Introducing the SHAM GRAS Act, a Bill To Weaken Food Chemical Safety

Last week, some of the biggest players in Big Food, including household names like Nestlé, Coca-Cola, General Mills, Hormel and PepsiCo, teamed up to launch a lobbying coalition to permanently undermine food safety in the United States.

The new coalition is purportedly seeking to reform the “Generally Recognized as Safe” (GRAS) loophole, a federal policy that allows food companies to self-certify their ingredients as safe and then introduce them into the market without even informing FDA. At the same time, there are rumblings of Sen. Roger Marshall R-KS, introducing a federal bill to amend the GRAS process, pairing it with a preemption provision, a move that aligns with the interests of the new group.

It may come as a surprise to no one that the new front group, ironically titled “Americans for Ingredient Transparency,” has a special interest in taking on federal food chemical safety reform.

The group has stated that one of its primary goals is to ensure that the federal government is the first and last word in food safety, superseding any state law – a process called “preemption.” This preemption effort will be sweeping, as the group aims to include not just ingredient safety but also “safety assessments, registrations, reporting requirements, and labeling requirements.”

A second goal of the group will be to attempt to influence federal regulation to meet the needs of its members, a goal that will certainly result in weak federal standards governing GRAS, likely a system that does not fully close the GRAS loophole by requiring premarket approval for new food chemical uses.