A Texas bill on the brink of becoming law would crack down on major food manufacturers, requiring them to label products with warnings about ingredients “not recommended for human consumption,” under the standards of countries other than the U.S.
The bill also outlines requirements for physical education and nutrition education in schools. The legislation reached the desk of Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Sunday.
The HHS did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
“As currently written, the food labeling provision in this bill casts an incredibly wide net—triggering warning labels on everyday grocery items based on assertions that foreign governments have banned such items, rather than on standards established by Texas regulators or by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration,” the letter said.
The companies argued in the letter that Texas is outpacing national food labeling standards, and the enactment of the bill would “destabilize local and regional economies” and limit access to foods in times of economic uncertainty.
According to John Hewitt, senior vice president of state affairs at Consumer Brands Association, which represents several major U.S. food manufacturers, the food industry is committed to tools that increase ingredient transparency, but urged Abbott to veto the bill.
“The ingredients used in the U.S. food supply are safe and have been rigorously studied following an objective science and risk-based evaluation process,” Hewitt told Fortune in a statement. “The labeling requirements of SB 25 mandate inaccurate warning language, create legal risks for brands and drive consumer confusion and higher costs.”
Consumer Brands Association did not respond to Fortune’s inquiry about what component of the warning language was inaccurate.
In the past following the enactment of food labeling legislation, food manufacturers have had to make sweeping changes to packaging to abide by the laws, according to Jura Liaukonyte, professor of marketing and applied economics at Cornell University’s SC Johnson College of Business.
Christina Roberto, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Food and Nutrition Policy, told Fortune that in other cases, food manufacturers resist the legislation by taking legal action.
“The industry tends to not want to do something different, not want to do something that’s going to incur costs,” Roberto said. “And certainly this kind of legislation—where it’s trying to warn consumers about the harms of aspects of the product—it’s very unlikely that any manufacturer would be on board.”
Liaukonyte noted another potential layer of uncertainty for food manufacturers is the bill’s invocation of foreign food standards on U.S. products. Liaukonyte said the labeling mandate would highlight the disparities between food safety standards in the U.S. versus other parts of the world.
“There is a very different principle of how food and cosmetics safety is regulated in [the European Union] and in the U.S.,” she said.
“There is a little bit of reframing health as a conservative value,” she said. “Reframing the labeling initiative: It’s an issue of parental rights, personal responsibility, and it’s sort of like making your own decisions conditional on being informed.”
For Roberto, her qualm with the legislation in question isn’t that it isn’t supported by scientific research or oversteps boundaries with food companies, but that it doesn’t go far enough in setting standards to protect public health. She would like to see legislation advocating for warnings about salt, sugar, and saturated fats in certain foods, as well as taxing or banning them from schools.
“It actually is an exciting time,” Roberto said. “But I think a lot of these policies could go further to support children’s health by coupling it with other types of policies that we know work.”
