More than 100 unreviewed chemicals are contained in products on grocery store shelves, according to a new analysis.
The nonprofit Environmental Working Group said on March 3 it identified 111 chemicals that have not been reviewed by federal regulators in sports drinks, snack bars, cereals, and other foods and drinks in grocery stores.
These includes aloe vera, which the Food and Drug Administration banned in laxatives in 2002; nearly two dozen extracts, including green tea extract, which has been linked in research to heart and liver issues; and newer proteins such as beta-lactoglobulin, an animal-free version of whey protein.
Companies are able to use the unreviewed chemicals under the Generally Recognized as Safe rule, or GRAS. Under the rule, companies are permitted to evaluate new ingredients and determine whether or not they are safe without notifying the FDA.
“This is a wake-up call for every American who assumes the FDA is reviewing the safety of chemicals in their food,” Melanie Benesh, vice president for government affairs for the Environmental Working Group, said in a statement. “Instead, food and chemical companies are exploiting a loophole to keep both the government and the public in the dark.”
Emily Broad Leib, faculty director of the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic, said the analysis “makes clear that the public and regulators are flying blind when it comes to the safety of many substances in our food” and called for “urgent reform to ensure decisions about food safety are based on science and are visible to the public—not left to companies with a financial stake in the outcome and without any oversight.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, the FDA’s parent agency, told The Epoch Times in an email that GRAS is a loophole that the FDA is seeking to close.
“In addition, FDA is advancing a robust, transparent post-market chemical review program to ensure that food chemicals in the U.S. food supply remain safe,” the spokesperson said. “In the past year, FDA has developed a systematic post-market review process for chemicals in foods and updated our list of select chemicals currently under the agency’s review to provide more insight on the status of the FDA’s post-market assessments of chemicals in the food supply.”
“For far too long, ingredient manufacturers and sponsors have exploited a loophole that has allowed new ingredients and chemicals, often with unknown safety data, to be introduced into the U.S. food supply without notification to the FDA or the public,” he stated at the time.
The FDA said recently that it planned to propose a new regulation regarding GRAS, and an abstract for that proposal stated that the FDA would require companies to submit notices for any substances purported to be generally recognized as safe.
