State Ingredient Bans Are Hurting Consumers and Manufacturers

America doesn’t suffer from a lack of food regulations. It suffers from too many. State ingredient laws are increasingly driven by trends rather than sound science.

This growing patchwork of state regulations is fragmenting the market, restricting consumers, raising costs, and discouraging innovation.

The Make American Healthy Again (MAHA) movement brought forth a much-needed discussion around nutrition. More than ever, consumers are reading labels, opting for whole foods, and avoiding foods they regard as unhealthy. These are deeply personal and subjective choices.

While it is within the government’s purview to regulate and/or ban genuinely unsafe ingredients, it is not acceptable for any government – state or federal – to ban ingredients that are considered safe but offend the personal preferences of lawmakers.

In the past few years, this topic has become more prevalent as several states issued bans of cell-cultured meat products: Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Indiana, Montana, Texas, and Nebraska. Despite no apparent safety risks, these states took choices away from millions of consumers and halted innovation in their respective regions.

There have also been a patchwork of bans against several common additives, dyes, sweeteners, and seed oils in Arizona, California, West Virginia, and Louisiana, whose MAHA bill targeted more than 40 common ingredients.

Some states have also passed burdensome labeling requirements for certain ingredients. For example, Texas passed a bill that requires food manufacturers to have warning labels products that include one or more of the 44 listed ingredients. These labels must “inform” customers that “Australia, Canada, the European Union, or the United Kingdom have labeled the ingredients as “not recommended for human consumption.””

These requirements are currently being litigated on grounds that the labeling is false and misleading (several cited countries allow the use of these ingredients and most do not label them as unsafe for human consumption) and is compelled speech.

Nanny state laws steal choices from consumers. Regardless of what your opinion is of a certain ingredient, if it is considered generally safe, you should be allowed to buy it. In a free society, adults, not politicians or regulators, decide what goes into their grocery carts. When the government substitutes preference or fear for science, it undermines both personal responsibility and trust in public institutions.

Unnecessary restrictions on ingredients makes food more costly for everyone. Without uniform standards, food manufacturers are forced to cater their products to fit a hodge-podge of different state requirements. This makes it difficult to produce at scale, thus increasing the cost of producing the product. At a time when affordability is a top issue for voters, making their grocery bill more expensive is a mistake.

Ingredient bans hurt innovation. When states prohibit ingredients that the federal government deemed safe, they discourage all investment and push research dollars overseas. Innovation markets only work when the rules are clear.

Both manufacturers and consumers would benefit from some form of science-driven, uniform standard for ingredient and label requirements. Otherwise, grocery costs will keep rising, consumers will have less options, and investment dollars will move overseas.