In this podcast episode, EWG President and co-Founder Ken Cook talks with Dr. Peter Lurie about the Food and Drug Administration’s recent decision to ban Red Dye No. 3 in food.
Lurie is the president and executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, or CSPI. He has a lengthy career in public health, including a stint as the FDA's associate commissioner for public health strategy and analysis during the Obama administration.
CSPI in 2022 filed a petition asking the FDA to prohibit companies from using Red 3 in food due to concerns about its health harms. Cook and Lurie discuss the agency’s decision, as well as potential actions that the Trump administration might take on food safety.
Disclaimer: This transcript was compiled using software and may include typographical errors.
Ken: Hello, everyone. It's Ken Cook and I'm having another episode. This one is particularly rewarding because I'm meeting someone for the first time who's been an inspiration to me and a lot of other people in the public interest and public health community. He's a neighbor in our office building in D. C. and yet somehow we've never met in person. Dr. Peter Lurie is President and Executive Director of CSPI, the Center for Science in the Public Interest. And you know what? Before we get into our conversation, I want to start on a high note, uh, a celebration. Red Dye No. 3 has been banned in the United States as of this podcast.
This is a big victory for EWG and many other public interest groups. No group more than CSPI. You may recall, we spoke about red dye number three a few weeks ago with my colleague at EWG. Melanie Benesh. Here's what she had to say.
Melanie: Our colleagues at the Center for Science and Public Interest created a really comprehensive petition that they filed with the FDA in 2022 that we signed on to that reiterates the FDA's own 1990 conclusion that RED3 causes cancer, at least in lab tests.
And the law is very clear that if an additive is shown to cause cancer in people or in animals, it cannot be in food. There's not a lot of nuance to the legal standard. It doesn't really talk about how likely it is to cause cancer at what dose. It just says if tests have shown that this causes cancer, it cannot be in food.
And so it should be pretty easy for the FDA to respond to that petition and say, Yes, this violates, uh, it's called the Delaney Clause, and we can't allow it in food, and the FDA doesn't even really have to make a determination whether or not it's safe. The petition does a great job going into detail about all of the ways in which REDD3 is probably not safe and shouldn't be in food, but really all the FDA needs is that cancer study to ban it.
Ken: Red Dye No. 3 was banned in cosmetics in 1990, but was given the okay to stay in our food by the FDA until 2025. This is long overdue, but we celebrate our wins when we get them. Now, our guest today, Dr. Peter Lurie also joined me for a portion of the two live streams. I did cover the two Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. confirmation hearings to become the head of health and human services under the Trump administration. And it's now very clear he is going to be confirmed for that position. I had a number of guests join me from other public interest groups, and I want to make sure I highlight these folks and the incredible organizations they're part of in the work they do.
During my first stream, I was joined by Dr. Rob Davidson, who is the executive director of the Committee to Protect Healthcare. Dr. George Benjamin, the Executive Director of the American Public Health Association. He says
Dr. Benjamin: We're not spending anything on chronic diseases. The vast majority of the budget is actually on chronic diseases.
So the argument that we're not spending, um, at NIH a lot of money on chronic diseases, the answer is we absolutely do. We do spend a fair amount on infectious diseases. But there is a crossover between these two, right? Vaccine science can be used for a range of things. Not only disinfects his diseases, but also to prevent cancers.
So the HPV vaccine, which he has been opposed to, um, actually prevents a chronic disease caused, you know, cervical cancer.
Ken: As well as our guest today, Peter Lurie. For my second live stream, my guests included Tom Philpott, who's a food journalist and senior research analyst. At Johns Hopkins center for a livable future.
I was also joined by executive director, North Saunders and advocacy director, Jen Herricks from the safe communities coalition action fund. Additionally, I was joined by Max Goldberg, my friend, who's the founder of the newsletter, organic insider, Daria Minovi, senior analyst at the center for science and democracy at the union of concerned scientists.
