What "Clean Beauty" Actually Costs You Now: MoCRA, MAHA, and the Marketing Claims Problem
For decades, the beauty industry operated under some of the lightest federal oversight of any consumer product category. While it certainly might not feel like this “light” oversight was true to form for legal and compliance teams in the industry, it’s factual that until MoCRA, a brand could put something on shelves without proving it was safe first. The burden was essentially on the FDA to prove it was unsafe after the fact. That's a very different standard from, say, pharmaceuticals or medical devices, which require pre-market approval.
Light-touch regulation meant more room to move. Faster approvals. Fewer formal constraints on marketing language. That era is ending. Quietly, then all at once.
I recently attended ACI C5's 13th Annual Legal, Regulatory & Compliance Forum on Cosmetics & Personal Care Products and heard from leaders how they’re adjusting their policies and workflows. Blee’s head of legal engineering and operations, Antonia Walters, joined the session, "Cosmetics in the Crosshairs: FDA, MoCRA, and the New Federal Regulatory Landscape," and covered a lot of ground. The thread running through all of it was the same: three significant forces are converging on this industry simultaneously.
MoCRA has given the FDA tools it has never had before. The MAHA policy agenda is reshaping how ingredients are evaluated, including in cosmetics. And marketing claims: "clean," "non-toxic," "free-from", have quietly become the primary source of regulatory and litigation exposure.
Enforcement and litigation in this area are already picking up, with regulators and plaintiffs increasingly targeting marketing claims, signaling that this risk is no longer theoretical. For legal and compliance teams, the window to get ahead of this risk is open. But it won't stay open.
MoCRA Gave the FDA Teeth It Never Had Before
For most of the past century, cosmetics occupied an unusual regulatory position. The FDA had authority over cosmetic products in theory, but very limited practical tools to enforce it. There were no mandatory registration requirements, no formal recall authority, and no structured adverse event reporting. The industry largely governed itself.
MoCRA changes that. Signed into law in December 2022, it created a comprehensive federal framework for the first time—covering facility registration and product listing, cosmetic good manufacturing practices, adverse event reporting, safety substantiation, mandatory recall authority, labeling, and updated adulteration and misbranding standards.
The significance isn't just the individual requirements. It's what they represent collectively: the FDA now has a real enforcement infrastructure for cosmetics.
The panel spent a lot of time talking about what MoCRA is signaling, more than any single provision, that the FDA is now a credible enforcement actor in this space in a way it wasn't before. Companies that have been operating on the assumption that cosmetics are low-risk from a regulatory standpoint need to revisit that assumption.
There's also a legislative layer still in motion. The Safer Beauty Bill Package (a collection of four bills currently awaiting review by the House Committee) signals that federal appetite for cosmetic regulation is not limited to MoCRA. The framework is still being written. Compliance teams preparing today are, in some respects, preparing for a moving target.
MAHA Is Coming For Ingredients And Cosmetics Are Not Exempt
The Make America Healthy Again policy agenda is widely understood as a food-focused initiative. But that framing is too narrow, and the panel spent time on why.
The FDA's recent move to explore phasing out certain synthetic petroleum-based food dyes is a useful illustration. The dyes in question: FD&C Red No. 3, Yellow No. 5, Yellow No. 6, and Blue No. 1, raised concerns initially in a food context. But these same color additives are standard ingredients in lip products, eye makeup, and personal care formulations. The regulatory pressure that starts in one product category has a way of traveling.
More broadly, MAHA is driving increased scrutiny of the GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) pathway, greater emphasis on ingredient transparency and labeling, and the post-market reassessment of ingredients that were approved under frameworks developed decades ago. What was settled is no longer settled.
The practical implication for compliance teams is a timing problem. Reformulation takes time, often years. Companies that wait for formal regulatory action before beginning that process may find themselves without enough runway to respond. The better posture is to begin assessing exposure now, even while the regulatory picture remains uncertain.
"Clean," "Non-Toxic," And "Free-From" Are Now High-Risk Claims
This is where the conversation became most directly relevant to marketing compliance—and where the stakes are highest for most companies in the room.
The panel was direct about it: marketing communications are now the primary source of regulatory and litigation exposure in the beauty and personal care industry. Not manufacturing. Not labeling. Marketing.
