General Mills has been selling flour with a cancer-linked additive to Florida schools.
Florida's AG just issued the subpoena General Mills never saw coming.
And what he's demanding they hand over will tell you exactly what they knew and when they knew it.
The Chemical 40 Countries Already Banned
Potassium bromate is a flour additive that makes bread rise higher and dough easier to work with.
The European Union banned it in 1990.
Canada banned it in 1994.
China banned it in 2005.
India banned it in 2016.
The World Health Organization's cancer research arm classified it as a possible human carcinogen in 1999 – citing kidney tumors, thyroid tumors, and abdominal cancer in animal studies.
https://twitter.com/AGJamesUthmeier/status/2076733416335163669?s=20
The FDA knew all of this and responded by politely asking bakers in 1991 to please stop using it voluntarily.
That's it.
No ban.
No deadline.
Just a friendly suggestion – one that some companies ignored for the next 35 years.
Potassium bromate is still turning up in more than 200 American food products, including the 50-pound bags of Pillsbury and Gold Medal baking flour sitting in school cafeteria kitchens right now.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier just decided that wasn't good enough.
On Monday, Uthmeier issued a civil subpoena to General Mills and its Pillsbury subsidiary under Florida's Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, demanding full records on every bromated product sold in Florida – including every sale to a K-12 school.
"Nobody is getting sued today – yet," Uthmeier said at a press conference in Orlando.
The subpoena specifically targets Pillsbury Potentate High Gluten Flour, Pillsbury Best Bakers Patent Flour, Gold Medal All Aces Bakery Flour, and Gold Medal Superlative Bakers Flour.
Florida wants three years of sales data, whatever safety research General Mills has run internally on this ingredient, and documentation of every warning – or absence of a warning – passed along to the buyers of that flour.
https://twitter.com/FLVoiceNews/status/2076720050417909965?s=20
"The FDA approval is not a free hall pass or a get-out-of-jail-free card," Uthmeier said. "We're going to look at how these products are marketed and sold to families."
This Is the Fight RFK and Trump Built MAHA For
President Trump endorsed RFK's Make America Healthy Again agenda, and Florida just showed what that looks like in practice.
States aren't waiting for Washington.
More than 100 bills targeting food additives have been introduced across the country in 2026 alone, with at least 11 already signed into law.
West Virginia banned seven synthetic food dyes outright.
New York just passed its own potassium bromate ban – now awaiting the governor's signature.
California – not exactly a conservative state – banned this chemical in 2023, with the law taking effect in 2027.
Florida's legislature tried too – Republican Rep. Meg Weinberger pushed a bill in 2025 that would have banned potassium bromate statewide beginning in 2028.
It never got a committee hearing.
So Uthmeier didn't wait.
He used the subpoena power of his office instead, and General Mills won't be the last company he comes after – "the list will likely go on from there," he said.
Here's what Big Food is about to learn the hard way: FDA approval is not a shield against state consumer protection law.
The core question Florida is asking is whether General Mills ever told the school districts buying this flour that the ingredient in those bags is classified as a possible carcinogen.
If the answer is no, that's fraud on families.
The FDA spent 35 years on voluntary requests and got a shrug.
Uthmeier just handed General Mills a legal document with a deadline.
Sources:
- Florida's Voice, "Uthmeier Investigates General Mills Over Potassium Bromate in Food Products," Florida's Voice, July 13, 2026.
- Tampa Free Press, "Florida Attorney General Subpoenas General Mills Over Potassium Bromate In Food Supply," Tampa Free Press, July 13, 2026.
- Florida Daily, "Florida Attorney General Investigates Potassium Bromate in General Mills Products," Florida Daily, July 13, 2026.
- Policy Canary, "Potassium Bromate FDA Status, California Ban and International Regulations," Policy Canary, March 12, 2026.
- Bloomberg Law, "RFK Jr.'s MAHA Food Push Outpaced by Growing Web of State Laws," Bloomberg Law, July 2026.