Darya Minovi: As an environmental health researcher, I did a lot of work on toxics during the last Trump administration, and we saw regulation after regulation rolled back. The administration was very friendly to petrochemical companies to the chemical industry lobby. And, uh, I don't think that Mr Kennedy is going to see success, even if that is an issue.
He has no. Oversight over for the most part, I don't think there's going to be a lot of movement in the direction he wants to see. And again, I, I just don't hear from him a lot of expertise on the issues that will be under his jurisdiction and HHS.
Ken: And finally, my dear friend, who's also been on the podcast author and entrepreneur Robin O'Brien.
Now our guests on the live streams and Dr. Peter Lurie specifically are the people I'm proud to call colleagues in this fight for public health. Human health. Make sure to head on over to our show notes and give their organizations a follow. Now my guest today, Dr. Peter Lurie, is especially relevant to this day and age.
In addition to being the executive director at CSPI, Peter was also the associate commissioner for public health strategy and analysis at the FDA. And before that, He was the Deputy Director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group, where he worked on drug and medical device issues and co-authored the organization's Consumer Guide to Medications, Worst Pills, Best Pills.
A Bible in the public interest world. He also led efforts to reduce worker exposure to hexavalent chromium, famously known as the Aaron Brockovich chemical. And Aaron was our very first guest in this podcast, Peter. Thank you for joining us. I'm so grateful for everything you do at CSPI. Michael Jacobson, your predecessor, the founder of CSPI is a dear friend and a legend like you are.
In this moment, we're facing some really perplexing, not to say frightening, issues around appointees and nominees in the Trump administration. And I invited you on, Peter, to get a sense of how CSPI is preparing for these times. A lot of us rely on CSPI for our everyday lives. Your newsletters are absolutely indispensable.
Before there were influencers, there was CSPI's newsletter, the Nutrition Action Newsletter, and it's still going strong. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for taking some time. What are you thinking right now, Doctor, about what we have ahead of us? Four years of, oof.
Peter: Yes, that. Well, first of all, Ken, thank you so much to, uh, for inviting me.
And, um, yes, it's a pleasure to meet you finally after all these years, I'm not quite sure how that happened. Yeah. In any event, you know, obviously this is not the, uh. Outcome that maybe we expected and certainly not intended. The biggest question I think for public interest groups at this moment is, you know, do they try to find sort of the nuggets of positivity that might look within the administration or do you look at the big picture and, um, you know, I try to be optimistic and practical, but when people come along with ideas that are so antithetical to science and so antithetical to science based decision making, I When they start to take on the very tenets of public health that have served us well.
Basic things like vaccination or pasteurization of milk. When that happens, I think you have to draw a line. I think that's right. And, uh, that's what we've done at CSPI. Uh, we've said, look, if they wanna work with us on additives, and I'm sure we'll talk about that in a moment, that's fine. At the moment, the question before us in Washington is, are these people suitable for nomination?
And they are not. And by them, I mean, at a minimum. Dr. Oz and RFK jr. These folks do not show any evidence of an ability to manage large organizations in the first place or to think scientifically. And as a result, they found themselves in the clutches of really improbable people. You know, if you're at all scientifically inclined, people who are hostile to vaccination, people who think that, you know, there's a dietary supplement for practically every ill.
That's where we are. We take a strong stance against those two. I think Dr. Weldon over at CDC is another who could stand a good look for his own anti vaccination proclivities. But that's, that's the way we're looking at it. And you know, if they happen to get it confirmed all the same, um, then we'll look for opportunities to work with them.
Ken: Yeah. That's kind of the same place EWG comes down. I think, uh, in the case of RFK Jr., my feeling is that his original sin, uh, was sort of grooming people to vote for Trump. Uh, with the prospect that he was going to do all these, make all these sweeping swashbuckling changes happen. He's going to reform farm subsidies.
Well, he's not at USDA, so that won't happen. He's going to get pesticides out of, out of our food. Well, that's not what you do at FDA or HHS. That's the job of the EPA. So, Just for starters, when you look at the misleading nature of his messaging to his followers, he's never come back on and given a video presentation of what he can't do by virtue of just the jurisdiction.