Antonia put it in perspective, “There was a time when reviewing everything was genuinely on the table. You had a finite number of campaigns, a manageable amount of copy, and a process that was slow but complete. AI and influencer marketing ended that.”
Terms like "clean," "non-toxic," and "free-from" have become standard vocabulary in beauty marketing—particularly for brands positioning in the wellness or conscious consumer space. The problem is that none of these terms carries a standardized regulatory definition. They're consumer-facing shorthand with no formal anchor. Which makes them easy to challenge and genuinely difficult to defend.
The same risk applies to sustainability and environmental claims, and to any marketing that implies ingredient safety or transparency without the substantiation to back it up. Across all of these claim types, the question regulators and plaintiffs will ask is the same: what does this claim actually mean, and can you prove it?
"When we talk to legal teams in this industry, the gap we see most often isn't in their product safety process. It's in their marketing review process,” Antonia added. “Claims go out through influencer posts, retailer pages, and campaign copy that were never formally reviewed against the regulatory standard. That's where the exposure lives."
The federal–state patchwork compounds the problem. A claim that is defensible at the federal level may create exposure under California's Prop 65, state PFAS restrictions, or other state-level frameworks that are moving faster than federal regulation. There is no single standard to comply with. There is a landscape to navigate and that landscape looks different depending on where your customers are.
For example, a beauty brand runs a national “clean” campaign that is reviewed and approved at the federal level, but the same claim triggers risk under California Prop 65 or emerging state PFAS restrictions. The campaign is live across all channels, but compliance requirements aren’t consistent across jurisdictions, which makes it difficult for teams to manage risk without creating state-specific guidance or workflows.
Compliance Now Requires Operational Governance
The practical section of the session focused on what well-run teams are actually building in response to this environment. Five things stood out.
- The first is centralized oversight: a single source of truth for claims and substantiation across all marketing content. When claims live in spreadsheets, email threads, and individual team members' institutional knowledge, there's no way to consistently enforce standards or demonstrate compliance if challenged.
- The second is structured approval. Standardized review gates for all campaigns, from brief to publication, ensure that nothing goes out without the right eyes on it and that the review process itself is documented.
- The third is multi-channel monitoring. A claim reviewed and approved for a product page can resurface in an influencer post, a retailer listing, or a partner site without ever going through formal review. The companies managing risk well are tracking claims across all these surfaces, not just the ones they directly control.
- The fourth is cross-functional coordination. Legal, regulatory, and marketing aligned early, not at the point of final approval. When compliance requirements are built into the brief rather than evaluated at the end, the volume of issues reaching formal review drops substantially.
- The fifth is jurisdictional guidance. Clear playbooks for specific state and local rules so that marketing teams aren't navigating the patchwork unaided and legal teams aren't fielding the same questions repeatedly.
The key shift underlying all five of these is a conceptual one. For example, a mid-sized beauty brand launches a “non-toxic” campaign that is reviewed and approved on its website with very specific wording tied to substantiation. When that wording gets reused or simplified across other channels, it can go beyond what’s actually supported. Influencers are less controlled and more likely to exaggerate, and retailer pages may auto-populate or reframe claims without full context. Even if the original website copy is compliant, these differences in how claims show up across channels can create exposure, which is where review processes often break down.
Compliance used to function as a gate at the end of the content process. A final sign-off before publication. That model worked when content volume was manageable and regulatory scrutiny was limited. Neither condition holds today.
What Comes Next
For a session that covered a lot of unknowns—the kind that would make any legal-minded person quietly anxious—the mood in the room was less panic than genuine curiosity. What comes next? And how do we get ready for it?
The regulatory environment for beauty and personal care has shifted structurally. The teams managing it best aren't waiting for enforcement to tell them where the gaps are. They're building the infrastructure now with updated workflows, clearer review processes, and the right tools to maintain visibility over content and claims across every channel.
The path forward doesn't require predicting exactly what the FDA, the FTC, or state legislatures will do next. It requires being in a position to respond clearly and quickly when they do.
Blee helps legal and compliance teams in beauty and personal care manage marketing content risk at scale from "clean" claims to influencer posts to retailer pages, all in one place. Request a marketing compliance workflow review to see how we can help you build the oversight infrastructure this moment requires.