FDA urged to overhaul food additive safety evaluations

A coalition of environmental and public health groups is challenging the US Food and Drug Administration’s process for evaluating the safety of new food additives. The groups want the agency to consider the combined health effects of all food additives that act similarly rather than assess each chemical individually. In a Sept. 23 petition, the groups claim that the FDA and food manufacturers “have not taken into account the many chemicals we consume in our daily diet that are similar in structure or affect similar function(s) of organs in the body when making safety determinations for new additives.” An investigation by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), one of the petitioners, revealed that manufacturers considered health effects from other, similar substances in the diet for only 1 of 877 food additives deemed generally recognized as safe (GRAS). Despite a legal mandate to consider cumulative effects, the FDA allowed the GRAS additives