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Texas Wants a Warning Label Saying Europe Won't Let You Eat Red 40. Europe Will.

Published October 5, 2026

Facts verified as of October 5, 2026

Starting in 2027, a bag of chips sold in Texas could carry a label reading: this product contains an ingredient that is not recommended for human consumption by the appropriate authority in Australia, Canada, the European Union, or the United Kingdom. The claim is the whole premise of a sweeping new state law. For at least three of the ingredients on the list the state is required to warn about, it is not accurate. The European Union permits all three for sale today.

That is the tension sitting underneath Texas Senate Bill 25, a law that has been enjoined by a federal court, finalized by the state anyway nine days later, and is now under appeal.

What just happened

Governor Greg Abbott signed SB 25 on June 22, 2025, and it took effect as state law on September 1, 2025. The statute, part of a package supporters called the "Make Texas Healthy Again" legislation, requires a conspicuous warning on any food product containing one of 44 listed ingredients, using language set by the state: the product "contains an ingredient that is not recommended for human consumption by the appropriate authority in Australia, Canada, the European Union, or the United Kingdom." The Texas Department of State Health Services published a proposed rule to implement it on September 26, 2025.

Four trade groups, the American Beverage Association, Consumer Brands Association, National Confectioners Association, and FMI the Food Industry Association, sued Attorney General Ken Paxton in the Western District of Texas that December, arguing the mandate violates the First Amendment. On February 11, 2026, the court agreed, at least provisionally. Applying the Supreme Court's Central Hudson test for commercial speech, the judge found the warning did not directly advance the state's stated interest and was not narrowly tailored, since Texas had less restrictive ways to communicate the same information, such as a public advertising campaign. The court preliminarily enjoined enforcement against the four plaintiff associations and their member companies.

Nine days later, DSHS finalized its implementing rule anyway. The adopted rule, 25 TAC Sections 229.1001 through 229.1005, was published in the February 20, 2026 Texas Register. It exempts restaurant and retail-prepared food, products already regulated by USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, drugs and dietary supplements, and any ingredient the FDA or USDA has classified as generally recognized as safe (GRAS). It does not carve out infant formula or medical foods specifically; DSHS said in the adoption notice that federal law already preempts state labeling there, so a separate exemption was unnecessary. Compliance is required for any label developed or copyrighted on or after January 1, 2027.

Paxton filed a notice of appeal to the Fifth Circuit on March 10, 2026 (No. 26-50192). Briefing closed with his reply brief on August 31, 2026, and as of October 5, 2026, no oral argument date has been set.

How we got here

SB 25 is part of a wider run of state-level food legislation since 2023 that uses other countries' regulatory choices as the benchmark for what a U.S. label should say. California's AB 418, enacted in 2023 and taking effect in 2027, prohibits four additives outright. Texas took a different approach: rather than banning ingredients, it conscripts the label into making a comparative claim about foreign regulatory status. That design choice is also the law's central legal and factual vulnerability. It requires every one of 44 ingredients to be treated as a single undifferentiated category, "not recommended," when the actual regulatory posture toward each one abroad varies enormously, from outright non-authorization to permitted-with-conditions to permitted-with-a-warning-label of its own.

Where regulators diverge

Some ingredients on the list do match the warning's premise. The EU withdrew authorization for titanium dioxide as a food additive in 2022, citing an inability to rule out a "genotoxicity" concern, while the U.S. still permits it under 21 CFR 73.575. Potassium bromate is not authorized as a food additive in the EU. Both are clean cases of a foreign regulator declining to permit an ingredient the U.S. allows.

Red 40, Yellow 5, and Yellow 6 are a different case, and they illustrate exactly why "banned abroad" framing breaks down under its own weight. All three are authorized food colors in the European Union today. What the EU requires, under Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008, is a warning label on foods containing them stating they "may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children," a requirement the EU added in 2010 in response to a 2007 UK-funded study that reported an association between certain color mixtures and hyperactivity in children. That is a disclosure requirement attached to a food the EU still allows people to buy and eat. It is not a finding that the ingredient is "not recommended for human consumption," which is the specific claim the Texas statute puts on the label. The three dyes are a small slice of the 44-item Texas list on their own, roughly one in fifteen entries, but the list also includes several other FDA-certified synthetic colors under the same umbrella entry, "certified food colors," and that entry is one the DSHS rule goes out of its way to keep covered: the rule's broad GRAS exemption does not reach it.

What the label actually says

If SB 25 survives the Fifth Circuit appeal, the warning itself will be short and generic: it names no specific ingredient and cites no specific country's finding, just the single sentence pointing to an unnamed "appropriate authority" somewhere among four jurisdictions. A shopper reading it in 2027 will not be able to tell from the label alone whether the product contains titanium dioxide, which one regulator genuinely stopped authorizing, or Red 40, which remains on sale in the country the label implicates. Checking which is which currently requires going to the ingredient list on the same package and cross-referencing it against the regulatory record yourself.

Where PurityIQ fits

That cross-referencing is the gap PurityIQ exists to close. The app puts the actual public record in front of you at the shelf: which agency has acted on a given ingredient, what it actually decided, and when, each claim linked to its primary source rather than compressed into a single line on a label. You see the record. You decide.

Sources

Sources

PurityIQ puts this same public record in front of you at the shelf. The score shows every deduction and source. Join the early-access list.