Dive Brief:
- The FDA is deliberating whether to ban the use of seven food additives due to possibly being carcinogenic to humans or other animals.
- The consideration comes at the request of the Natural Resources Defense Council and others, who filed a petition regarding the additives.
- "If we determine new data are available that establish these food additives induce cancer, then FDA will amend (its regulations) to no longer provide for their use," the FDA said in a Federal Register notice published Jan. 4.
Dive Insight:
According to the petition, the FDA approved these additives in 1964 without setting numerical limits for how much could be used in food and beverage products. The next year, the Flavor and Extracts Manufacturers Association (FEMA), an official testing organization for food and beverage flavorings, added the substances to their GRAS list, which FEMA recently published online as the FEMA Flavor Ingredient Library.
However, since 1958, federal law has contended that no additive can be deemed safe if studies find that the additive induces cancer in humans or animals. These seven substances have been classified as possibly carcinogenic to humans or worse by various organizations, including WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the National Toxicology Program (NTP), which coordinates testing with the Department of Health and Human Services, and the state of California.
One of these targeted additives, styrene, has recently been removed from FEMA's GRAS list because "there is little evidence that (it is) used for the technical effect of flavoring," according to the organization's report.
Depending on the additive and products it's used for, these bans, if passed, could impact manufacturers by causing a ripple of product reformulations already common in the industry over the past year. Much of product reformulation has centered on the removal of artificial ingredients. But when the FDA called for the removal of trans fats earlier this year, manufacturers were given a three-year deadline to take out the substance from their products. Manufacturers have petitioned for limited use. PHOs were also addressed in the recently passed omnibus spending bill.