On January 22, 2026, two California shoppers sued Costco over its five-dollar rotisserie chicken — not the price, but two words on the sign above it: "no preservatives." The complaint, filed by Bianca Johnston and Anatasia Chernov, argues that two ingredients in the chicken's brine, sodium phosphate and carrageenan, function as preservatives in every way that matters, whatever the label calls them. Costco pulled the "no preservatives" claim from its signage within a week. It did not pull the ingredients.
Three weeks later, a much quieter carrageenan development landed on the desk of a federal advisory board. On February 12, 2026, the Organic Materials Review Institute delivered a new Limited Scope Technical Report on carrageenan to USDA's National Organic Standards Board, the panel of outside experts that advises USDA on what belongs in certified-organic food. It's the paperwork that kicks off a review, not a decision — but it means the question of whether carrageenan should keep its spot on the organic National List is now open for a third time since 2016. The first two rounds didn't go the way you'd guess from a straight reading of the vote counts.
Carrageenan is a thickener extracted from red seaweed, used to keep dairy products, plant-based milks, deli meats, and infant formula from separating in the container. FDA has regulated it since the 1970s as both a food additive (21 CFR 172.620) and a GRAS substance under its older name, Chondrus extract (21 CFR 182.7255). Neither listing has been revoked or reopened by FDA in recent years; carrageenan's federal additive and GRAS status is unchanged from decades ago. It was added separately to USDA's organic National List in 2003, where non-organic and synthetic materials need an explicit exemption to be used in food labeled organic — and that exemption is what's been under repeated review.
In November 2016, the NOSB voted 10 to 3, with one abstention, on a motion to recommend removing carrageenan from the National List, citing available substitutes like gellan, guar, and xanthan gum for most uses. Under the Organic Foods Production Act, a National List amendment needs two-thirds of the votes cast to pass — 10 of the 13 votes cast cleared that bar, so the motion carried as a formal recommendation. USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service considered it and declined to follow it, renewing carrageenan's listing in a final rule effective May 29, 2018, reasoning that available substitutes "do not adequately replicate the functions of carrageenan across the broad scope of use" and that removing it could disrupt the organic industry.
Ahead of carrageenan's next scheduled sunset, the NOSB took the question up again at its Spring 2021 meeting. This time the motion to recommend removal got 9 votes in favor to 5 against — a majority, but short of the two-thirds-of-votes-cast threshold the law requires, which would have meant 10 of the 14 votes cast. The motion failed on procedural grounds; no recommendation to remove was ever formally transmitted to USDA this round. With no adopted recommendation against it, AMS renewed carrageenan a second time, effective May 29, 2023, pushing its sunset date to May 29, 2028. So the record isn't quite "USDA overruled its own advisers twice." It's closer to: the advisers cleared the bar to formally recommend removal once, in 2016, and USDA declined to follow that recommendation; the second attempt, in 2021, never reached the bar to become a recommendation at all. Either way, carrageenan has now survived three separate points where its organic status could have ended, and the newest technical report means a fourth review is already starting, with no vote yet scheduled.
Europe's version of this story runs on the same theme of process without resolution. EFSA re-evaluated carrageenan (E 407 in the EU) in 2018 and found no safety concern for the general population at the exposure levels reported at the time, but flagged a real data gap for infants under sixteen weeks old — a population EU food law reviews under separate, more conservative rules. EFSA opened a formal call for additional toxicological and clinical data that October, extended the deadline to the end of 2022, and has not, as of this writing, published a follow-up opinion resolving the infant question. That's notable because EFSA has been clearing the same backlog for other additives collected in the same 2018 data call — it published the infant-safety follow-up for guar gum (E 412) in 2024 and for citric acid esters of mono- and diglycerides (E 472c) in 2025. Carrageenan's own follow-up isn't on either list yet.
The underlying health-research picture splits into two genuinely different substances, and conflating them is where a lot of carrageenan coverage goes wrong. IARC evaluated native, undegraded carrageenan — the kind actually used as a food additive — and classified it Group 3, not classifiable as to its carcinogenicity, citing a lack of evidence in animal studies. It separately evaluated degraded carrageenan, also called poligeenan, a chemically altered form made under harsh acid conditions that is not approved for use in food anywhere, and classified that substance Group 2B, possibly carcinogenic to humans, based on evidence of cancer in rats. More recently, a 2024 randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover trial in BMC Medicine gave 20 healthy young men either carrageenan capsules or a placebo over two-week periods. The researchers reported no significant overall effect on insulin sensitivity across the full group, but among the subset who were overweight, carrageenan exposure was associated with lower insulin sensitivity, higher inflammatory markers, and signs of increased intestinal permeability. The study's own authors noted it was small, limited to young healthy men, and short — two weeks isn't long enough to rule out effects that build over time.
