Regulatory concerns about food additives

According to the latest report, between 1990 and 2010, more than 1,000 ingredients were labeled as GRAS by manufacturers without notifying the FDA of the addition of the ingredient.

Since 2010, thousands more have likely been added to the American food supply without regulators conducting proper safety testing. Researchers have found that because of the lack of oversight, there is no good estimate of how many additives have entered the nation’s food supply through GRAS labeling.

A large portion of the FDA’s budget comes from fees paid by pharmaceutical companies to review drugs. Because most of the funds are allocated to the drug program, food inspection is often neglected.

“The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) evaluates the safety of ingredients regulated as food additives before they are placed on the market, but leaves it up to the food industry to self-regulate and decide which substances are considered generally recognized as safe (GRAS) based on unpublished data and conclusions that FDA never sees,” Pomeranz’s team concluded. “In addition, FDA lacks a formal approach to reviewing food additives and GRAS substances that are already in the food supply. Thus, substances in the food supply include harmless ingredients (e.g., black pepper), those that are harmful in high doses (e.g., salt), those whose safety is questionable (e.g., potassium bromate), and those that are unknown to FDA and the public.”

The researchers called on the agency to develop a more clearly defined policy to regulate food additives to better protect public health.

Current regulations on food additives

The agency and Congress have taken several steps in recent years to more strictly regulate food additives.

For example, after years of advocacy and public opposition, the FDA recently banned brominated vegetable oil. Previous research has shown that brominated vegetable oil is linked to neurological problems and can damage the liver. The ingredient was already banned decades ago in the United Kingdom, the European Union and Japan.

In March, members of Congress called on the FDA to re-evaluate seven chemicals commonly used in meat, dairy and egg products. The chemicals include preservatives, dyes, emulsifiers and disinfectants that are known to have serious health side effects and are banned in the European Union and other countries.