“Imagine this: you’re prescribed a life saving medication but hidden within its formula is an ingredient that could trigger a severe allergic reaction or, worse, exacerbate a chronic condition like Celiac disease. This isn’t a hypothetical nightmare. It’s a reality for millions of Americans today,” King George County Supervisor Cathy Binder told the House Social Services Subcommittee.

Binder, who has Celiac disease and cancer, is one of those Americans. She described going to the pharmacy and being told staff could not determine whether a product contained wheat, and that she would need to call the manufacturer —quite a burden for someone who is seriously ill. She also shared that her chemotherapy drug once had to be remixed because it contained wheat.

On Binder’s behalf, Senator Richard Stuart carried SB 486, a bill that would have required drugs and supplements sold in Virginia to list active and inactive ingredients and include a separate disclosure if the product contained gluten.

After the bill passed the Senate, Stuart learned that federal law already requires some ingredient disclosure. But he argued that federal requirements only apply above certain thresholds.

“So what federal law says is gluten- free is really not gluten-free,” he said, leaving people with Celiac disease still at risk. He pointed to supplements as an example, noting that wheat is sometimes used in capsules as a binding agent.

Binder added that federal sounds comprehensive but is flawed because it does not require identifying the source of ingredients. A label listing “starch,” for example, does not indicate whether it comes from corn, potatoes, or wheat.

Questions and Opposition Scott Johnson, representing the Consumer Health Products Association, opposed the bill. “As the federal law basically recognizes, our testing capability cannot detect anything below 20 parts per million, and so that is what they use. So if you were to say something is gluten free, it may have an amount between zero and 20, and we have no way to know that,” he told the subcommittee.

Stuart pushed back on discussion about the ability to detect small amounts of ingredients. “That is something I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around, because if you put wheat gluten in something, then somebody knows it was there. If, through the manufacturing process, they are putting wheat gluten in it as a binding agent or anything else—and that’s the whole point of this bill, trying to get at that disclosure.”

According to Johnson, “Federal law today says if wheat is in a product, a supplement, or a drug, it has to be listed on the label. FDA is currently looking at regulations to say whether oats and barley ought to be on there, because that can cause a gluten allergy as well.”

He said Binder’s experience appeared to be a compliance issue rather than a gap in federal law. “If the lady was given a gel cap—whether it’s a supplement or drug—and it had wheat to bind it together or make it, and it wasn’t on the label, then that is a situation where you file a complaint with the FDA that they’re not following existing federal law.”

Johnson also argued that no other state has created its own gluten labeling requirement and that consistency with federal law is important. He said federal rules do not require certain processing additives to be listed, but the bill would—creating a conflict. He also noted that the bill’s definition of “gluten free” did not align with federal testing limits.

“So, we’ve got in this draft two federal conflicts, and also we’ve got a situation where we would be setting up a Virginia law that’s already governed by federal law,” he told the subcommittee.

Maybe Next Year

Delegate Laura Cohen moved to carry the bill over until 2027 and requested that a letter be sent to VDACS to “figure out comprehensively what this looks like and how we could make it work.”

Stuart urged the subcommittee to keep the bill alive, noting it was already scheduled to go before VDACS and that he would work with the department and with Johnson to get the specifics where they needed to be.

Chairwoman Kathy Tran said there appeared to be differing views about how feasible the proposal was and how the state might move forward if it chose to do so. She said the motion—which passed—would give Stuart more information to bring back a bill next year.