Then on top of that, you add this really disturbing anti-science approach he's taken to things, and he is himself someone who has no scientific training. He had, you know, some very distinguished aspects of his prior career defending the environment. You can't be a supporter of Trump and think you're going to be in an administration that's defending the environment just for starters.
But how do you, how do you disentangle Or do you bother? I mean, I think you're right. Um, if someone's taken the position he's taken on vaccines, and now he seems to be backpedaling, I think he's even gonna, I think he's even gonna sell out his most fervent anti vaccine fans at some point, and just say, more research.
That's his new battle cry, I think, which would never attract a crowd. But how do you, to me, it's really difficult, when someone walks in and says, on the one hand, um, there's never been an effective or safe vaccine, And on the other hand says, but these food additives are also a problem. I don't want to be in the company of that anti vaccine mentality and try and make the case for food additives.
I think that's what you were getting at, right?
Peter: Yeah. Right. You don't want to, you know, what's the expression? You lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas. Right. Yeah. You know, I think, um, you do have to watch yourself. And I think, you know, for us, I think if we're going to find areas where we coincide, we need to express the reasons.
before that position in its own scientific terms, right? Not because of some nearness to Kennedy or some desire to, you know, make friendly with him. It has to stand on its own scientific grounds. And you know, if we thought that the Grass Loop hole was a problem before Kennedy, we think it is now and we'll make the argument on the very same grounds.
You might get a little bit of lift that we didn't seem to get even in democratic administrations who knows. My personal view is that all of these best ideas will go nowhere, um, because most of these best ideas are in fact pro regulatory, like closing the, the, the grass loop. And so, uh, he's going to run into two problems.
One is an ideological problem within the administration, which is devoted to anti regulation on principle. And the second is, you know, those campaign donors and they have deep pockets to the GOP. You know, many of them emanate from industry and industry is not going to want a bunch of these things.
They're not going to want, you know, the closing of the grass loophole that's worked all too well for them. Even the drug manufacturers are not going to welcome deregulation either. I mean, as you know, the FDA is heavily funded by so called user fees, which are funds provided by industry to support the agency.
And it's, you know, in the realm of about half of all agency activities are funded that way. Big industry, meaning big pharmaceutical companies are not going to put up with a circumstance in which it. 50 percent of the agency's funding disappears overnight because you can be sure that the current Congress is not about to replete the 50 percent of funding that, you know, the user fees would take away.
So next thing you've got a 50 percent underfunded agency, which is underfunded even before the 50%. And now everything is going to go slower at the FDA. Now you're telling me that the big pharmaceutical companies are going to want to see those drugs. That where every minute of patent protected life is critical to their bottom line, they're going to see that time ticking away, you know, just because the, the industry, the agencies and well enough funded to review their applications, that's not going to happen.
So I think, you know, the best ideas will actually fail. The bad ideas on the other hand, have a chance. I think it's going to be next to impossible to like revoke the approval of say the polio vaccine. I mean, not that. You know, uh, RFK associated people haven't tried to do that already, but I think that the probability of that succeeding is rather low.
You can get up on the bully pulpit. You can throw mud at the thing. You can get people to have more doubts. And the practical result of that is low vaccination rates. And you know, the only people cheering that on are the measles and the mumps virus because they're going to have a field day if that's what happens.
Ken: That's right. Now, you, you served in the Food and Drug Administration, and I think we've been as critical as you have been, uh, from the outside of why the, you know, the agency has not gotten done what it needs to get done. There are lots of reasons for it. Some of them are the money is not there for better regulation of food.
Sometimes the statutory authority is, by design, left in its weakened condition. And that, that generally Uh, recognized as safe category is a good example of that, where it does tie the hands of the, of the agency. But what about the, the, the other element of this? Not just the defunding, but the aggressive things Kennedy said about FDA.
Staff, pack your bags, keep your records. What was your reaction as a former FDA official, not as an apologist for the agency, but as someone who just, who worked there? And there are a lot of people working there who give their heart and soul every day.
