Cookies made with natural colors, right, and ones made with artificial colors at a Panera Bread pop up store in New York in June 2015. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer) MONTPELIER — The Vermont Senate abandoned a bill that would have barred a list of chemical additives from the food and drinks served i n schools after two of the state’s largest school districts told lawmakers they were opposed to the proposal. Senators’ decision to scrap the bill, S.26, is notable because it came after the legislation won unanimous approval in the chamber’s Health and Welfare Committee. Typically, when bills get such strong initial support, they are almost certain to move forward. The legislation also had backing from the Vermont Agency of Education, meaning it was unlikely to face opposition from Gov. Phil Scott’s allies in the Republican minority.  But the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Ginny Lyons, D-Chittenden Southeast, said she ultimately did not want to override the wishes of school nutrition leaders who argued the legislation would create more administrative work while leading to little change in what students actually ate, since few items served in Vermont schools today contain the additives that would be banned. Two months after that 5-0 committee vote, including weeks in limbo on the Senate floor, the school food bill is back in the health and welfare committee, which Lyons chairs. And it will not advance, in any form, before the end of the session, she said.  That’s disappointing advocacy groups who say the ban would improve student health. The legislation would have prevented public and private schools, during the school day, from serving food or drinks containing any of six listed colorful dyes. It would also have banned four other additives commonly used to improve foods’ color, texture or shelf life. Supporters of the bill, which Lyons first introduced in 2025, pointed to research linking those additives to behavioral difficulties such as inattentiveness and impaired memory in some children. All of the additives in the bill have already been banned, or their regulation is being considered, in at least three other states, according to data compiled by the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, which lobbied in favor of S.26. The bill would have been something of a rare alignment between Vermont state policy and a stated goal of the Trump administration. Under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the federal government has been pressing food manufacturers to remove many chemical additives, especially colored dyes, from their products. While it’s a politically popular policy, the administration’s push has had limited success so far. After clearing the health and welfare committee in mid-March, the Vermont bill sat for about a week on the Senate’s calendar for floor action, which is longer than most bills spend in that stage. Then, senators voted with no debate on the floor that the bill be “ordered to lie” — an atypical move meaning it had been put on the back burner. More than a month later, at the end of April, senators voted — again without debate — to direct the bill back to the health and welfare committee. At that point, Lyons and her committee had decided they would no longer try to move the bill forward, she said. “I didn’t like doing it,” Lyons said in an interview. “But, that’s life. Sometimes you have to respond to what you hear. And we did.”  What the committee heard, Lyons continued, was opposition to the bill earlier this year from two of the state’s largest school districts.  In February, school nutrition directors from the Burlington School District and the Essex Westford School District told Lyons’ committee that they supported the idea of limiting chemical additives and that school staff already try their best to do so. However, the work of finding suitable replacements for some foods, including to-go items that help students eat in a rush, would not be worth the effort, they said.  Food or drinks containing the additives S.26 would have banned represent some $219,000 out of the $20 million Vermont schools had spent on food as of that point this school year, according to Laura La Vacca, the nutrition director in Burlington. “While well intentioned, (the bill) functions as an unfunded mandate and adds another layer of compliance to programs that are already highly regulated and struggle to be financially self-sustaining,” Scott Fay, the Essex nutrition director, told the senate committee. “It also places responsibility solely on schools, rather than addressing these additives more broadly in the food system.” La Vacca agreed, saying: “The responsibility for producing foods without harmful ingredients lies with the manufacturers, not the consumer.” According to Lyons, the state education agency said it would be willing to shoulder any administrative burden resulting from the bill, including finding replacements for additive-containing products. But that did not seem to change the school districts’ opinions, Lyons said. She said her committee was also hesitant to advance a proposal that faced pushback from schools in a year when lawmakers are already considering highly controversial changes to how the state’s education system is governed and funded. The Senate Education Committee is currently drafting its version of this year’s follow-up legislation to the sweeping reform package that lawmakers passed last year, Act 73. “Schools are under the gun right now,” Lyons said. One of the lobbyists who backed the food additives ban this year — Anna Seuberling, of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group — agreed that “there are a lot more pressing issues facing our education system today.”  Still, she would have liked to see the policy get across the finish line to prevent school food and drinks from including chemicals that research has shown can be toxic. “We look forward to taking a look at it again next year,” Seuberling said of S.26. Lyons said that if she’s reelected to her Senate seat and again chairs the health committee, she would be interested in examining a ban on those food and drink additives across the state, not just in schools. “Regardless of the minimal amount of foods that we have in schools that contain these chemicals,” she said, “it’s just not OK to expose children to things that are going to cause harm.” Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont lawmakers abandon push to ban chemical dyes from cafeterias after school district opposition. ...read more read less