The battle for a cleaner food supply has begun, and Secretary Kennedy is on the front lines. Today we’ve released our strategic weapon—a ground-breaking white paper with a detailed plan to target and eradicate toxins, protect vital nutrients, and enforce unprecedented transparency. This is not a request; it’s a demand for a safer, healthier future for all Americans.
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THE TOPLINE
- ANH has launched a white paper that advocates for balanced reform of the GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) system, warning against eliminating the Self-GRAS pathway, which has enabled access to many safe, beneficial supplements and natural health products.
- The paper advocates for a science-based approach that works within the existing constitutional and legal frameworks and includes transparency and independent scrutiny.
- We must urge regulators to support reform that enhances safety without restricting health freedom, emphasizing that abolishing Self-GRAS would overwhelm the FDA and delay action on the many truly dangerous additives that persist in our food supply.
Today, April 10, we’re releasing a major new white paper that tackles a critical food safety issue: which additives or other ingredients we can add to foods or dietary supplements. This means reforming the GRAS (“generally recognized as safe”) system that was created in 1958 and substantially revised in 1997. Our message: we need reform—but not a scorched-earth approach that would wipe out access to safe, beneficial ingredients along with the harmful ones.
>>> Download the ANH GRAS Reform media kit, including the white paper
GRAS is a designation created in 1958 under the US Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. The system originally involved companies petitioning the FDA and additives and ingredients had to be affirmed following detailed evaluation. This system was originally meant to streamline approval for ingredients like salt, vinegar, and other staples with a long history of safe use.
However, resource constraints led to substantial amendments in 1997, allowing companies to self-affirm GRAS status, with a voluntary notification system to the FDA—so long as those substances are widely recognized by qualified experts as safe under their intended conditions of use.
Over the years, however, GRAS—particularly the ‘Self-GRAS’ pathway—has been exploited by some unscrupulous companies that add ingredients to food without adequate evidence of safety. We’ve all seen the lists of the chemical additives that are banned in Europe but permitted in the US. Yet the truth is that the majority of these dangerous additives, like food colorings and titanium dioxide, were approved by the FDA to be added to food.
The Self-GRAS pathway has also enabled innovation in supplements and natural health products, allowing them to enter the market without having to overcome unnecessary bureaucratic or regulatory hurdles. Simply put: many of the ingredients in supplements you rely on likely came to market through the Self-GRAS process.
The Call for Reform—and Why We’re Taking a Stand
Many health advocates and lawmakers have begun sounding the alarm, calling for sweeping changes to the GRAS system. Most recently, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. called on the FDA to explore eliminating the Self-GRAS pathway.
While we agree that the system is broken, total elimination of Self-GRAS would be a disaster for health-conscious consumers, the natural health industry, and even the FDA itself. That’s why our white paper lays out a clear, blueprint for balanced reform that:
- Prioritizes the removal of truly harmful ingredients from the market.
- Preserves access to safe, health-promoting ingredients used in supplements, functional foods, and natural products.
- Creates a GRAS Transparency Register, making all GRAS determinations public for review by independent experts, consumer groups, and researchers.
- Introduces a tiered, proportionate risk assessment model rooted in the Paracelsian, rather than the precautionary, principle—i.e., “the dose makes the poison”—so that low-risk ingredients aren’t treated the same as high-risk ones. Some of the most hazardous additives on the US market have been previously approved by the FDA (see our media pack).
- Avoids importing overly precautionary European-style policies that unnecessarily limit consumer access to beneficial nutrients and foods.
>>> Download the ANH GRAS Reform media kit, including the white paper
Reform Without Regression
We believe in protecting consumers from harmful food chemicals—but not at the expense of health freedom and innovation. As our white paper explains, abolishing Self-GRAS outright would overwhelm an already under-resourced FDA, which lacks the capacity to reassess the 10,000+ ingredients already on the market through this pathway. With the doorway to Self-GRAS closed, truly dangerous additives would remain on store shelves for years while the FDA goes through the process of evaluating the safety of thousands of additives in the food supply. That is not a workable solution.
That’s why ANH-USA is calling on regulators, lawmakers, and the health freedom community to support a smarter, more transparent approach to GRAS reform.
Why This Matters to You
This is a critical issue for consumers because, at its core, it’s about your right to access the ingredients you rely on to stay well—from probiotics and botanicals to functional food components and clean-label supplements. It’s about keeping corporate interests from hiding behind secrecy—and making sure real reform protects both safety and access.
We need your voice to help make this happen. Share our white paper broadly among your networks. Reform is coming—and we need to make sure it’s the right kind.
>>> Download the ANH GRAS Reform media kit, including the white paper
Knowledge is power! Please share this news story and the media pack link widely through your networks!
