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US federal and state actions can improve food ingredient safety

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A safe food supply is critical to the health and future of nations. The new US administration has issued robustly worded intentions to address unsafe food ingredients, yet with voluntary proposals and conflicting priorities. Additionally, states are rapidly innovating around ingredient bans, warnings and public disclosures. A review of these federal and state actions reveals specific ways they might materially advance food ingredient safety.

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Correspondence to Jennifer L. Pomeranz.

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Competing interests

J.L.P. reports research funding from the National Institutes of Health and book royalties from Oxford University Press. D.M. reports research funding from the National Institutes of Health (2R01 HL115189), the Kaiser Permanente Fund at the East Bay Community Foundation, the National Association of Chain Drug Stores Foundation, Google Health and the Rockefeller Foundation; is a member of the scientific advisory board for Beren Therapeutics, Brightseed, Calibrate, Elysium Health, Filtricine, HumanCo, Instacart Health, January Inc. and WndrHLTH; has performed scientific consulting for Amazon Health; has equity in Calibrate and HumanCo; and has received chapter royalties from UpToDate. Funders took no part in the design or conduct of the study.

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Pomeranz, J.L., Mozaffarian, D. US federal and state actions can improve food ingredient safety. Nat Food 6, 641–644 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-025-01199-8

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