Ideally, she says, the FDA would require a pre-market review for new ingredients so that it could ensure their safety before they’re added to the food supply. (New color additives, for instance, are not allowed to go through GRAS and must be pre-approved by the FDA before they’re added to food.) But that might be difficult to enact in the current political climate, she says.
“MAHA conflicts with MAGA,” she says, because MAHA (the Make America Healthy Again movement) wants to force food companies to be more transparent about their ingredients, while MAGA (Make America Great Again) is about deregulation. Bloomberg News recently reported that the Trump Administration delayed a long-awaited definition of ultra-processed foods because of pressure from food industry CEOs.
Closing the GRAS loophole
The GRAS loophole has led to illnesses in the public, which is one big reason it needs to be closed, says Thomas Galligan, principal scientist for food additives and supplements for the Center for Science in the Public Interest. In 2022, the company Daily Harvest used a new substance called tara flour in one of its plant-based products, which would become linked to hundreds of instances of people getting sick. The company had not filed a GRAS notice about the substance, and in 2024, the FDA determined that the substance was not generally recognized as safe.
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