On September 18, 2024, U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) introduced the Safe School Meals Act, a bill that would make widespread reforms to school lunches to reduce the presence of toxic heavy metals, pesticides, artificial food dyes, and chemical contaminants. At the same time, the legislation contains provisions about soil and water remediation on farms to remove harmful environmental contaminants commonly found in foods.

Specifically, if passed, the Safe School Meals Act would:

• Require the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to set maximum allowable limits for toxic heavy metals (i.e., arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury) in school meals, based on a threshold of reasonable certainty of no harm to school-age children from aggregate exposure. If FDA were to fail to set limits within two years, non-detectable limits would automatically be put into place until the agency determines a safe level of exposure.
• Ban glyphosate, paraquat, and organophosphate pesticide residues in school meals. FDA would be required to propose a final rule within one year that establishes a schedule for decreasing the level of pesticide residues in school meal products.
• Ban per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), phthalates, bisphenols, and lead in food packaging and school meals.
• Require FDA to reevaluate food additives/“generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) substances with known carcinogenic, reproductive, or developmental health harms, and ban their use in school meals prior to the completion of FDA’s analysis. The first reevaluation would take place within five years and then be conducted every five years thereafter. The substances to be evaluated in the initial reassessment would be: butylated hydroxyanisole, butylated hydroxytoulene, tert-butylhydroquinone, sodium benzonate, propylgallate, titanium dioxide, seven artificial food dyes, azodicarbonamide, potassium bromate, and propylparaben.

Additionally, the Safe School Meals Act would require the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to partner with universities and nonprofit entities to conduct research on methods of remediating toxic heavy metals and metalloids, PFAS, microplastics, and other environmental contaminants in soil and water. Such research should produce information about how to make improved remediation methods more cost-effective and easier to implement, and the findings would be distributed to farmers, prioritizing farms certified as clean suppliers under the National School Lunch Act.

The Safe School Meals Act is supported by the Environmental Working Group, the American Federation of Teachers, the Michael J. Fox Foundation, the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments, the Organic Farmers Association, the Center for Environmental Health, Healthy Schools Now, EAT Real, Unleaded Kids, and Food Fight.

Rising Concerns About Food Substances and Contaminants Shaping Legislation

Concerns about chemical contamination of foods is on the rise in the U.S., with consumer groups and academics pointing to a mounting body of evidence regarding the presence of harmful substances in foods—both from intentionally added, questionably safe substances and from pollutants in soil and water entering crops and food animals. For example, Harvard medical and law experts recently published an article raising concerns with FDA’s GRAS process for the introduction of ingredients to the food supply.

Additionally, influential watchdog organization Consumer Reports regularly publishes the findings of their own analyses of chemical contaminants and toxic heavy metals in foods, most recently raising alarm bells about lead, cadmium, and phthalates in Lunchables products served to children through the U.S. National School Lunch Program.

In this context, legislators across the U.S. have introduced a number of bills targeting various additives and chemical contaminants in foods, with many citing FDA inaction as the driver behind their proposals. To get ahead of an emerging patchwork legislation on food chemical regulation, FDA has been proposing new approaches to its review of substances approved for food use; however, the agency’s progress in this area has not kept pace with action being taken in some states.

California is setting the trends when it comes to food additives regulation, with the California School Food Safety Act passing the California Assembly in August 2024, which will ban several synthetic food dyes from foods offered in public schools. The California School Food Safety Act followed the California Food Safety Act, signed into law in October 2023, which bans four toxic additives (red dye no. 3, potassium bromate, brominated vegetable oil, and propylparaben) from foods sold or manufactured in the state.