The cognitive biases preventing Health Canada from making changes to Red 3/Erythrosine even after the FDA did
In the coming years, America will no longer have food dye in their food supply. They didn't outright ban it, because enforcement and an outright ban is costly and timely. But they highly encouraged manufacturers to stop using it, and this method is working. This will eventually trickle down to Canada, but as an adovocate, I wanted to better understand Health Canada's inaction. Health Canada's stance from day one appears to simply hold firm to their position, and make no changes. The dozens of people making these decisions have worked at Health Canada for up to 20 years. Here's how their biases are preventing them from action. Status Quo Bias: This is the tendency to prefer things to remain the same. For a regulator, changing a longstanding safety decision requires immense effort, can create market disruptions, and opens the agency to criticism, making the "no-change" path far more comfortable Sunk Cost Fallacy : This occurs when past investments unduly inf...
