This is an attack that throws the baby out with the bathwater. GRAS exists because there are things that we know are safe and we recognize that it is a very time-consuming and costly process to demand long-term health testing on every possible chemical that may find its way into food.
I have no problem with doing the work of testing things which have become controversial. They're good questions to ask and good ones to answer. But as someone with a bit of background in the clinical healthcare sciences, I understand that there is a devil in the details here that has to be addressed. Getting the data to do this kind of assessment isn't easy. Isolating the variables isn't easy. Trying to prove what they're seeking to prove is going to require fairly extensive testing. Who's going to pay for the work? Who's going to do the work? In medicine, there's a reason it's the pharma companies who do all the testing. They're the only ones with a vested interest in actually doing the work. No one else is going to pay for it. But if you're going to go test various GRAS food additives that are widely used in the food supply, now who pays? Are you going to force General Mills to pay to test Red Dye No. 40 when it's hardly the only one using it?
This isn't simple. I hear a lot of screeching from people here demanding why perfection hasn't been instituted less than 2 months into Trump's presidency. None of the real solutions to these problems is simple. It didn't break overnight. It got this way because people thought these were the right policies for a very long time.
I think the GRAS designation needs to exist. I think if Kennedy is concerned about particular additives, then a process needs to be put into place to define what the threat may be and develop a path to test it including to pay for it. Congress is going to have to authorize money for this. And I want guarantees that all of this will be publicly posted transparently if the taxpayer's going to pay for it.
Sounded like multiple other countries have their own GRAS which has hundreds, not thousands, of items on that list.
My initial thought is to look at the healthiest country's GRAS list, and require food companies to offer the exact same ingredients in the US for the same price they charge to that country (similar to the drug costs that Trump demanded drop during his first term). Maybe even go with the top 10 healthiest countries.
I don't know what those prices will look like once they hit the shelves, but requiring the lowest price sold to other nations to be offered here should help with the keeping the pricing honest. Stock the product ls side by side clearly labeled as "Clearly Safe Foods" & the other right next to it labeled "Testing For Saftey" with prices side by side. That will allow consumers an easy choice. If the box/bag of cereal is twice as much for the Clearly Safe option, then many are likely to keep using the Testing Saftey option. Though if that Clearly safe is less than a dollar difference, I would believe most would take the Clearly Safe option.
Run the data based on self reporting during well visits at doctors offices between groups of like individuals (ie age, gender, race, known medical condition, vaccination statuses, etc...). I would think that we could get a similar set of data monkeys to work on this like they are for DOGE to quickly find patterns that cross similar groups.
Maybe I am wrong, though that is where my head is initially at.
Instead of an edit on my first response, I figured this could be it's own response to further stimulate ideas.
A more extreme (if we wanted to call it that) solution would be to ban all GRAS that are not on the healthiest nations lists & then if a food company truly believes the ingredient they want to add is worth it, they can show the data in open-source silos/information depots on how those ingredients should be considered a safe ingredient. Once that is established, any other company using that ingredient would pay the researching company a fee for the following 7 years to use the ingredient also. Multiple companies could join together for that research.
That said. It is very likely a combination of thousands of micro poisonings that have slipped through/combined as generally safe that cause these issues. Along side vaccines that cannot be sued for damages, there are a potential for a plethora of variables.
This is an attack that throws the baby out with the bathwater. GRAS exists because there are things that we know are safe and we recognize that it is a very time-consuming and costly process to demand long-term health testing on every possible chemical that may find its way into food.
I have no problem with doing the work of testing things which have become controversial. They're good questions to ask and good ones to answer. But as someone with a bit of background in the clinical healthcare sciences, I understand that there is a devil in the details here that has to be addressed. Getting the data to do this kind of assessment isn't easy. Isolating the variables isn't easy. Trying to prove what they're seeking to prove is going to require fairly extensive testing. Who's going to pay for the work? Who's going to do the work? In medicine, there's a reason it's the pharma companies who do all the testing. They're the only ones with a vested interest in actually doing the work. No one else is going to pay for it. But if you're going to go test various GRAS food additives that are widely used in the food supply, now who pays? Are you going to force General Mills to pay to test Red Dye No. 40 when it's hardly the only one using it?
This isn't simple. I hear a lot of screeching from people here demanding why perfection hasn't been instituted less than 2 months into Trump's presidency. None of the real solutions to these problems is simple. It didn't break overnight. It got this way because people thought these were the right policies for a very long time.
I think the GRAS designation needs to exist. I think if Kennedy is concerned about particular additives, then a process needs to be put into place to define what the threat may be and develop a path to test it including to pay for it. Congress is going to have to authorize money for this. And I want guarantees that all of this will be publicly posted transparently if the taxpayer's going to pay for it.
Sounded like multiple other countries have their own GRAS which has hundreds, not thousands, of items on that list.
My initial thought is to look at the healthiest country's GRAS list, and require food companies to offer the exact same ingredients in the US for the same price they charge to that country (similar to the drug costs that Trump demanded drop during his first term). Maybe even go with the top 10 healthiest countries.
I don't know what those prices will look like once they hit the shelves, but requiring the lowest price sold to other nations to be offered here should help with the keeping the pricing honest. Stock the product ls side by side clearly labeled as "Clearly Safe Foods" & the other right next to it labeled "Testing For Saftey" with prices side by side. That will allow consumers an easy choice. If the box/bag of cereal is twice as much for the Clearly Safe option, then many are likely to keep using the Testing Saftey option. Though if that Clearly safe is less than a dollar difference, I would believe most would take the Clearly Safe option.
Run the data based on self reporting during well visits at doctors offices between groups of like individuals (ie age, gender, race, known medical condition, vaccination statuses, etc...). I would think that we could get a similar set of data monkeys to work on this like they are for DOGE to quickly find patterns that cross similar groups.
Maybe I am wrong, though that is where my head is initially at.
Instead of an edit on my first response, I figured this could be it's own response to further stimulate ideas.
A more extreme (if we wanted to call it that) solution would be to ban all GRAS that are not on the healthiest nations lists & then if a food company truly believes the ingredient they want to add is worth it, they can show the data in open-source silos/information depots on how those ingredients should be considered a safe ingredient. Once that is established, any other company using that ingredient would pay the researching company a fee for the following 7 years to use the ingredient also. Multiple companies could join together for that research.
That said. It is very likely a combination of thousands of micro poisonings that have slipped through/combined as generally safe that cause these issues. Along side vaccines that cannot be sued for damages, there are a potential for a plethora of variables.