FDA proposes mandatory food ingredient reporting
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The Trump administration on Monday proposed requiring food companies to tell the Food and Drug Administration when they determine ingredients are safe to eat and doing away with an oft-criticized voluntary notification program.
Why it matters: Food safety advocates have long complained that the "generally recognized as safe," or GRAS, designation is a major blind spot.
- But the new proposal doesn't detail what FDA will do with ingredients it finds questionable.
Driving the news: Administration officials, flanked by Make America Healthy Again-aligned influencers, said the change would bring needed transparency at a time when almost 60% of Americans' diet consists of ultra-processed foods.
- "The proposal will give the agency greater visibility into the substances that are entering our food supply," said Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The administration's effort to tighten oversight of what we eat appears constrained by federal law, leaving any next steps up to Congress.
- "In this proposed rule, the agency appears to have gone as far as it can, without new congressional action, to provide greater oversight of food ingredients," former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb wrote on X.
Between the lines: Kennedy also announced that the Health and Human Services and Agriculture departments submitted the federal government's first definition of ultra-processed foods for final review, but did not release that definition to the public.
- Some nutrition and consumer groups were skeptical, saying food companies could continue to sell products without premarket reviews.
- "It's hard not to draw the conclusion that the food industry had a good day," said Scott Faber, Environmental Working Group's senior vice president of government affairs.
- He said the GRAS proposal isn't clear on how the new standard would be enforced or what happens if the FDA misses review deadlines.
- While companies that are using substances previously unknown to the FDA will have to disclose it, "that does not mean in any way that that substance will no longer be allowed in food," Faber said.
Zoom in: The proposal not only falls short of requiring premarket review but doesn't cover postmarket reviews of products already being sold, Marion Nestle, nutrition expert and professor emerita at New York University, told Axios.
- "My first question is who's going to be doing this? Who's going to read these things? Where are the scientists left at FDA who are qualified to evaluate these when they have gotten rid of so many staff and have been unable to hire that staff back?"
The other side: The food industry has lobbied for federal changes, saying they're preferable to state-by-state oversight of ingredients they say could further inflate the price of food.
- "The Administration's release of a proposed GRAS rule only further underscores the limitations of the existing law, and that is exactly why Congress needs to act this year to modernize GRAS and create a national, uniform approach to ingredient review and labeling," said Americans for Ingredient Transparency, which includes the food industry-backed Consumer Brands Association.
The industry is pushing back separately on the efforts to define ultra-processed foods, arguing they will cause "widespread consumer confusion and increase grocery costs."
- "We are confident that this definition won't move forward once the president is made aware of it and the disastrous consequences it will have on his affordability agenda," Rhonda Bentz, executive vice president of public affairs for the Consumer Brands Association, said in a statement.
