> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Nobody Certified a Batch of Orange B Since 1978 - URL: https://giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io/nobody-certified-a-batch-since-1978/ - Published: 2026-08-31T14:14:28.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-31T14:14:28.000Z - Description: FDA revokes Orange B effective September 8 and proposes ending Citrus Red No. 2. It is housekeeping that will read as a ban. Here is the standing answer, pasteable copy, a still and a five-shot video. - Author: giovanni gallucci - Tags: Clean Label, Ingredients, Label Claims, Crisis Response, Consumer Trends, Organic Social Listen to this episode of The Daily Trends Report, then use the piece below. Bought navel oranges Saturday. Four ninety-nine for the bag, and every one of them the same shade, which is what a produce display is engineered to look like. There has been a rule on the books since 1959 saying somebody could spray dye on that skin. I've been doing this twenty years and I didn't know that either. The [FDA](https://www.linkedin.com/company/fda/?ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io) is deleting the rule. On July 22 the agency [issued a final order revoking Orange B and proposed revoking Citrus Red No. 2](https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-takes-further-steps-remove-outdated-authorizations-color-additives-food?ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io). Orange B colored the casings and surfaces of frankfurters and sausages. Citrus Red No. 2 has been authorized since 1959 for the skins of mature oranges. Both are petroleum-based. Both are getting pulled for the same unglamorous reason. FDA says industry walked away from them a long time ago. The number is in the [Federal Register order](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/07/23/2026-14910/revocation-of-the-color-additive-listing-for-use-of-orange-b-on-casings-or-surfaces-of-frankfurters?ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io). No batch of Orange B has been certified or requested since 1978\. Forty-eight years of a live federal authorization for a dye nobody ordered. FDA took sixteen comments on the September 2025 proposal, fifteen of them supportive, and not one company wrote in to say they were still using it. The Orange B order takes effect September 8\. That's eight days out. Comments on Citrus Red No. 2 closed August 24 under docket FDA-2026-N-6304, and the agency decides from there. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. framed it as modernizing food safety regulations. Acting FDA Commissioner Kyle Diamantas framed it as removing outdated authorizations under a regulatory reform agenda. Both of those are accurate and both of them are going to lose to a screenshot. ## What actually happens on September 8 Your regulatory affairs person files this under housekeeping, and they're right. That has nothing to do with how it moves through a feed. Somebody drops BANNED across the headline in white Impact and posts it over a picture of a hot dog. Somebody else finds the 1959 date, does the arithmetic, and posts that oranges have been getting dyed for sixty-seven years. Neither of those people is lying on purpose. They're just faster than a final order, because a final order is written in the voice of a final order and a screenshot is written in the voice of somebody who's mad. By the weekend it's a stitch. By Monday somebody's asking your brand account directly. This is good news you're going to have to defend, which is the most annoying category of news there is. ## The one sentence you already have If you sell citrus, juice, hot dogs, sausage, or anything in a casing, your answer is one sentence and it's almost certainly that you're clean. You don't use these. Nobody has since before most of your customers were born. The problem is that sentence currently lives in a regulatory affairs inbox and not in your comments. Go get it. Today, while it's still boring, and while asking your QA lead a question isn't an emergency. Ask three things. Have we ever certified or purchased Orange B or Citrus Red No. 2, on any SKU, at any co-packer. What certified colors are in the current book, if any. Who signs off if that changes. Write the answers down in plain words. Not the regulatory language. The words a person would say out loud. ## The post you write this week Post it before the news breaks, not after. A brand that answers a question nobody asked yet reads as confident. The same brand answering on September 9 reads as caught. Pasteable, adjust the brackets: FDA is pulling two old color additive authorizations this month. One of them, Orange B, was legal for hot dog casings and hasn't had a batch certified since 1978\. The other, Citrus Red No. 2, was legal for