– OPINION –
Sarah Sorscher
Last week, some of the biggest players in the food industry, including big names like Nestlé, Coca-Cola, General Mills, Hormel and PepsiCo, came together to form a lobbying coalition to permanently undermine food safety in the United States.
The new coalition is ostensibly seeking to reform the Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) loophole, a federal policy that allows food companies to independently certify their ingredients as safe and then put them on the market without even informing the FDA. At the same time, there are rumors that Senator Roger Marshall (R-KS) is introducing a federal bill to amend the GRAS process by combining it with a preemption provision, a move that suits the interests of the new group.
It may come as no surprise that a new advocacy group, ironically named Americans for Ingredient Transparency, is taking a special interest in federal chemical food safety reform.
The group stated that one of its main goals The goal is to ensure that the federal government has the first and last word on food safety issues, superseding any state law—a process called “preemption.” These proactive efforts will be extensive as the group seeks to include not only ingredient safety but also “safety assessments, registrations, reporting requirements and labeling requirements.”
The group's second goal will be to try to influence federal regulation to meet the needs of its members, a goal that will certainly result in weak federal standards governing GRAS, likely a system that will not fully close the GRAS loophole of requiring premarket approval for new uses of food chemicals.
Preempting state laws has become a top priority for large food companies in response to the wave of state bills that began with California Food Safety Act of 2023which banned four harmful additives. Bills regulating food chemical safety have emerged in many states in the past year, with both Democratic and Republican Party advocates taking aim at synthetic dyes, titanium dioxide, potassium bromate, propylparaben, toxic heavy metals and a host of other chemicals associated with health risks.
These bills, often supported by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have injected momentum and new energy into the FDA, an agency that has long been lax in regulating food chemicals, thanks in large part to years of effective lobbying by industry. But since the California law was passed, the FDA has gained new enthusiasm for regulation, banning Red 3 and brominated vegetable oil (BVO), two chemicals included on California's ban list earlier this year before the Trump administration took office. The FDA is now also consideration many chemicals covered by other state bills.
Big Food is desperately trying to kill this momentum. As the word “transparency” in its name suggests, the group seeks to combine this agenda of priority action with popular consumer transparency initiatives, including GRAS reform. Not only is the current secret GRAS process opaque, some of the chemicals going through GRAS aren't even disclosed because they may be announced simply as “flavorings” in the ingredient list. GRAS reform is a modern-day unicorn: an issue that is popular across the political spectrum and therefore most likely to gain support.
Closing the GRAS loophole means requiring not only transparency but also independent safety review to ensure that chemicals undergo rigorous testing before they go to market, a job that would shift to the FDA if the GRAS regulation were truly reformed.
There are currently several proposals in Congress to reform the GRAS loophole, including Food Reform and Safety Act (HR4958), Safe and Non-Toxic Food Enforcement Act (S.2341), and Toxic Free Food Law (HR9817). The sponsors of these bills worked with groups like the Center for Science in the Public Interest, knowing that we have been fighting for decades to close the GRAS loophole. And these bills we support require rigorous, independent pre-market analysis of new food chemicals. None of them involve preemption.
Senator Marshall has not shared his bill or reached out to CSPI or other consumer groups, but as a member of the senator's staff described, the bill would involve preemption, harmonizing the laws of various states by creating a single standard, which would make it easier for food companies to comply, especially if the federal standard is not strict.
It is not surprising that, given the lack of consumer input, the GRAS provisions in the Marshall Bill are considered weak. Instead of requiring pre-approval of all new chemicals, the bill would simply require food companies to “notify” the FDA of their plans to use new chemicals in food products.
Such a bill would not “close” the current loophole in federal law. Instead, it would perpetuate the avoidance of pre-market inspection at the additional cost of broad repeal of stricter state food safety laws now and in the future.
Such a bill would clearly be harmful to consumers, but this approach appears tailor-made for the purposes of the new front group. Marshall also appears to have borrowed ideas from industry, titling his bill the “Food Ingredient Transparency (FIT) Act,” which is very similar to the name of the advance group.
Influential figures in the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) community who have supported government chemical food safety bills, including Vani Hari (aka Food Babe), have already taken sharp aim at the new industry group. If this bill were introduced by Senator Marshall, co-chair of the Make America Healthy Again Caucus, it would be the ultimate betrayal of the work of many MAHA-affiliated activists who fight for safety reform at the state and federal level.
The name of the “FIT Act” fits well with the food industry's misleading messaging, but I have a name for any bill that fits the food industry's agenda by “harmonizing” state laws with a weak and ineffective federal standard: the Putting Harmonization Before Meaningful Governance and Actual Supplement Safety Act, or the SHAM GRAS Act.
If Senator Marshall or any member of Congress puts forward a GRAS reform bill to serve the industry's agenda, they should be prepared for consumer advocates to call it what it is – the Sham GRAS Act – a name that reveals its true impact.
About the author: Sarah Sorscher is the Director of Regulatory Affairs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Founded in 1971, the Center is a nonprofit group that advocates for science-based, public-informed policies in the areas of nutrition, food safety and health; holds government agencies and corporations accountable; and provides consumers with independent, objective information to help them live healthier lives.
