Dive Brief:
- Following Subway's Friday announcement that it would no longer use azodiacarbonamide, a chemical also used in yoga mats and shoe soles, in its bread, Sen. Charles Schumer called Sunday for an FDA ban on the chemical's use in food.
- The chemical is used by fast food chains like Subway and McDonald's to make bread chewier and give it a longer shelf life, but research also shows that, when cooked, it can produce the carcinogen semicarbazide.
- Azodiacarbonamide is already banned as a food ingredient in Australia and the European Union.
Dive Insight:
It's not hard to see the consumer backlash to this chemical on the horizon. As Newsday points out, though, the fix for the FDA is easy: A regulatory clause prevents it from approving carcinogenic items for consumption, so attaching it to that clause seems like a fairly clean solution. Of course, it does mean the companies producing the bread for fast food restaurants will have to change their processes a bit, and those restaurants will have to adjust for bread that will, presumably, have a shorter shelf life, but that's arguably better than a customer revolt.