"The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is making it harder for manufacturers to deem their own chemical ingredients as safe.
Today, the FDA proposed a rule that would make it mandatory for manufacturers to notify the agency whenever the manufacturer is adding a substance to food that the company deems to be “Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS).”
The rule is meant to give the agency greater visibility into substances entering the food supply, and allow it to “better carry out its statutory responsibility to prohibit the use of unsafe additives in food,” acting FDA commissioner Kyle Diamantas said during a conference call.
Prior to proposing the rule, the GRAS notification program was voluntary — companies could choose to notify the FDA about new chemical ingredients they determined are safe for use in food. The proposed rule would make GRAS notification mandatory."
