Name: Why Phasing Out Artificial Food Dyes Is So Complex
Uploaded: 2025-07-08T04:01:00Z
Duration: 5 min 14 s
Description: RFK Jr. says he’s working with the food industry to remove synthetic dyes by the end of 2026. WSJ visited one of the world’s largest food color plants to see why this deadline is so hard to achieve.

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RFK Jr. says he’s working with the food industry to remove synthetic dyes by the end of 2026. WSJ visited one of the world’s largest food color plants to see why this deadline is so hard to achieve. Photo: Reinaldo Gentile-Rondon

https://m.wsj.net/video/20250707/9be4a412-e95a-4389-a869-11a8c19e8bfb/2/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

RFK Jr. says he’s working with the food industry to remove synthetic dyes by the end of 2026. WSJ visited one of the world’s largest food color plants to see why this deadline is so hard to achieve.

Why Phasing Out Artificial Food Dyes Is So Complex

Narrator: Natural food dye companies are ramping up production after RFK Junior's call to eliminate artificial colors by the end of 2026. And more and more companies have announced that they're working towards that goal. But some food executives say an industry-wide transition could take more than six years. So we went inside one of the largest food color plants in the world to see why industry leaders say this transition will be so difficult. Sensient Technologies might not be a household name, but you probably have its products in your home. As one of the world's largest dye manufacturers, it's been in business for almost 150 years and has been producing natural colors for US food and beverage companies for over 15 years.

How has business changed for Sensient since RFK Junior took office and with the rise of the MAHA movement?

Well, it certainly accelerated efforts around natural colors, although interestingly enough, natural colors was very much the trend, even before that announcement. The big change now is every product that's in the market that's not been newly released in the last number of years is gonna need to convert to natural.

So has your phone sort of been ringing off the hook with all these customers who are saying, you know, we've got two years or we've got about a year to make this happen, help us?

Yeah, the phones are ringing. Most brands are very well in the hunt to get this thing right and a lot of brands have been doing this for years, so it's not brand new to anybody per se, but it's just the timing and the scale is what has changed the dynamic here considerably.

RFK has made it clear that he would like for synthetic colors to be removed from the US supply chain by the end of 2026, is that feasible?

There's a lot of challenges. First and foremost, can you actually technically do it? Can you achieve the same color profile, the same vividness as the synthetic color? Can you do that in a whole range of applications, from sports beverages to candy, to soups, to you name it?

Narrator: Sensient says it has been investing in the technical side of natural dye production for years, creating formulas that can withstand changes to heat, light and pH.

But concurrently it's the supply chain that is probably gonna be the single longest lead time item here, the single biggest bottleneck, if you will.

Narrator: Natural dyes are derived from sources like plants, fruits, and vegetables.

These products are grown all over the world. So these are not just raw materials grown in the United States. In fact, very few of them are grown in the United States.

Narrator: The raw materials arrive at the plant in the form of concentrates. They're blended into liquid or powder formulas and then sent to food companies to be added to their products. Sensient estimates it will need 10 times the amount of product it has now to meet demand. So challenge number one is finding the land and ideally, land that isn't prone to natural disasters.

Several years ago, our butterfly pea flower crop was destroyed by a typhoon in the Philippines. We had a situation two years ago in Turkey where we sourced our black carrot, there was a major earthquake.

Narrator: So the company started diversifying its crop locations, which also allowed it to maximize productivity by taking advantage of different growing seasons around the world. For example, red radish is usually planted in late summer to be grown in the fall. So by growing it in the US and Peru, which have different fall months, Sensient can harvest red radish twice a year instead of once.

It takes time to diversify and to do it and grow it safely and within accordance with the law and sustainable agricultural practices. It's all the complexity that goes into this timeline.

Narrator: When procuring new land, Sensient says it also looks for areas with lower pesticide use to reduce the risk of contamination.

Where you have rice fields, where you have banana plantations, you're gonna have a lot of pesticide use. It's not necessarily the farmers are gonna use those pesticides, but it just to overspray, the drift, as we call it, from those fields, will impact our farm.

Narrator: This is not only important for the safety of the product, but also for keeping costs down. Sensient says if it finds heavy metals or pesticides in its raw materials, it has to reject the shipment. The company says, on average, one out of about four raw materials fail to meet their safety standards. Synthetic colors are more closely regulated by the FDA. Natural colors don't currently have an FDA approval process. So Sensient created its own testing standard. Another hurdle has been finding the right growers for the job.

In some cases, they've been farming for hundreds of years, and to try to change their protocol on farming techniques is difficult 'cause we're looking for the highest color pigmentation. The majority of them, if not all of them, they've been used to farming for just pure weight.

Narrator: As Sensient and other companies work to build up capacity, more than a dozen states are considering legislation to ban synthetic food dyes.

There's gotta be a lot of folks who are, you know, now trying to see a future in natural dyes. What does the competition look like and what are you gonna do to beat them?

We've been working on this a long time, we've been investing for a long time. So somebody who may want to come to the game now, they would be at an inherent disadvantage. We play the long game and I think we're gonna be right about that. We could add a substantial amount of revenue to the business for this. And so this is an example to those who also like the long game that, if you've done your homework and you've studied the trends and you've invested in your business, the returns can be there in a very, very strong way.

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