Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has taken a swing against processed foods in the United States, but didn’t go as far as the food industry had feared.
Food manufacturers would have to submit information about additives, including dyes, preservatives, sweeteners and emulsifiers, to the Food and Drug Administration, according to a proposed rule detailed Monday by administration officials.
In a sigh of relief for the industry, the packaged foods would be able to remain on the shelves in the meantime.
Additives “generally recognized as safe,” or GRAS, currently fall under a regulatory loophole that allows them to be included in foods with little oversight. Kennedy and officials touted the proposal as a fulfillment of his promises to improve diet and nutrition in the United States, where people get more than half their calories from ultra-processed foods. For decades, the loophole has raised concerns among consumer and nutrition advocates.
Trending
“We cannot reverse America’s chronic disease epidemic without transforming our food system,” Kennedy said in a statement. “These historic actions bring greater transparency to what’s in our food and stronger science to federal nutrition policy.”
Acting FDA Commissioner Kyle Diamantas also said the agency has submitted for interagency review a definition of ultra-processed foods — which could inform new front-of-package labels Kennedy has promised.
Kennedy took the helm of HHS last year with ambitious promises to crack down on the ultra-processed food he, his “Make America Healthy Again” supporters and nutritionists blame for the nation’s epidemic of obesity and chronic disease.
The administration revamped the federal nutrition guidelines earlier this year and extracted promises from a handful of large food companies to remove certain dyes from their products. Last year, Kennedy directed the FDA to start working on GRAS reform.
The proposed rule isn’t final and will be available for public comment. For products with GRAS substances that are already on the market, the FDA would have 180 days to review information submitted by manufacturers. It would have 45 days to review applications for new GRAS ingredients. Officials said Congress would need to delegate them the authority to mandate GRAS review before products are on the market.
Sign up for the NOTUS Metro newsletter for essential coverage of the D.C. region
The regulation would close “a decades-old information gap” and “improve transparency and the agency’s oversight of the U.S. food supply,” Diamantas said.
“Americans deserve confidence that the ingredients in their food are subject to transparent,
science-based oversight, and today’s actions strengthen both sides of that equation,” he said.
Thomas Gremillion, director of food policy at the Consumer Federation of America, said he’s glad to see the administration mandate notices of GRAS ingredients, calling it a “long overdue policy,” so the FDA can fully assess the safety of the nation’s food supply.
But he worries the FDA will end up rubber-stamping GRAS ingredients because it lacks the time and staffing to conduct a thorough review of so many ingredients.
“Nothing in this suggests that FDA will actually do anything to review the safety of the substances for which GRAS determinations have been made,” Gremillion said.
Former FDA Commissioner David Kessler said “the proposed GRAS actions do not tackle the root causes of chronic disease in this country.”
Kessler also told NOTUS the White House is holding up action on a petition he filed last August calling on the agency to legally strip refined carbohydrates like high fructose corn syrup from the U.S. food supply.
Kennedy’s “MAHA report” last year laying out his priorities promised to “fund independent studies evaluating the health impact of self-affirmed GRAS food ingredients, prioritizing risks to children and informing transparent FDA rulemaking.”
Lobbying on the pending regulations by trade associations, companies and organizations has skyrocketed in the past year, NOTUS has reported.
The food industry has rallied around draft legislation from Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Florida) that takes an even softer approach. It would retroactively approve ingredients currently considered GRAS and nullify state food-additive laws, which have surged this year amid food safety reform efforts by MAHA activists.
Author
