What Does The FDA Consider "Safe"?

Is it shocking to you that food additives are not automatically required to get premarket safety approval by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)?

The FDA uses a term “GRAS”, which stands for Generally Recognized As Safe. Yes, it may be difficult to conceive that the FDA does not require mandatory testing for food additives that are at a concentration of less than 1 part per million. These additives fall under the GRAS classification. Is it a prudent or logical assumption that at a concentration of less than 1 part per million, these additives will do no harm?

Processed foods can contain any number of the thousands of additives used by the food industry. Many people are under the mistaken assumption that such additives must have gone through stringent testing to prove their safety, but as you can see, that oftentimes is not the case at all.

These GRAS designated additives are exempt from the approval process altogether. This is a loophole stemming from the 1958 Food Additives Amendment.

According to Center for Science in the Public Interest, at least 1,000 ingredients have been added to our food that the FDA has no knowledge of their safety.

GRAS Food Ingredient Approval Process Violates the Law:

Together with the Consumers Union, the Environmental Working Group, and the Natural Resources Defense Council, CSPI has filed an 80-page long regulatory comment, stating that the process for determining GRAS substances is in violation of the 1958 law, which requires the FDA to determine the safety of an ingredient before it can be used in food.

How Can Brand New Technologies Be GRAS?

One of the latest food technologies we are contending with is called nano technology, which produces taste modifying chemicals that allow the company to reduce the fat or sugar content of the food.

These additives do not even have to be listed on the label. Instead, they fall under the general category of “artificial flavors,” even though they do not actually have or add any flavor.

To combat this runaway situation, the groups make several recommendations they believe would bring the FDA’s proposal on GRAS in line with the 1958 food additives law.

Their recommendations include:

• Denying GRAS for novel chemicals and substances flagged as potentially risky by authoritative scientific bodies

• Denying GRAS notifications based on unpublished studies

• GRAS notifications must be made by experts without conflicts of interest

• GRAS notifications should be mandatory and public

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