Peter: Exactly. You know, my first reaction was as a human being.
And the people who I thought about were those people who actually are trying day in and day out to do their best, you know, in the nutrition world. And what I did is I made a phone call and I said, listen, I just want you to know I feel terrible for you. Yeah. You know, this is awful. And, and, uh, you know, I just want you to know that, you know, here we are, we're supporting you, at least in spirit, because the, what this really brought to mind for me was, you know, Rudy Giuliani's activities down in Georgia with those two poor election workers, right?
Yeah. Where you go out and you kind of, you know, throw names or titles around. Right. And the next thing, you know, terrible things are happening to people in their personal lives. Real people. Exactly. And, you know, there isn't even a department of nutrition at FDA, so that part of it doesn't even make any sense.
Yeah. Yeah. Of course. But setting that aside, you know, it's the sort of heartlessness of it, right? The, the, the, the, the forgetting that there are actual human beings working to do their best day in and day out and to just cost aspersions in ways that could be dangerous to them. It's really unhelpful.
Ken: Absolutely. And of course, you can't, you also can't get done what he says he wants to get done. Again, let's go, let's go back to the good ideas and talk about how hard it will be to actually get some of these things done. Let's talk about food additives because he talks about that all the time. He inappropriately gave Trump credit in one of his videos for banning a bunch of food dyes, I think it was.
The six or seven that were banned in 2018, which came about you, you had a petition at CSPI and it took a lawsuit by earth justice to, uh, to actually get that, uh, that done. So it really wasn't Trump's actions, uh, as Bobby suggested in one of his videos, what will it really take to make our food additives, bring it to the, into the modern era as it were, it's not going to be Bobby walking down the hall.
As HHS secretary and saying, Hey, let's be like Europe on food additives, right?
Peter: No, that's, that's simply not going to cut it. Nor, you know, misleading statements about the number of additives and Canadian Fruit Loops helpful. None of that is helpful. You know, there are two ways of looking at this. I think, you know, one is a sort of chemical by chemical approach and the organization and ours, that we've taken that approach and certain things.
You know, that lights be fast aspartame in our case anyway, red three, and that's fine. And, uh, it's a hell of a lot of work for each of them, but you, you know, you have to do it. And sometimes you win now as. You will know, it's stymied at the federal level as we have been, we've started to turn to the states.
That's not the ideal solution to this problem. It's not the way I would like to go about it. But if the FDA is going to take more than 30 years to act on its own conclusion that REDD3 is carcinogenic and a clear statutory mandate to ban it accordingly, Well, then we're going to have to look and see what can be done because people are still exposed and as consumer advocates, we need to do what we can about that.
And so we turned to California and you know, I think that that's really has gotten people's attention, frankly, including RFKs, even if he's gets a little gobbled once in a while. So that's sort of the one part you're kind of chemical by chemical thing. And then you have to look at the systematic problem.
Which I know you've explored on the show before, the grass loophole, and that's, that's a huge deal. I mean, the grass loophole is not just a loophole, you know, it's just a, you know, a massive gaping wound, you know, which most chemicals come pouring at this point. And that's just really unacceptable. And so, you know, on the federal level, we, you know, we probably need statutory reform in order for that to really be closed.
That's going to be a pretty tough hole. I mean, we've had bills in the Congress for years now trying to accomplish that. And we haven't got a lot of traction. And so once again, we're turning to the States and here in New York is the one that's shown the greatest interest. They've got a bill that would require the listing of all the, the, the chemicals being used in New York that, uh, qualifies grass and, you know, that basically shines sunlight from New York all over the country, right?
It basically illuminates the entire country if this were to pause. So. It's very exciting. It's, it's, it's interesting to see the innovation coming from a state level and especially because it addresses not just a chemical by chemical problem, but the systematic problem that is grass. Yeah.
Ken: No, I think that's exactly right.
