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- NATION, Page 29American NotesHEALTHBye, Bye, Red Dye
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- Will canned fruit cocktail be the same without its rosy
- cherries? How about candy canes without their crimson stripes?
- Some cheeses minus their red-wax coating? After eight years of
- debate, the Food and Drug Administration banned Red Dye No. 3,
- an ingredient in all of the above and in some cosmetics. Though
- extremely high doses of the coloring have induced thyroid
- tumors in laboratory rats, the food industry insists that the
- risk to consumers is negligible. Oddly enough, the FDA agrees.
- But it was forced to ban the dye, for which there is no good
- substitute, under a 30-year-old statute mandating that
- additives with even the slightest hint of a cancer risk be
- outlawed. Said Health and Human Services Secretary Louis
- Sullivan: "Today's action is yet another reminder of the need
- for Congress to consider updating the law."
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