Advocates and Lawmakers Demand NYS Legislature Protect Kids' Health As Pressure Mounts From Industry Groups

ALBANY, NY (06/02/2025) (readMedia)-- On Tuesday, leading public health advocates, medical professionals, and lawmakers will join the Center for Science in the Public Interest for a virtual press conference in support of the Food Safety and Chemical Disclosure Act (A1556C/S1239C) - legislation that will ban cancer-linked Red No. 3, potassium bromate, and hormone-disrupting propylparaben in New York foods, and require companies to disclose evidence proving the safety of food chemicals that have bypassed the FDA's safety review. Recently, industry groups such as American Beverage, Consumer Healthcare Products Association, and the National Confectioners Association have scaled up lobbying against the bill, pushing their profit margins over food safety.

The bill is on the floor in the Senate, and moving through the Assembly.

Like other states, New York's food supply is riddled with unsafe chemicals, banned throughout the European Union, due to a federal loophole that allows food companies to self-certify their ingredients as "generally recognized as safe" aka GRAS without adequate FDA oversight. As a result, FDA officials admitted, "We simply do not have the information to vouch for the safety of many of these chemicals" and said, "we do not know the universe of compounds that are going to market."

Between the FDA's tentative plans to "remove food dyes" via voluntary industry efforts, and the Trump administration's AI-authored MAHA report on children's health with fake citations, the federal government has failed to keep pace with scientific evidence and consumer safety.

Watch the Zoom conference here.