The federal government publishes information about links between nutrients and disease risk. But when consumers are standing in a store or shopping online, the government blocks you from reading the same information on supplement or food labels. ANH-USA is asking a federal court to put an end to this information blackout. Donate now to support our litigation and advocacy efforts.

THE TOPLINE

• ANH-USA and four supplement companies are asking a federal court to overturn FDA’s suppression of 114 nutrient health claims drawn from federal agencies’ own published statements.
• The challenge argues that FDA has unlawfully restricted a pathway Congress created for sharing government-backed health information on product labels.
• ANH advocates truthful claims with appropriate qualifications so consumers can weigh the evidence when choosing supplements.

ANH Takes the Fight to Court

ANH-USA is fighting for the freedom to share truthful, science-backed information about the benefits of vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients. This censorship reflects a deeper failure in our healthcare system: even as preventable chronic diseases take an enormous toll, the government restricts information that could help Americans protect their health. A system that prioritizes pharmaceutical treatment while blocking information about nutritional approaches to prevention has its priorities backward. Our latest court action aims to change that.

On September 16, ANH-USA and four dietary supplement companies filed a motion for summary judgment in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The motion asks the judge to rule that FDA unlawfully blocked 114 nutrient-disease risk-reduction claims derived from statements published by federal health agencies.

These include statements from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The motion is the latest development in ANH-USA’s effort to open a pathway Congress created in the Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act of 1997. That law allows certain health claims based on “authoritative statements” from qualified federal scientific bodies to be used after FDA is notified. It was meant to offer an alternative to the agency’s standard pre-approval process.

ANH-USA argues that FDA has restricted that notification pathway by imposing requirements Congress never enacted.

The court has not yet ruled on the motion.

Information Where It Matters Most

This case is not simply about what supplement companies may print on a label. It is about whether consumers can access useful, scientifically grounded information when they are making decisions about their health.

A shopper might be able to find a government webpage discussing a nutrient’s relationship to cardiovascular health, bone health, or metabolic function. But that shopper may never know to search for it. Product labels are where people compare options and decide what may fit their individual health goals.

Preventing relevant information from appearing at that point does not create informed consumers. It leaves them less informed.

That does not mean every nutrient claim should be presented as conclusive. Evidence has different strengths, and responsible claims should reflect those limitations. ANH-USA told FDA it would accept reasonable, accurate, and unbiased qualifying language where needed. Yet the FDA, so far, seems determined to revert to censorship rather than providing consumers with context to make decisions for themselves.

A First Amendment Question

The case also raises a fundamental free-speech issue: Can FDA completely suppress a potentially truthful health claim when a clear disclaimer could prevent consumers from being misled?

In Pearson v. Shalala, the D.C. Circuit concluded that appropriately worded disclaimers may be a less restrictive alternative to prohibiting dietary-supplement health claims outright.

ANH-USA also argues that the Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo strengthens the challenge. That ruling curtailed the ability of federal agencies to interpret ambiguous statutes by reaffirming that courts must independently determine what the law means.

Restoring The Link Between Knowledge and Choice

ANH-USA’s original petition identified 118 government-backed nutrient claims. After FDA rejected that effort in December 2025, ANH-USA went to court. The current motion challenges the suppression of 114 claims.

Consumers cannot take greater responsibility for their health while regulators keep potentially useful information out of sight. People deserve truthful claims, appropriate qualifications, and the freedom to decide what the evidence means for themselves and their families.

ANH-USA will continue fighting to restore that freedom and keep you informed as the court considers this landmark challenge.

We Need Your Help to Protect Freedom of Speech in Health

Please donate now to support our litigation and advocacy work. This fight is powered entirely by people like you, and we can only keep pushing back against FDA censorship with your support.

The post If NIH Can Say It, Why Can’t Supplement Labels? first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

Patients relying on natural thyroid therapies face renewed uncertainty as the agency doubles down on its impending ban. Action Alert!

