This year, many in Congress have been working on bills to reform Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) protocols for food ingredients.
Last week, these included Senator Roger Marshall's Better Food Disclosure Act (The Better FDA), change the Food and Drug Administration's oversight of ingredient disclosures and reviews. It would also require food companies to report to the agency the ingredients they add to their products.
Several other congressional proposals to reform the supposed GRAS loophole include: Food Reform and Safety Act (HR4958), Safe and Non-Toxic Food Enforcement Act (S.2341), and Toxic Free Food Law (HR9817).
All this congressional interest raises the question of where the FDA stands on this issue.
In March, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. directed the FDA to study developing rules that would eliminate companies' ability to “self-certify” ingredients as safe without oversight.
As part of Kennedy's Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) mission, he called for “radical transparency” for consumers.
But studying is almost all the FDA is doing this year as part of its GRAS reform mandate. Actual participation in rulemaking changes will not occur until 2026. In mid-September, the FDA added GRAS to its spring 2026 program.
Currently, companies independently certify the safety of the ingredients they use in food and voluntarily share studies with the FDA, hoping for a “no questions asked” letter from the agency confirming their GRAS status.
Under Kennedy, HHS ordered the FDA to find a “pathway” to eliminate self-certified GRAS status for food and beverage ingredients.
The FDA's GRAS registry currently includes more than 1,200 substances. Most likely, all of them will be taken into account by the new rule. A 2013 Pew Charitable Trusts study estimated that 3,000 GRAS substances had evaded FDA review.
The FDA currently has voluntary GRAS notifications, processing about 75 annually and publishing more than 1,000 since the program began, according to HHS. Self-attribution hides many of the ingredients from the agency's view and does not require public disclosure.
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