WASHINGTON – On Monday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that the Food and Drug Administration will explore revising the system that lets companies introduce chemicals into the food supply without first notifying the FDA.
The following is a statement from Scott Faber, the Environmental Working Group’s senior vice president for government affairs:
The fact that chemical companies can conclude a chemical is safe to eat and then bring it onto the market without first notifying the FDA shows just how broken our food chemical safety system has become.
Simply pledging to ‘take steps to explore’ changing a system that has been broken for more than 60 years is not the change consumers rightly expect. Until the FDA takes real action to put itself in charge of food chemical safety, this announcement is best seen as a 'plan to plan,' not real progress toward ensuring our food is safe.
This announcement merely suggests that chemical companies must tell the FDA when the companies, not the FDA, have concluded the chemicals we eat are safe. This announcement will not in any way ensure that the food chemicals are reviewed by the FDA or that the chemicals we eat are actually safe. And it will not change the fact that 99 percent of food chemicals are reviewed for safety by the chemical companies, not the FDA.
Congress intended that 99 percent, not 1 percent, of chemicals are reviewed for safety by the FDA, not the chemical companies. Sadly, the reverse is true. It remains to be seen whether the agency will restore the intent of Congress or will instead preserve a system that allows chemical companies to submit summaries of chemical industry science to the FDA for its ratification.
The most significant danger facing consumers is not the new food chemicals that escape any meaningful FDA review; the most significant danger is that thousands of chemicals are already being used in our food without ever having been reviewed by the FDA, or without having been reviewed by the FDA for many decades.
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The Environmental Working Group is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization that empowers people to live healthier lives in a healthier environment. Through research, advocacy and unique education tools, EWG drives consumer choice and civic action.