Listen to the audio version of this article:

THE TOPLINE

• The FDA’s March announcement makes clear that natural desiccated thyroid (NDT) is not eligible for compounding, escalating the threat to patient access.
• The agency plans to issue formal compliance guidance by August 2026, giving a clearer timeline for enforcement.
• The FDA’s reasoning is scientifically and legally inconsistent, and is advancing a strategy to protect access through regulatory, legal, and legislative pathways.

In a late-March statement, the FDA doubled down on its plans to restrict access to natural thyroid treatments. This includes commercial products like Armour Thyroid as well as compounded NDT medicines. The move is a blatant betrayal of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement that will leave millions of patients who rely on NDT in the lurch.

The FDA’s position is that NDT products are biologics, not drugs, under the Public Health Service Act, and thus require an approved Biologics License Application (BLA); no commercial NDT products are currently marketed under an approved BLA. By law, biologics cannot be compounded by traditional compounding pharmacies. The FDA has indicated it intends to issue formal compliance guidance by August 2026.

We must band together to protect patient access to compounded NDT.

A Direct Threat to Compounded Care

As we noted last year, FDA Commissioner Makary provided positive signals for FDA approval of a commercial NDT product, pending clinical trial results.

But even if some commercial NDT products eventually win FDA approval, compounded thyroid therapies are still on the chopping block. For many patients, compounded NDT is essential. Thyroid disorders are highly individualized, and patients often require customized dosing, specific T3/T4 ratios, and/or alternative delivery forms. These needs cannot be met by one-size-fits-all, mass-produced drugs—should they ever get approved.

If the FDA’s position stands, practitioners will lose the ability to tailor care, and patients who do not respond well to synthetic drugs will be left without viable options.

FDA’s Biologics Argument—And a Key Inconsistency

The FDA’s classification of NDT as a biologic rests in part on the presence of thyroglobulin, a protein found in animal thyroid tissue used to make NDT. But this argument raises serious questions.

In desiccated thyroid products, thyroglobulin is an inactive component. The primary therapeutic agents, typically standardized in specific ratios, are actually the thyroid hormones thyroxine (T4) and tri-iodothyronine (T3). Natural porcine or bovine NDT typically also contain small amounts of monoiodothyronine (T1), diiodothyronine (T2) and traces of reverse T3.

The FDA’s own guidance has previously acknowledged that a product containing a protein only as an inactive ingredient is not considered a “protein” for purposes of biologic classification. By asserting that the mere presence of thyroglobulin makes NDT a biologic, the agency is departing from its own precedent. These and other arguments were raised in a Citizen Petition filed by the Alliance for Pharmacy Compounding, a trade group for compounding pharmacists.

ANH-USA’s Strategy

In response to this dire threat to patient autonomy, ANH-USA has developed a comprehensive advocacy strategy outlined in a position paper we released in September 2025. The basic contours of the plan are as follows:

Short-term: Press the FDA and HHS to reclassify NDT as a drug, restoring legal pathways for compounding.

Medium-term: Secure enforcement discretion for high-quality, GMP-manufactured NDT products.

Long-term: Advance federal legislation creating a durable carveout to protect both compounded and commercial thyroid therapies.

We believe this plan provides the best chance to retain access to compounded NDT.

The Bigger Picture

The threat to compounded thyroid treatments is part and parcel of a broader regulatory trend in which the FDA increasingly applies drug (or biologic) frameworks to natural and individualized therapies, regardless of their long history of safe use.

The result is a system that limits physician flexibility, reduces patient choice, and favors standardized, patentable products.

For patients with individualized needs, these constraints can have real and lasting health consequences.

What Comes Next

With formal FDA guidance expected by August 2026, the window to influence policy is narrowing.

With your help, ANH-USA will continue to apply grassroots pressure on decision-makers to make compounded NDT available to patients.

Action Alert!

The post FDA’s Anti-MAHA Stance on Natural Thyroid first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

America cannot drug its way out of the chronic disease epidemic. The crisis is costing lives, shortening healthy lifespan, draining family and public finances, and exposing the failure of a system built primarily around late-stage intervention.

