Confectionery giants DEFEND carcinogenic additives in Skittles, REFUSING to comply with California bill to ban them

Indus­try offi­cials have reject­ed Cal­i­for­nia bills that could ban foods such as Skit­tles, Sour Patch Kids and Camp­bel­l’s soup.

The bill aims to curb the use of five addi­tives linked to can­cer, DNA and organ­ic dam­age, but many com­pa­nies in the indus­try claim the addi­tives are “safe.” there is

Exec­u­tives from com­pa­nies includ­ing the Nation­al Con­fec­tionery Asso­ci­a­tion, the Cal­i­for­nia Gro­cery Asso­ci­a­tion and the Amer­i­can Chem­istry Coun­cil added that the bill would side­step the rules because the safe­ty of addi­tives is already being con­sid­ered by many exist­ing poli­cies. rice field.

Of the five banned addi­tives, three are banned in the EU: bromi­nat­ed veg­etable oils, potas­si­um bro­mate and tita­ni­um diox­ide. Anoth­er Red 3 is banned in the US.

Foods that may be affect­ed are jel­ly beans, PEZ can­dy, Tri­dent sug­ar-free chew­ing gum, Camp­bel­l’s soup, and oth­er con­fec­tionery such as small brands of bread across the Unit­ed States.

A let­ter writ­ten in oppo­si­tion to the bill states, “These five addi­tives have been exten­sive­ly reviewed by fed­er­al and state sys­tems, as well as many inter­na­tion­al sci­en­tif­ic bod­ies, and are still con­sid­ered safe. ” is written.

It also added that a peti­tion was filed last Novem­ber call­ing for the removal of the “Red 3” and is open for com­ment until next month.

In addi­tion, the non-prof­it con­sumer advo­ca­cy group “ Pub­lic Inter­est Sci­ence Cen­ter ” has sub­mit­ted a peti­tion to the Cal­i­for­nia Depart­ment of Pub­lic Health in 2022 ask­ing for warn­ing labels on foods con­tain­ing syn­thet­ic col­ors. A pub­lic hear­ing is sched­uled for April 11, 2023.

Anoth­er let­ter, writ­ten exclu­sive­ly by the Nation­al Con­fec­tionery Asso­ci­a­tion, not­ed that the con­fec­tionery indus­try sup­ports more than 100,000 high-pay­ing jobs in Cal­i­for­nia.

As man­u­fac­tur­ers of choco­late, can­dy, gum and mints, the con­fec­tionery indus­try … cre­ates high-pay­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs and sup­ports thou­sands of addi­tion­al Amer­i­can jobs across the economy.”

In Cal­i­for­nia, the con­fec­tionery indus­try accounts for $7.7 bil­lion in eco­nom­ic out­put, pays $1.8 bil­lion in wages and sup­ports 106,351 jobs in the state.”