@feld Having thought about it a little more, I am annoyed to have come to the conclusion that two years is right to expect any regulation of agricultural products to start to take place.

Let's pretend for a moment that Red 3 is going to be replaced by some chili pepper extract. You generally want to plant those basically now. The next opportunity to successfully demand more peppers is next year: January 2026. You can maybe expect the chili peppers to be ready in July or August, 2026. That's about two years.

Because it's a food coloring - that is, it's not really necessary - this might be an exception. However, that two year timeline makes a lot more sense as a general rule of thumb, and I see where that delay comes from now.

...That said, the FDA should have an expert on hand who would have been able to point out what the most likely replacement is, and the timeline could have totally been tightened up.