed. He also worried other recent changes at the FDA could hinder longer-term work to fix the system that has allowed chemicals linked to health risks to remain in the food supply for so long.
“Thanks to the brutal staff cuts to FDA imposed by Secretary Kennedy and Elon Musk’s DOGE, it will be harder now for FDA to police other food additives, inspect factories, or perform just about any function than it was four months ago,” Lurie said. Last week, the country’s top ultra-processed foods researcher resigned from his role within HHS after he said he no longer believed it was possible to practice “unbiased science.”
During the conference, Kennedy reiterated his promises of transparency and sticking to science. “We’re going to restore gold-standard science, so we know what’s in our food and we can eliminate it,” he said. (Link to this post.)
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