The New York Times – In his first weeks as health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declared war on an obscure regulatory process that many argue has been exploited by the food industry for decades.
The pathway allows companies to introduce new ingredients or chemicals into food products without a Food and Drug Administration review, as long as they self-certify them as “generally recognized as safe,” or GRAS for short.
The designation has allowed new chemicals to be viewed as “innocent until proven guilty,” leading to thousands of ingredients flooding the American food system, Mr. Kennedy said at his confirmation hearing in January. “It needs to end, and I believe I’m the one person who’s able to end it,” he added.
In March, Mr. Kennedy directed the Food and Drug Administration to revisit the GRAS rule, describing it as a “loophole” that needed to be eliminated.
Food companies and ultraprocessed snacks may be the target of Mr. Kennedy’s ire.
But the elimination of GRAS would also be a significant setback for the growing multibillion dollar supplement industry, which has regularly used the pathway to quickly bring new ingredients to market with little oversight.
Mr. Kennedy’s announcement has rattled the industry, prompting concerned calls from supplement makers and intense lobbying in Washington by the trade associations that represent them.
Since March, leaders of four dietary supplement trade associations have met multiple times with F.D.A. officials to lobby the agency on the designation’s benefits.
Supplement makers are worried they could become collateral damage in a campaign targeting unhealthy foods.
Kennedy and his team “may not have fully appreciated how it could end up limiting consumer choice in supplements, something that runs counter to their broader platform,” said Duffy MacKay, a senior vice president of dietary supplements at the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, a trade group …
