RFK Jr. to Eliminate Exemption for Harmful Chemicals in Our Food

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy announced that the FDA is eliminating the exemption for harmful chemicals in our food.

Transcript

“Hi, I’m Robert F Kennedy Jr. I’m the Secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services.

“In the final months of the election, President Trump repeatedly called for removing toxins from our food supply. He added his voice to the millions of Maha moms who were touting the Make America healthy again agenda. The first step is radical transparency, because right now, not even the US government knows what’s in our food.

“In 1958 the government created a designation called ‘generally recognized as safe’ or GRAS so that we can make common ingredients like salt and baking soda exempt from testing.

“Today, it isn’t just salt and baking soda. Food companies and cooperative regulators have enlarged the GRAS exemption so that these companies can decide for themselves whether a substance is generally recognized as safe. No FDA approval is needed.

“European nations, on the other hand, require that a chemical be proven safe before it becomes a food ingredient. In our country, the GRAS standard means that every chemical is presumed safe until proven dangerous, and that proof might not happen until millions of Americans are sick with chronic disease.

“This mass experiment on the American population with GRAS has assured a catastrophe. We now have around 10,000 chemicals in our food. Europe has only 400. For example, titanium dioxide, potentially linked to DNA damage and cancer, is banned in the EU, but it’s in our children’s food.

“Potassium bromate, a suspected carcinogen banned in Europe and Japan. And you guessed it, it’s in our children’s bread.

“Food dyes, such as red dye 40 and yellow, five and six times with warning labels in Europe. They’re linked to behavioral issues in children, but in the US, they’re generally recognized as safe.

“I can’t really blame the food companies. They’re just doing what we’ve allowed them to get away with in a system that’s taken on a life of its own. We all agree now that it’s time to change the system, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.

“I am today directing the FDA commissioner to start the process of changing the rules to eliminate the self-affirming GRAS pathway for new ingredients. I’m also directing the FDA and NIH to ramp up post-market assessments of GRAS chemicals currently in our food so that we can rapidly identify the compounds that are making Americans so sick so that American consumers and regulators can make informed decisions.

“This issue isn’t going away. Moms aren’t going to return to wanting chemicals in our food that are banned in other developed countries. Even industry knows that. We have to change. So I promise you, I’m going to work with all parties; the company is the moms, the scientists, the consumer advocates to make American food the healthiest in the world, the way that it was when I was a child.”

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