Illinois lawmakers are pushing a bill to ban food additives that have been linked to cancer and behavioral issues, but there is a debate over who should regulate it.
The bill targets erythrosine — or red dye No. 3 — brominated vegetable oil, potassium bromate and propylparaben.
Many of these additives can be found in cookies, candies, bread and other processed.
These additives have a connection to cognitive health risks in children and animals, according to studies from the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment and other institutions across the country. Children reportedly show symptoms of hyperactivity after eating large amounts of food that contain these additives.
This is why state Sen. Willie Preston has pushed the bill since last session, where it passed the Senate with Democrat support but couldn’t get enough attention in the House.
Preston, a Democrat who represents Chicago, filed the bill after he visited Israel a few years ago. The country has stricter regulations on food additives and foods must go through multi-step processes before being accepted into a country.
Preston said he could tell the difference in how the food made him feel and that caused a worry about what additives were in his children’s food.
“I feel compelled to make sure that we do the same thing to rid our foods (of these additives) in Illinois, and quite frankly, we should do this in America to give our people the opportunity to not consume foods that are clearly making them unhealthy and sick,” Preston said.
Not everyone in the medical community is convinced that banning these food additives is necessary.
Mike Endris is a pediatrician at OSF Healthcare, a Catholic not-for-profit hospital system based out of Peoria.
Endris said additives have the potential to be harmful, but it’s difficult to point to it as the main cause of health issues in patients.
“The few main culprits of red dye [No. 3] is thought to have a relationship with adverse behavioral outcomes in children,” Endris said. “Both with and without any known diagnoses, it can seem to lead to higher ADHD symptoms in kids that consume higher amounts of food dyes. Again, oftentimes it's hard to narrow what exact food dye might be problematic, because usually kids are getting a variety of them.”
Endris says some studies could be outdated or provide conflicting results, and he thinks more studies should be done to determine the long-term side effects.
“If they were approved 40 or 58 years ago for use, we always need to revisit those things,” Endris said. “Science in general improves, and we have better techniques to measure some of those things, and track smaller, subtle differences then we always should be supporting that kind of approach for food scientists to really study these things in greater detail.”
Endris said there should be a nationwide ban if the federal Food and Drug administration determines there is more evidence of harm.
That way, Endris said there would be consistency in the law.
However, Republican Sen. Li Arellano from Dixon voted no to the bill during its hearing a few weeks ago. He says the federal government and the FDA should be the ones responsible to regulate what goes in Illinoisians’ foods.
“The wisest way to do it is to go through one national process where the FDA, backed by science, backed by studies, is taking a look at our food and issuing recommendations and issuing requirements,” Arellano said.
Arellano said the state is relying on conflicting studies, and that it would be too costly to come up with data that's more definitive.
Manufacturers
That lack of clarity is also a concern for the food makers who use these additives.
Donovan Griffith is a director at the Illinois Manufacturers' Association. Griffith said he acknowledges the public health concerns but said the state should not regulate food additives when the FDA could.
“If individual states start implementing their own additive bands of various different additives, what we'll have is a patchwork of regulations in each state that will be distinctly different,” Griffith said. “It'll be very hard for food manufacturers who don't make food for just one state, or one particular area makes food for the entire country and across the world, to have to comply with each individual state potential bans on additives.”
In fact, the FDA has since moved to ban red dye No. 3 and brominated vegetable oil. Two of the four additives Preston wants to ban.
Preston said he understands the concern food manufacturers have but he has worked with those companies across the state to negotiate the bill. Supply chains issues, Preston said, won't be a large issue since California has its own ban on these additives.
Preston said he understands those concerns, but says his top priority is food safety.
“The health of Illinoisians should be premier, we cannot afford not to do this," Preston said. “What about all the cost to health care that we're having? What about all the cancer patients that are in our hospital sick because of the foods that they consume."
The bill was approved in committee and is headed to the Senate floor for consideration.