The Arizona Statement is a roadmap for change—restoring truthful health information, removing barriers to prevention, expanding access to lower-risk personalized options, and modernizing regulation so health can be built, not merely managed after it is lost.

>>> Read the Press Release

Rob Verkerk Ph.D.

Executive & Scientific Director

“Federal and state governments censor truthful health information, prevent the exercise of independent clinical judgment, and block safe, effective, nutrition- and nature-based interventions. They advance the economic interests of Big Pharma and Big Food at the expense of individual health. The Arizona Statement charts a course to restore freedom of informed choice, professional autonomy, and scientific integrity. We call on citizens, practitioners, innovators, and leaders to join us in restoring competition and freedom of informed choice.”

Jonathan W. Emord, Esq.

ANH-USA General Counsel

"The United States spends more per capita on health care than any other nation on Earth. Despite that, Americans have among the worst health outcomes in the industrialized world. The barriers that impede efforts to improve this situation are imposed by government in service to special interests. If the reforms discussed in the Arizona Statement are achieved, the United States will experience a remarkable transformation. Americans will live healthier, longer, and more productive lives for the betterment of each and for the welfare of the nation."

The post Arizona Statement first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

New federal loan caps and regulatory changes could quietly sideline naturopathic doctors—shrinking healthcare choice at a time when Americans are demanding more options. Action Alert!

THE TOPLINE

• The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) caps federal loans at $100,000 for graduate degrees and $200,000 for professional degrees—but a proposed Department of Education rule excludes naturopathic doctors (NDs) from the “professional degree” category.
• Naturopathic medicine has been recognized by the United States Department of Education as a First Professional Degree since 1999, yet NDs could now lose access to higher federal loan limits.
• With four-year ND programs costing over $400,000 total and more than 80% of students relying on federal loans, reduced access threatens to shrink the workforce and limit patient choice.

Policy changes resulting from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) and the subsequent Department of Education’s proposed rule to implement aspects of the OBBBA could quietly choke off the pipeline of integrative health professionals, especially naturopathic doctors (NDs), that serve millions of patients nationwide. Not quite so beautiful.

The OBBBA caps federal loans at $100,000 for “graduate” degrees and $200,000 for “professional” degrees. The bill uses the existing statutory definition of “professional” degree, which defines the term broadly: the list of degrees “includes but is not limited to” things like Pharm. D’s, D.D.S’s, M.D.’s, etc. The Department of Education’s proposed rule, however, explicitly excludes NDs from the definition of a “professional” degree.

According to the Association of Accredited Naturopathic Medical Colleges, naturopathic medicine has been recognized by the US Department of Education as a First Professional Degree since 1999.

A four-year naturopathic degree can cost over $400,000—and more than 80% of students rely on federal loans. Schools are already seeing sharp drops in applicants due to decreased federal funding.

It boils down to this: Slashing loan access will shrink the workforce. When you shrink the workforce, patients lose options.

NDs complete four-year doctoral programs with extensive clinical training. Many serve as primary care providers. They focus on nutrition, lifestyle, environmental health, and prevention—the very root causes driving chronic disease.

Reacting to these developments, Nasha Winters, ND, who recently joined ANH-USA’s Board of Directors, told us:

“Federal student loans made it possible for me to pursue my naturopathic medical education. Without them, I would not have had access to this training. I did not come from a background with the financial means to pay for medical school out of pocket, and loans were the bridge that allowed me to follow what has become my life’s purpose.”

(pictured left: Nasha Winters, ND, naturopath, integrative oncology specialist, and new ANH-USA Board member.)

“That said,” she continued, “the system is not without its flaws. It took me nearly twenty years to repay my loans, even with a hugely successful career, and I have seen many colleagues struggle with the financial burden of repayment. Eliminating loan access altogether, however, risks creating an even bigger problem. It could make naturopathic medical education accessible only to those with independent wealth, shutting out talented and passionate students who simply lack the resources.

“We should absolutely be discussing reforms to ensure students are not saddled with unsustainable debt,” she concluded. “But removing access entirely may unintentionally undermine the future of naturopathic medical education and the physicians it trains.”

