Wednesday, 29 April 2026

Latest from Food Politics: Preempting the GRAS loophole: not a good idea

One of the reasons for Monday’s rally at the Supreme Court (see Monday’s post) is the food industry’s efforts to be able to continue to use whatever additives it chooses, without regulatory oversight. A press release from the Environmental Working ...
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By Marion Nestle

Preempting the GRAS loophole: not a good idea

One of the reasons for Monday’s rally at the Supreme Court (see Monday’s post) is the food industry’s efforts to be able to continue to use whatever additives it chooses, without regulatory oversight.

A press release from the Environmental Working Group warns: ‘FRESH’ and Affordable Foods Act is rotten to the core.

This refers to a a draft bill introduced by Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) designed to preempt all state food chemical laws.

States have been passing inconvenient laws banning food dyes and chemicals.  The industry want this to stop.

According to the EWG’s analysis, the bill would do things like this (and more):

  • Allow new food chemicals linked to cancer and reproductive harm to be considered “safe.”
  • Retroactively approve all food chemicals currently considered generally recognized as safe (GRAS).
  • Allow new chemicals to be added to food if the FDA does not respond to a GRAS notice within 90 days.
  • Allow new chemicals reviewed by industry-funded expert panels – including the flavor industry’s notorious “expert” panel – to be automatically GRAS and used in food immediately.

Under the “GRAS loophole,” which Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, has vowed to close (this has not happened yet), chemical companies – not the FDA – decide whether a food chemical is safe. For new chemicals, companies submit a GRAS notice to the FDA, and the FDA responds with a “no questions” letter.

As an EWG analysis found, since 2000, almost all new chemicals – nearly 99% –  have come onto the market through the GRAS loophole.

The system is already inadequate; this act would make it worse (here’s my contribution to this discussion from more than a decade ago).

Helena Bottemiller Evich says in Food Fix: Food industry quietly advances its preemption push in Washington

Right now, preemption is becoming even more critical for industry because MAHA groups and consumer advocates have been having a ton of success in state legislatures. In many cases, the industry is actually getting creamed outside of Washington.

She notes that the New York legislature has just required companies to publicly disclose any additivies they self-determine to be GRAS (it also bans Red 3, propylparaben, and potassium bromate in the state).

This kind of action makes the food industry long for federal preemption.

Secretary Kennedy and the MAHA movement have promised to fix all this.  Will they be able to?

Stay tuned.

The post Preempting the GRAS loophole: not a good idea appeared first on Food Politics by Marion Nestle

Now Available: What to Eat Now

My new book, What to Eat Now, is officially out!

It's both a field guide to food shopping in America and a reflection on how to eat well—and deliciously.

For more information and to order, click here.

You can explore the full archive of this (almost) daily blog at foodpolitics.comwhere you'll also find information about my books, articles, media interviews, upcoming lectures, favorite resources, and FAQs.


​​​​​​​

Marion Nestle

Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University, Emerita


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Tuesday, 28 April 2026

Trekkin’ 4 Trachies…A New Platform for S3 Kit!

Latest from Food Politics: American tragedy redux: USDA is relocating more programs out of the DC area

It’s deja vu all over again. During the Trump I administration, I wrote repeatedly about the tragic relocation of the USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) to Kansas.   As I said, the Government Accountability Office confirmed my analysis. Why ...
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By Marion Nestle

American tragedy redux: USDA is relocating more programs out of the DC area

It’s deja vu all over again.

During the Trump I administration, I wrote repeatedly about the tragic relocation of the USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) to Kansas.  As I said, the Government Accountability Office confirmed my analysis.

Why tragic?  I don’t have anything against Kansas, but expecting long-time residents of the Washington, DC area to uproot their families to move there seemed designed for only one purpose: to gut the ERS of its experts and to force it to stop producing sophisticated—and honest—analyses of inconvenient food issues.

In this, the move succeeded admirably.  Many experts quit.  Some were rehired to the DC area, but as far as I can tell, the ERS has never recovered.  It continues to publish routine statistical data, but the analytic reports have stopped.  This is an enormous loss to my work in particular, but also to society.

Now the USDA is doing it again, and finished the job on ERS.

Last week, the USDA issued two press releases on the relocations:

I.  USDA Advances Reorganization and Restructuring of the Research, Education, and Economics Mission Area to Improve Efficiency and Better Serve American Farmers

This effort refocuses REE’s structure on mission delivery—streamlining operations, strengthening leadership accountability, and positioning resources closer to the agricultural communities USDA serves. The updated structure will be guided by five core principles: strengthening leadership accountability, reducing organizational complexity, ensuring consistency across agencies where appropriate, leveraging emerging tools and technologies, and aligning clearly with USDA’s priorities.

II.  USDA Announces Food Safety and Inspection Service Reorganization, Establishes National Food Safety Center in Iowa

This one says pretty much the same thing.

Let me translate what the USDA is really doing.

It is moving the hub of the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) to Urbandale, Iowa where it will establish a National Food Safety Center with about 200 employees relocated from Washington, DC (if they agree to move).  It also is relocating employees to Fort Collins, Colorado, and to a Science Center in Georgia (ditto).

Ostensibly, this is to bring FSIS closer to its constituents to strengthen “its ability to protect public health and ensure the safety of the nation’s food supply.”

In practice, the moves will gut the agency, destroy its expertise, and disable it for years to come.

That has to be the intent.

Add these to the 27,000 people who have already left USDA since Trump II, 37% of its staff.  Surely, some of those people helped get the agency’s work done.

Who will be hired to replace the people who choose not to relocate?  I’m guessing those who go along with the current administration’s ideological agenda.

As I said, tragedy.

The post American tragedy redux: USDA is relocating more programs out of the DC area appeared first on Food Politics by Marion Nestle

Now Available: What to Eat Now

My new book, What to Eat Now, is officially out!

It's both a field guide to food shopping in America and a reflection on how to eat well—and deliciously.

For more information and to order, click here.

You can explore the full archive of this (almost) daily blog at foodpolitics.comwhere you'll also find information about my books, articles, media interviews, upcoming lectures, favorite resources, and FAQs.


​​​​​​​

Marion Nestle

Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University, Emerita


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💻 tech & tiny creatures 🐸

April 2026 NewsletterHi read,April just flew by! I hope you all are getting outdoors a lot with your kids and enjoying the spring weather. ...