"Who Determines if Food Additives Are Safe?"
November, 2013, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration
announced their plans to all but eliminate trans-fats
from processed foods, citing a CDC statistic
that the elimination of partially hydrogenated oils
from the food supply could prevent more than
10,000 heart attacks and thousands of deaths every year.
Currently, trans-fats enjoy so called GRAS status –
Generally Recognized As Safe.
How did these killer fats get labeled as safe?
Who gets to determine that?
Currently, a generally-recognized- as-safe determination
is made when a manufacturer of a food substance
evaluates the safety of the substance themselves
and concludes that the use of the substance is safe.
Did I just read that right?...
The company that manufactures the substance
gets to determine if it's safe or not?
This approach is commonly referred to as
"GRAS self-determination".
To make matters worse, not only do they not have to
inform the public, they don't even have to inform the FDA!
Eh...in a footnote they explain that...uh...
a company may voluntarily tell the FDA–
they just came up with a new food additive they decide as safe,
but are not required to even do that.
The cumulative result is that there is an estimated
6,000 current affirmative safety decisions
which allow for more than an estimated 10,000 substances
to be used in food.
In addition, an estimated 1,000 manufacturer safety decisions
are never reported to the FDA or the public.
Manufacturers and the trade association made the remaining decisions
without FDA review by concluding on their own
that the substances that they themselves were selling
were safe...
Well, manufacturers are not required to notify the FDA
of a "safe determination".
Sometimes they do notify the agency with a little "FYI".
At least in those cases, where they're going public
with their decision as to what they're putting in our food
presumably they're being above board
in finding some independent, third party panel.
The objective of this study was to find out.
Of the 451 GRAS notifications voluntarily submitted to the FDA
22% were made by someone directly employed by the company,
13% were made by someone directly employed
by a firm hand-picked by the company,
and 64% by a panel hand-picked by the corporation
or the firm the corporation hired.
Are you doing the math?
Yes, that means 0% of safety decisions were made independently.
An astonishing 100% of the members of expert panels worked directly or indirectly
FOR the companies that manufacture the food additive in question!
100%!
And those were just the ones the food companies told FDA about.
And they use the same "Rent-a-Scientist" experts over and over,
leading food industry watch dog, Marion Nestle, to ask,
"How is it possible that the FDA permits manufacturers"
"to decide for themselves whether their food additives are safe?"
Maybe, it's because many of the companies
providing our daily food are corporate giants with political muscles
national governments would envy.
PepsiCo alone spent more than $9 million in a single year
to lobby Congress.
The fact that food additives, like trans-fats,
have been allowed to kill thousands of Americans
year after year comes as less of a surprise
to those who realize 3 of Washington's largest lobbying firms
reportedly now work for the food industry.