The Food Ingredient Safety Coalition, an industry group formed in early 2025, has been quietly making the rounds in state legislatures with the goal of urging lawmakers to “support a strong federal system” governing food safety.
That framing may sound familiar.
Industry coalitions designed to prevent effective oversight
Last October, another industry-backed group, Americans for Ingredient Transparency (AFIT), emerged with a splashy public relations launch and a similar message. The group is calling for strong federal regulation with the ultimate goal of preempting—or blocking—state food safety laws and serving as a “death star” to shoot down state-level protections.
AFIT was not well received, with consumers and advocates unhappy that an industry-backed coalition had co-opted messaging on transparency and safety in an attempt to block state food safety laws.
Unlike AFIT, FISC does not emphasize transparency; it has not even disclosed its industry funders, lobbyists, or spokespeople. The FISC website—a single page with little information about the group, none about its members, and no real specifics about its agenda—says only that it “represents a broad section of America’s food, beverage, and ingredient industries.”
Despite the rhetoric about safety and FDA funding, the policy throughline appears consistent: FISC opposes state-level food safety laws it deems “inconsistent” with federal authority.
Like many shadowy front groups, FISC hasn’t received much media attention. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t hard at work behind the scenes in state politics. In March 2025, it submitted a letter of opposition against Maryland House Bill 1208, which prohibits the manufacture, distribution, and sale of food products containing brominated vegetable oil (BVO), potassium bromate, propylparaben, and FD&C Red 3. The letter, which, in an apparent Freudian slip, introduces the group as the “Food Industry Safety Coalition,” opposes the Maryland state action on the grounds that it would create a “patchwork” of state laws.
The letter doesn’t mention that all four of these chemicals had already been banned in California through a 2023 law, meaning companies complying with California’s law would face no conflicting requirements in Maryland or other states now seeking to ban the same list. Also of note is that BVO has been effectively banned nationwide by the FDA, which revoked the regulation that permitted its use as an ingredient in beverages. Manufacturers were given until August 2025 to remove it from their products, but that date had not yet arrived at the time of FISC’s opposition to the Maryland bill.
Taking on overdue oversight through the states
Laws like those at play in Maryland and California show how important states can be in overcoming federal dysfunction and gridlock. The FDA had not reviewed the safety of Red 3 for decades, despite banning the color additive from cosmetics in 1990 due to evidence of cancer risks. It was only after California banned Red 3 and BVO in 2023 that the FDA finally took post-market review seriously, launching its current food chemical reassessment program and banning BVO in 2024, followed by Red 3 in 2025. The two remaining chemicals in the California ban are currently being reassessed for safety by the FDA as part of the agency’s ongoing reassessment efforts.
Industry trade groups were unsurprisingly eager to support the FDA’s new reassessment program in the face of state action. But far fewer food industry groups were lining up to praise the agency’s work on food chemical safety before California banned four food chemicals.
New players in the fight for better FDA funding
Food industry giants like Pepsico, Coca Cola, Kraft Heinz, Nestle, and General Mills have lined up by the dozens to back AFIT to lobby for federal preemption to crush state laws, and are reportedly paying $1 million apiece for seats on that group’s steering committee. But industry support for increasing the FDA’s funding is far more piecemeal. In fact, only a few companies have been active over the years in advocating for increasing the FDA’s budget as members of the Alliance of a Stronger FDA. (CSPI is a member of the Alliance for a Stronger FDA.)
The stand-out exception is Mars, which is a member of the Alliance for a Stronger FDA, but not a member of AFIT.
Perhaps this means that more companies and decision-makers across the food industry now agree with consumer groups that stronger FDA oversight of food chemical safety is needed.
But federal systems can erode with poor funding, strong industry influence, weak underlying authority, or political leadership hostile to strong enforcement. State authority to step in when federal regulation fails will always be a powerful tool for consumer protection.
The bottom line: Strong federal oversight means making the food system safer and more transparent. If industry groups like FISC and AFIT were truly interested in these goals, they would be focused exclusively on making the FDA stronger—not pursuing an ulterior agenda of blocking state consumer protection laws.