On the label, carrageenan has to be declared by that name whenever it's used. It shows up most often in yogurt, ice cream, cottage cheese, deli meats, some infant formulas, and nearly any plant-based milk with a smooth, non-separating texture — that consistency is frequently carrageenan or one of its substitutes at work. Products marketed as "carrageenan-free" have almost always swapped in gellan, guar, or xanthan gum instead, the same substitutes cited in both NOSB reviews as evidence carrageenan isn't essential.
None of this resolves into a verdict, and that's the point. A federal food-additive listing that hasn't moved in decades, an organic exemption that's now up for its fourth look, and a European safety question that's been open since 2018 — three different processes, none of them finished. PurityIQ doesn't try to collapse that into a score. It shows you, at the shelf, whether a scanned product contains carrageenan, and puts the actual regulatory record next to it — the FDA listing, the NOSB votes, the EFSA question still open — cited to the source, not to an advocacy group's summary of it. You see the record. You decide.
As of September 7, 2026, carrageenan remains an approved FDA food additive and GRAS substance, remains allowed in USDA organic production under a listing renewed through May 29, 2028, and remains under an unresolved EFSA data request on infant safety first issued in 2018.
Sources
FDA, Substances Added to Food — Carrageenan — https://hfpappexternal.fda.gov/scripts/fdcc/index.cfm?id=CARRAGEENAN&set=FoodSubstances
21 CFR 172.620 — Carrageenan (eCFR) — https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-21/chapter-I/subchapter-B/part-172/subpart-G/section-172.620
21 CFR 182.7255 — Chondrus extract (carrageenin) (Cornell LII) — https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/21/182.7255
7 U.S.C. 6518 — National Organic Standards Board (two-thirds vote requirement) — https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:7+section:6518+edition:prelim)
USDA AMS, National Organic Standards Board, Handling Subcommittee 2023 Sunset Review Final Recommendation — Carrageenan (Spring 2021 vote) — https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/HS2023SunsetRvwFinalRec.pdf
USDA AMS/OMRI, 2026 Limited Scope Technical Report — Carrageenan (Handling), Feb. 12, 2026 — https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/2026-LimitedScopeTechnicalReport-Carrageenan-Handling.pdf
USDA AMS, Petitioned Substances — Carrageenan — https://www.ams.usda.gov/rules-regulations/organic/petitioned-substances/carrageenan
Federal Register, National Organic Program: USDA Organic Regulations, 83 FR 14347 (Apr. 4, 2018) — https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/04/04/2018-06867/national-organic-program-usda-organic-regulations
Federal Register, National Organic Program: 2023 and 2024 Sunset Review and Substance Renewals, Doc. 2023-07886 (Apr. 14, 2023) — https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/04/14/2023-07886/national-organic-program-2023-and-2024-sunset-review-and-substance-renewals
IARC Monographs, Volume 31 — Carrageenan (native and degraded) — https://www.inchem.org/documents/iarc/vol31/carrageenan.html
EFSA, Re-evaluation of carrageenan (E 407) and processed Eucheuma seaweed (E 407a) as food additives, EFSA Journal 2018;16(4):5238 — https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2903/j.efsa.2018.5238
EFSA, Call for technical and toxicological data on carrageenan (E 407) — https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/consultations/call/call-technical-and-toxicological-data-carrageenan-e-407-uses-foods
European Commission, Food Improvement Agents — Re-evaluation status tracker — https://food.ec.europa.eu/food-safety/food-improvement-agents/additives/re-evaluation_en
Wagner R. et al., "Carrageenan and insulin resistance in humans: a randomised double-blind cross-over trial," BMC Medicine 22, 2024 — https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12916-024-03771-8
FindLaw, "Lawsuit Over Costco's Preservative-Free Rotisserie Chicken Ruffles Feathers" (reporting on Johnston/Chernov v. Costco Wholesale Corp., filed Jan. 22, 2026) — https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/law-and-life/lawsuit-over-costcos-preservative-free-rotisserie-chicken-ruffles-feathers/