Kraft Heinz to Remove Artificial Food Dyes from Products in Victory for RFK Jr. + More
Source: Children’s Health Defense
Kraft Heinz to Remove Artificial Food Dyes from Products in Victory for RFK Jr.
Food conglomerate Kraft Heinz announced Tuesday its plan to remove artificial food dyes from its products by 2027, marking a victory for Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in his quest to remake the American food supply.
Kraft Heinz said it would not be launching any new products with artificial food dyes and vowed to remove the remaining food dyes from its U.S. portfolio by the end of 2027.
The company also disclosed that almost 90% of its products are free from artificial food dyes, measured by net sales. “As a food company with a 150+ year heritage, we are continuously evolving our recipes, products, and portfolio to deliver superiority to consumers and customers,” Kraft Heinz North America president Pedro Navio said in a statement.
“The vast majority of our products use natural or no colors, and we’ve been on a journey to reduce our use of FD&C colors across the remainder of our portfolio.” The announcement comes after Kennedy and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary moved in April to phase out eight popular food additives found in a large swath of American goods.
Sen. Bernie Sanders Wants an Investigation of RFK Jr.’s Vaccine Firings
Sen. Bernie Sanders is asking Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Republican chair of the health committee, to investigate Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s recent decision to fire all 17 members of the nation’s top vaccine advisory committee.
In a letter provided to NOTUS by the Vermont senator’s office, Sanders questioned Kennedy’s recent dismissal of the entire membership of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Sanders is the ranking member of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
“I am requesting that we immediately initiate a bi-partisan investigation into these firings and conduct serious oversight into the actions Secretary Kennedy has taken to mislead the American people about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines and erode public health,” Sanders said in the letter, which was sent Friday.
The EPA Wants to Roll Back Emissions Controls on Power Plants
Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) moved to roll back emissions standards for power plants, the second-largest source of CO2 emissions in the country, claiming that the American power sector does not “contribute significantly” to air pollution.
“The bottom line is that the EPA is trying to get out of the climate change business,” says Ryan Maher, a staff attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. The announcement comes just days after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, quietly released record-breaking new figures showing the highest seasonal concentration of CO2 in recorded history.
In a press conference last Tuesday, flanked by legislators from some of the country’s top fossil-fuel-producing states, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin accused both the Obama and Biden administrations of “seeking to suffocate our economy in order to protect the environment.” Zeldin singled out data centers as helping to drive unprecedented demand in the U.S. power sector over the next decade. The EPA, he said, is “taking actions to end the agency’s war on so much of our U.S. domestic energy supply.”
Democrats Press Pfizer, J&J and Others Over Low Tax Bills and Lobbying as Senate Debates Trump’s Plan
Two Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday pressed five of the nation’s largest pharmaceutical companies about their low tax bills and whether they support extending massive tax cuts for the industry in the GOP reconciliation bill. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., accuse Pfizer, Merck, Johnson & Johnson, AbbVie and Amgen of paying little to no federal taxes for profit earned in 2024 and years prior, despite generating tens of billions of dollars annually from their drugs.
In separate letters to each company on Tuesday, the lawmakers allege that the pharmaceutical companies all avoided paying U.S. tax bills by shifting their profits to offshore subsidiaries in jurisdictions with much lower tax rates, such as Ireland and Bermuda. That practice was enabled by a provision in President Donald Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which aimed to curb corporate tax avoidance but instead created new incentives for U.S. multinational companies to move profits and operations overseas.
In the letters, Warren and Schakowsky said the practice illustrates “just one of the ways in which our tax code has been skewed to benefit wealthy pharmaceutical corporations, enabling them to profit off Americans, charging them the highest drug prices in the world, without paying their fair share of taxes.”
FDA Launches New Priority Review Voucher Program for Biopharmas That ‘Align With National Priorities’
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is introducing a new priority voucher program designed to shorten the drug review process from 10 to 12 months down to one or two months, according to the agency. The federal outfit’s “Commissioner’s National Priority Voucher” (CNPV) program will include a “limited number of vouchers” for “companies aligned with U.S. national priorities,” according to a June 17 press release.
“These vouchers are non-transferrable,” an FDA spokesperson told Fierce Biotech. “However, they will remain valid through changes in company ownership.” FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, M.D., will determine a company’s eligibility for CNPV by assessing whether the biopharma is addressing several national priorities.
Without providing specifics, the FDA said the vouchers will go to companies that are addressing a U.S. health crisis, “delivering more innovative cures,” addressing unmet public health needs and boosting domestic drug manufacturing.
