Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announces the FDA will now eliminate an exemption that has allowed Big Food to put harmful chemicals into our foods.
This ends a VERY broadly-used exemption food companies use to avoid FDA approvals…and it includes things like food dyes.
RFK: “In our country, the GRAS standard means that every chemical is presumed safe until proven dangerous, and that proof might not happen until millions of Americans are sick with chronic disease. This mass experiment on the American population with GRAS has ensured been a catastrophe. We now have around 10,000 chemicals in our food. Europe has only 400.”
“The first step is radical transparency because right now, not even the US government knows what’s in our food. In 1958, the government created a designation called ‘generally recognized as safe’ or ‘GRAS’ so that we can make common ingredients like salt and baking soda exempt from testing. But today, it isn’t just salt and baking soda. Food companies and cooperative regulators have enlarged the GRAS exemption so that these companies can decide for themselves whether a substance is generally recognized as safe. No FDA approval is needed.”
“For example, titanium dioxide potentially linked to DNA damage and cancer is banned in the EU, but it’s in our children’s food.”
“Potassium bromate, a suspected carcinogen banned in Europe and Japan. And you guessed it, it’s in our children’s bread. Food dyes such as red dye 40 and yellow five and six come with the warning labels in Europe. They’re linked to behavioral issues in children, but in The US, they’re generally recognized as safe.”
“I am today directing the FDA commissioner to start the process of changing the rules to eliminate the self affirming GRAS pathway for new ingredients. I’m also directing the FDA and NIH to ramp up post market assessments of GRAS chemicals currently in our food so that we can rapidly identify the compounds that are making Americans so sick and so that American consumers and regulators can make informed decisions.”
“This issue isn’t going away.”
