Two actions to modernize federal oversight of food ingredients and establish a stronger scientific foundation for future nutrition policy were announced Monday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS. It’s proposed a rule requiring manufacturers to notify the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, when concluding that the use of a substance added to human or animal food is generally recognized as safe, or GRAS.
In addition, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, or USDA, is submitting for final review the federal government’s first proposed definition of ultra-processed foods, or UPFs.
“Nearly 60% of the American diet is made up of ultra-processed foods, and childhood obesity now affects more than one in five American children,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.said in a statement. “We cannot reverse America’s chronic disease epidemic without transforming our food system.”
However, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, or CSPI, an advocacy group, is critical of the proposals.
The GRAS “action” is only a proposal and the UPF definition isn’t even that, the CFPI said in a statement, adding eventually both will require further action to be finalize and carried out.
“Today’s celebration also serves to distract from the real harm this administration has already carried out on independent science and healthy food access,” said Peter Lurie, M.D., president of CSPI.
The GRAS loophole in the current food additive regulatory system allows companies to self-certify the safety of new food chemical uses in secret, without sharing any safety data or even notifying the FDA or the public that they’re on the market.
For decades, CSPI and other health and consumer organizations have been calling for reforms to this system, even suing the FDA in an effort to close the loophole in 2017.
“For too long, FDA has been blind to the full universe of novel chemicals used in our foods and industry has aggressively lobbied against attempts at federal reform,” Lurie said. “We can be sure that industry will pull out all the stops to promote its interests as the rule is finalized.”
While CSPI welcomes efforts to close this loophole and looks forward to the opportunity to comment, the proposal will need to be strengthened and finalized before it can have a substantial impact, he said.
Lurie said the proposed rule will still allow companies to sell products before or during the process of submitting a GRAS notice to FDA – there’s no requirement for companies to get the greenlight from FDA before going to market, which is one of the fundamental flaws in the existing system.
The CSPI urges the FDA to fully close the GRAS loophole by requiring premarket review for all new food chemicals. In addition, it’s unclear how the FDA would enforce a notification provision the administration characterizes as “mandatory.”
Mandatory without enforcement isn’t mandatory at all, he said.
Lurie points out that states continue to lead the way ensuring transparency and safety in the food supply. For example, New York’s Food Safety and Chemical Disclosure Act was passed by the New York State Legislature in April. If signed by Governor Hochul, the bill will require companies to report GRAS substances and safety data to the state.
The federal “ultra-processed food” definition, also celebrated Monday, isn’t published yet. Stuck at the Office of Management and Budget with no timetable for release, it’s a draft “white paper” rather than a regulatory policy.
Lurie said the CSPI recommends that policymakers take an approach that combines nutrient, ingredient, and processing attributes to ensure that the UPF policies target the processed foods that evidence shows are most clearly linked to health harms.
At the announcement event Monday, speakers claimed that 18 months of the Trump administration’s actions have made the U.S. food supply healthier and safer.
Lurie said that rhetoric distracts the public from the many steps this administration has taken to undermine independent science and healthy food access. Those include:
- Firings of expert staff at the FDA and other federal health agencies’ arbitrary grant terminations.
- Disbanding of food safety expert advisory committees.
- Intimidation of federal scientists.
- Promoting misinformation.
- Defunding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, of $187 billion over 10 years, while telling Americans to “eat real food.”
- Cutting nutrition education through SNAP-Ed.
- Terminating funding for local food in schools.
- Proposing cutting fruit and vegetable benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC.
“These actions make our food system less safe and make healthy food less accessible, contradicting the secretary’s purported goals,” Lurie said. “There is only so much a limited GRAS reform proposal and a not-yet-existing UPF definition can do to reverse these harms.”
