At this year's convention in Vegas, John Kendall (president of Chipco) gave a seminar and one of the questions asked was about the fading issue. As I recall, Mr. Kendall explained it like this:
Chipco chips are manufactured to exacting standards in regards to their raw materials. One of their ink suppliers reformulated their red ink without informing Chipco, and a chemical imbalance is what is causing the red to leech from the chips. He admitted they had some legal problems because of it and didn't want to talk about it any further.