FDA Hearings to Target Alleged Effect of Food Dyes on Children’s Behavior

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced an advisory
committee meeting to “discuss whether available relevant data demonstrate a
link between children’s consumption of synthetic color additives in food and
adverse effects on behavior.” FDA plans to provide background material no
later than two business days before the March 30-31, 2011, public meeting in
Silver Spring, Maryland.

Calling the news “welcome and overdue,” Center for Science in the Public
Interest (CSPI) Executive Director Michael Jacobson said that the meeting was
in response to CSPI’s 2008 petition calling for FDA to ban Yellow 5, Red 50 and
six other food dyes. The dyes “have long been shown in numerous clinical
studies to impair children’s behavior,” Jacobson said. “But for years—FDA—
which actually commissioned one of the first controlled studies—dismissed
the mounting evidence against the dyes.” See Federal Register and CSPI News
Release, December 1, 2010.