And I think people, again, it sounds great in a stump speech to say you're going to do that, but the reality is very different. And that often falls to organizations like CSPI. I'm, we're proud. EWG is proud to be working side by side to try and. Trying to advance these policy issues, but it's not easy.
Michael Jacobson used to talk to me at cocktail parties or receptions back in the 70s and 80s about some of these chemicals that you and I are still fighting to get out of food today, right? Absolutely. And so I think just to convey to people two points. One, there is a public interest. movement that has been working on this and trying to get it on the agenda.
I'm glad that we have president Trump saying something about it now. I don't have any confidence he'll really solve it because the money is on the other side, the money, the support, um, you know, the food industry, big ag, big pesticides, big chemicals, big, big energy, and. You know, oil and gas. Trump is their guy.
And so you have to somehow imagine that the presence of, of RFK Jr. in this, in their midst has changed everything. And I, I don't think so.
Peter: No, no, neither do I. I don't think it really works that way. You know. On the other hand, you know, the president himself is not known for exactly rigorous decision making.
The president, you know, the elect, you know, is not
Ken: known for rigorous
Peter: decision making. And so, you know, it is a little bit of, you know, who's the last person to talk to him before, you know, the door closes. And, uh, so, you know, things could happen. I mean, I, I, I, that, that can, that can go either way, of course, uh, and that's why it's important to have a person who thinks systematically before making big decisions, but yeah, we've seen time and again that that isn't the way things are. So it is, it is certainly very concerning.
Ken: Yeah. It's an important time for the issues you've devoted your life to. And I just want to say, you know, once again, um, you're a hero of the public interest in my view, and it's vitally important that people understand.
People have been at this for a long time. We don't care who's in office. We're going to stay at it. We don't praise Democrats because they're Democrats. We don't condemn Republicans because they're Republicans. We are research based advocates in the tradition of Sid Wolf, and, um, that's never going to change.
Peter: Absolutely. And, you know, we, we shouldn't forget that we had, you know, a good number of successes even during the previous Trump administration. I mean, some of them were defensive successes, but defensive successes are successes too. And we fought them in court over their school foods, uh, nutrition rule.
We got it rolled back. They had this And beat them. You beat them. Absolutely. And we helped, you know, get rid of this dreadful, dreadful thing called the sunset rule, which was a rule that would have required Literally all HHS regulations to undergo a review every five or so years or to lapse and just disappear.
Um, you know, that, you know, knowing how long it takes, uh, any agency to put out even a single rule, um, through a whole proposal process with notice and comment and all the rest of it, you know, that takes years in and of itself per rule. And here they were asking every five years to review 17, 000 rules. So that's just a recipe for.
You know, the loss of regulation in a completely disorganized way, simply based on what happens to be reviewed or not, what the agency can get to or not. That is anti regulation in full force, um, without, you know, really caring what the subjects are even. We got that one, you know, uh, reversed as well. So, you know, there are opportunities for victory here.
And at the end of the day, as you say, it's not a Republican matter, it's not a Democratic matter. It's a scientific matter. I really believe that. I'm sorry if it comes off across as a little bit naive, but you know, that's why I look at it. That's what's going to sustain me through this. And you know, you just stay true to what science demands and you keep pushing for it.
And you hope that, you know, you win most of the time.
Ken: Well, on that note, uh, we will see you at the barricades, Dr. Lurie, and I will see you in the elevator and see you in the elevator, my friend. Thank you so much. I look forward to connecting with you in person at our soonest opportunity. That'd be great.
Thanks a lot for having me. Dr. Peter Lurie, thank you for joining us and thank you for all the work you and your colleagues do over at CSPI. And thank you to all who contributed to the live streams and to all who tuned in. I also want to thank you out there for listening. If you'd like to learn more, be sure to check out our show notes for additional links for a deeper dive into today's discussion.
Make sure to follow our show on Instagram at Ken cooks podcast. And if you're interested in learning more about EWG, head over to EWG. org or check out the EWG Instagram account at environmental working group. If you liked this episode, send it to a friend who you think would like it too.
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