Can RFK Jr. Fix the FDA’s Food Safety Loophole?
The FDA’s GRAS rule lets companies decide if food additives are safe—without agency oversight. RFK Jr. now aims to close this loophole, requiring companies to notify the FDA of new ingredients and their safety data. Advocates call it a long-overdue reform,...
This was probably always a problem that we didn't recognize, but the problem today is that there's virtually nobody trustworthy enough to evaluate these substances scientifically and objectively. There's so much corruption and it's so pervasive that I'm not sure how any level of trust in process or people is ever reestablished.
However it's done, it would have to be with a level of transparency that we just haven't seen before in government.
~As a result, companies have determined that an estimated 1,000 chemicals are generally recognized as safe and have used them without notifying the agency.”~
We don't need no stinkin 1000 chemicals in our grub!!
A good deal of these “safe” chemicals are probably banned in Europe.
Which is why they don't accept our food exports. Changes like this must happen first.
The reason to ban US food imports alone should have been a red flag to any honest civil servant.
Are there any honest civil servants?
"GRAS" Generally Regarded as Safe. Utterly bullshit. Fancy way of saying, no one died right away from eating or using it so it's probably safe.
A slow lingering death is more profitable for their pharma partners.
Actually no it's even worse. All of the chemicals used BEFORE they started testing half a century ago were automatically grandfathered into GRAS.
Protip: avoid "Natural Flavors" in the ingredients list at all cost
Thanks, I honestly forgot about that. Scary.
In addition, we need to protect our local farmers and their land. Many are selling large chunks of land because financially the government has dictated what they can grow and sell so financially its killing their farm business. Instead of farming they are selling their land to have new housing take over, (or Lord forbid), Microsoft Spy Centers, and Foxconn failures. Most of us would like to purchase from local farmers for meat and produce. This is all out of balance.
GRAS= Generally Regarded as Safe. Do you think that actually means it is safe? No, it does not mean that. It means no one wanted to be bothered doing the lab work to find out what this thing does to a human, or even an animal. So, let's abolish this entire category and bring in one like: Lab Tested and found to be safe! Or just, after testing: SAFE! Regarding something means nothing.
GRAS my ASS -
My God, this should be a headline scandal: "Thousands of Ingredients are In Our Food, Determined by the Vendors as 'Safe' Without any Safety Data or FDA Approval."
The "system" is not "broken." It is NONEXISTENT. It is a fucking roulette wheel.
I remember when the soft drink "Simba" came out (1968-1972), with the logo of a lion. We jocularly called it "lion's piss" for its pungent flavor. Who knew?
They need to have a crash program to put a HOLD on ALL additives and enumerate which ones can be certified, starting now. I'm expecting that things like sodium and potassium chloride, sucrose, glucose, fructose, etc. would be early on the list, to establish purity standards and dose limitations. Chemical additives should be prioritized for review in reverse order according to the length of their formal chemical name. Simple and more fundamental chemicals tend to have shorter names. Believe me, the ones with longer names get them honestly.
I can't accept that we regulate the sulfur content of Diesel fuel to fractions of a percent---yet we don't have any regulation of the sulfur content of our food. But, hey, it could be worse! In times past, people used to make gin with turpentine added into it. And fusel oil in alcoholic beverages is probably much better to burn than to ingest.
In the 1930s, high school "home economics" cooking textbooks had more scientific understanding of what went into food and why. (I've read one. It's like a course in applied chemistry.)
Sorry that I'm on a rampage about this. I come out of an industrial background. We care more about the diet and feeding of our machines, than about each other.
u/#what