States expected to leapfrog feds on food-chemical regulation

Despite the Donald J. Trump administration’s embrace of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, state and local governments are poised to outpace the federal government in restricting food chemicals like synthetic dyes and other additives, legal and economic experts on the food industry tell C&EN.“States are passing more legislation than ever,” says Donnelly McDowell, an attorney and partner at Kelley Drye & Warren who leads the law firm’s advertising and marketing practice group.Wary of a patchwork of varying requirements across different states, companies have urged Congress to pass legislation that would establish federal preemption in this area, but this preemption push did not yield results in 2025.The MAHA momentum will carry more food-focused bills, rules, and lawsuits into 2026, across blue and red cities and states alike. “There aren’t too many issues where San Francisco and Texas are going to agree,” McDowell tells C&EN, but food formulation and processing is increasingly one of those issues. “I would have never guessed that we would end up here.” Companies are awaiting federal action At the federal level, there’s been “the appearance of a lot going on” but not much concrete action yet, says Mary Muth, an economist and senior fellow at the National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy. While some companies have announced they are removing synthetic dyes from products, the industry is generally taking a “wait and see approach” to potential federal regulation, Muth tells C&EN. The biggest thing the food industry is waiting on in 2026 is a