spraying orange skins since 1959. We've never used either. \[BRAND\] uses \[WHAT YOU ACTUALLY USE, or: no certified colors at all\]. Same answer today as last year. Ask me anything about the panel. I'll answer in the comments. Don't editorialize about the FDA. Don't say you applaud the decision. Nobody applauds a docket number. Say what you use, say how long that's been true, and open the floor. ## The still Shoot the actual product against a surface from your actual facility. Not a studio sweep. One SKU, held in a hand, ingredient panel facing camera and legible at thumbnail size. Natural window light, mid-morning, no ring light. Let the shadow fall where it falls. If the panel has four ingredients, that photograph is the whole argument and you don't need a caption card on top of it. If you're a citrus brand, shoot the fruit uncut, in the crate, on the dock. The dust on the crate is the credibility. Don't clean the crate. Shoot it on a phone. A 61-megapixel studio still of an ingredient panel looks like a lawyer took it. ## The 20-second video, shot the same day Five shots. One take each. Vertical. Shot one, three seconds. Hands, product, no face. You say: FDA is pulling an old dye authorization September 8\. Here's ours. Shot two, five seconds. Push in on the ingredient panel, hold it long enough to read. You say the ingredients out loud. All of them. If that takes longer than five seconds, that's a different problem and you'll want to know about it. Shot three, four seconds. Wide, in the plant or the packhouse, whoever runs it standing in frame. Name and title on screen for two seconds, nothing else. Shot four, five seconds. They answer one question: have we ever used it. One word, then a sentence of why not. Shot five, three seconds. Back to the product on the line. You say: same answer next month. Captions on, because most of this plays muted. Burn in three cards total, no more: the additive name, the date, your answer. No stock footage of a laboratory. No slow zoom on a gavel. Post it native to Reels and TikTok. Same file, same first line as the still. ## The comments (this is the job) Pin the post. For 72 hours a human replies, not a bot, and not the agency intern who's never walked the line. If somebody asks whether you ever used it: No. \[SUPPLIER OR CO-PACKER TYPE\] has never certified it for us. Here's what we do use: \[LIST\]. If somebody says every brand is saying that this week: Fair. Ours is on the panel in the pin, and it's been the same panel since \[DATE\]. Check it against the package in your hand. If somebody's angry at the food system generally and you happen to be standing there: Got it. The pin has our full panel. If you've got the product, tell me what's on yours and I'll answer it. One reply each. Don't argue about petroleum derivatives in a thread. Don't explain the Federal Register. Nobody has ever been won over by a citation. ## The lock I'd put on it Two dyes nobody's used since the Carter administration got sixteen public comments. That's the tell. This story has almost no industrial stakes and enormous narrative stakes, and those are the ones that catch brands flat, because nobody staffs for a story that isn't about them. So write the standing answer now and keep it somewhere a social manager can reach at 9pm on a Saturday. Certified colors we use, by SKU. Date that's been true. Who to call if it changes. One page. Then set a calendar note for whenever FDA finalizes Citrus Red No. 2, because that one comes with the better headline and the same 24-hour window. The brands that handle this well won't say anything clever. They'll have the sentence ready, in their own voice, with the panel in frame. That's the whole play, and it costs you a phone call and twenty minutes of shooting. ## If this is sitting on your calendar If you want the briefing before the write-up, the overnight desk is The Daily Trends Report on [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily-trends-report/id1896763846?i=1000785549310&ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io) and [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/033jcZwbZNGKpeUTRJvt1J?ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io). The show is the briefing. This piece is what you do with it. If writing the standing answer, shooting the panel, and sounding like a person instead of a press release is the part that's hard, that's the work I do. I'm giovanni gallucci. Twenty-plus years in organic social for outdoor lifestyle and clean-label food and beverage brands. Ad Age, Emmy, Shorty, Telly, Webby on the shelf. The useful part is I embed with your team and ship the posts. I don't do paid ads or email. LinkedIn: [linkedin.com/in/galluccinet](https://www.linkedin.com/in/galluccinet?ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io)