Proposed CA law could reveal secret food ingredients

By Thomas Galligan, especially for CalMatters

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When food companies keep secrets, consumers pay the price.

In 2022, a foodborne illness caused by Daily Harvest’s French lentils and leeks sickened nearly 400 people. including dozens of Californiansand sent 133 people to hospitalsome need gallbladder removal. The outbreak was later linked to tare flour, an ingredient not known to have been used in the food before.

Who decided tara flour was safe to eat?

The same year, a student from New Jersey died after drinking Panera’s highly caffeinated “Charged Lemonade.”

Who determined that the amount of caffeine in Charged Lemonade does not pose a risk?

The answer to both questions is the same: the food industry.

American consumers rightly assume that before an ingredient enters our food or drink, the US Food and Drug Administration has tested it for safety. But in most cases in recent decades, they would have been wrong.

A loophole in federal law allows food companies to market new nutritional supplements by self-certifying their safety in complete secrecy. Companies pay their own experts or employees to assess whether a substance is “generally recognized as safe” for use in food.

With this determination, manufacturers can either share it with the FDA or simply start using that chemical in food without notifying the FDA or the public.

If you were a for-profit company, what would you do?

Not surprisingly, both Daily Harvest and Panera appear to have made safety decisions behind closed doors without notifying the FDA of their plans to use tare flour and caffeine in their respective products. You might assume that food companies would have to disclose all ingredients on ingredient labels found on packaged foods and beverages. But you’d be wrong.

Companies can hide a large number of ingredients behind such vague terms as “artificial flavor.” As a result only the food companies know what’s in the food and if these ingredients are proven safe.

Californians deserve to know what’s in their food. They need to be able to trust that these ingredients are safe. The state is already a leader in consumer protection – especially the children — from dangerous food chemicals. Now, Assemblywoman Dawn Addis is working to give Californians more protections and transparency by pulling back the curtain on the food industry through Assembly Bill 2034.

The bill requires companies that use ingredients that have not passed an FDA safety review to notify the state and explain how they determined those ingredients are safe, providing all basic safety data. This information will then be published in a public database for all to see.

The measure would also require companies to publicly disclose the chemicals they hide behind terms like “natural flavor” and “artificial color.”

The food industry is doing everything they can to kill this sensible bill. They argue it will raise food prices across the state as companies suddenly incur major new costs to comply with the law.

This is not true. Under federal law, even if companies choose to use new ingredients without notifying the FDA, they are still required to prove those chemicals are safe by conducting rigorous safety evaluations. AB 2034 would simply require companies that have skipped the FDA process to instead share that safety assessment information with the state.

Only companies that violate federal law by using chemicals that have not been proven safe would have cause for concern. If companies are truly following existing federal law, they already have this information.

They’ll just have to send it to the state – a minor cost at best. There will be no reason to raise prices. Moreover, the human cost of the food industry’s secrecy turned out to be much higher.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.