The Food and Drug Administration has issued a blitz of high-impact new rules in the last days of the Biden administration. Now agency officials just need to convince Donald Trump that they should stick.
Some of the new rules, like the ban on Red Dye No. 3, are likely popular with both the outgoing and incoming administrations. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee to lead Health and Human Services, has said he will make reducing food additives a priority, and praised protesters rallying in October against food dyes. By issuing the new rule now, President Joe Biden’s FDA has taken one unpopular food additive off the docket for Kennedy and FDA commissioner nominee Marty Makary.
Other rules, like a proposed restriction on the amount of nicotine in tobacco products, will likely face opposition from the incoming administration — meaning the last-minute new rule effectively serves as a challenge from the current administration to the new one on whether or not they want to publicly state that cigarettes should be extra addictive. While Trump and Kennedy haven’t included nicotine reductions in their “Make America Healthy Again” platform, efforts to enact a similar rule during the first Trump administration failed. And Kennedy, though an ardent advocate for the reduction of toxins in the U.S. food supply, has been spotted with nicotine replacement pouches — which, incidentally, the FDA also ruled on this week, saying that the popular brand Zyn could begin marketing.