(NewsNation) — Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is urging the Food and Drug Administration to overhaul the approval process for ingredients entering the U.S. food supply.
On Monday, Kennedy met with food industry leaders and criticized the FDA’s GRAS, or “generally recognized as safe,” program, which allows companies to self-affirm their ingredients as safe.
Kennedy accused big food companies of “poisoning Americans” with ingredients that are not independently tested by government bodies.
Kennedy has repeatedly targeted ultraprocessed foods as the primary culprit behind a range of diseases that afflict Americans, particularly children. He vowed in a Senate confirmation hearing to focus on removing such foods from school lunches for children because they’re reportedly “making them sick.”
On social media, he urged the public to be more aware of harmful ingredients.
“This is a list of ingredients from foods — carrageenan, riboflavin, monosodium glutamate and 20 others that I can’t pronounce,” he said in a video posted to Instagram.
‘No equivalent’ to GRAS outside of US: FDA adviser
Food activists have slammed the GRAS program, arguing it allows companies to “self-certify” the safety of food additives.
Darin Detwiler, a former FDA and USDA adviser, said that under the program, companies are not required to alert the FDA when they use certain chemicals and substances.
“There is no equivalent to the GRAS program,” he said. “For instance, in the European Union, there are strict compliance and testing protocols, and the transparency and the way which companies have to go through a process to prove that their ingredients are worthy of being considered to be their equivalent, of generally regarded as safe … We just don’t have that here.”
Detwiler warned a lack of oversight could mean there are hundreds of untested ingredients and additives in the U.S. food supply.