At a time when Americans are demanding broader healthcare choices, federal policy is moving in the opposite direction.

Limiting student loan access for integrative professions raises barriers and shrinks patient choice.

Action Alert! Submit a comment to the federal docket on the Department of Education’s proposed rule.

The post Naturopathic Docs on the Chopping Block first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

When safety goes too far, we risk losing the very ingredients that keep us healthy—balance, not blanket bans, is the real solution. Action Alert!

By Rob Verkerk, Ph.D., Jonathan Emord, J.D., and Michael Ames-Sikora

Listen to the audio version of this article:

THE TOPLINE

• Sweeping changes to the GRAS system could unintentionally ban safe, beneficial nutrients and foods, harming public access to health-supporting ingredients.
• The precautionary principle, while well-meaning, often ignores the complexity of nutrition and dose-dependent effects, leading to overregulation and reduced consumer choice.
• A nuanced reform—like the one proposed in our white paper—can enhance safety and transparency without sacrificing innovation or legality.

On March 10, 2025, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. directed the FDA to explore eliminating the self-affirmed GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) pathway. In an exclusive interview with Face the Nation just a week ago, Secretary Kennedy called GRAS the “biggest villain” in America’s uniquely synthetic additive-rich food supply, and argues that eliminating exposure to synthetic additives like certain food dyes that have been banned in Europe would be an important step in Making America Healthy Again (MAHA).

Better Safe Than Sorry?

Kennedy’s goal is clearly well intended: to protect Americans from potential harm caused by food additives that haven’t gone through formal FDA approval. The “precautionary principle,” as used in the European Union, has been cited as a guiding reason for this reform: “keep it out until you prove [the ingredient] is safe.”

On the face of it, it all sounds entirely reasonable. After all, who wouldn’t want us all to be safe when it comes to our food? But like many things in public policy, the devil is in the details—and the precautionary principle, while well-meaning, often does more harm than good, especially when applied to foods and nutrients, which are also caught by GRAS.

The precautionary principle, in essence, says: “When there’s a possibility that harm may arise, even if we’re not completely sure it will happen, we should take action to prevent it.” In simpler terms, the principle is about being better safe than sorry. We buy smoke alarms and life insurance; we wear seatbelts—even though the chances of being involved in an accident are relatively small.

But when it comes to public policy relating to foods, ingredients in foods, and dietary supplements, adopting the precautionary principle can deny us health enhancing, and even lifesaving, options, especially when the “risk” comes from foods and supplements that also offer health and even therapeutic benefits that are demonstrated scientifically.

>>> Download the ANH GRAS Reform media kit, including the white paper

That is because many foods and supplements contain ingredients that at certain levels are helpful, even essential, but at other levels can create injury, notably for a small subset of the population that is more sensitive. Foods and supplements may also contain compounds or elements that may be potentially detrimental or antagonistic to certain aspects of health, while simultaneously containing a wide range of other compounds or elements that are clearly beneficial to health. That is the paradox of nutrition. Nutrition is so much more than simply a carrier of energy (calories) to the body. Food is a form of biological information. Even a simple, wholesome meal delivers many thousands of discrete chemical substances to the body, many of which have no direct role in energy metabolism. Some of these, especially if isolated and delivered in high concentrations, and in large amounts, may indeed induce harm. But at normal levels of intake, among the entourage of other chemistries with which they are typically associated in a healthy diet, they ‘talk’ to a myriad of metabolic, neurotransmitter, and endocrine pathways, in a language our body recognizes genetically and epigenetically, courtesy of the experience of our ancestors over millennia. What’s more, we’re increasingly learning that some of these potentially harmful substances can deliver benefits via a mechanism known as hormesis.    

That’s all very well, you say—but what has this got to do with the nasty additives and dyes Secretary Kennedy wants to remove from the US food supply? Rather a lot, as it happens. Because if the FDA follows through with Secretary Kennedy’s suggestion, several thousand nutrients, plant compounds, and other substances that have found their way into functional foods, dietary supplements, and medical foods via the self-affirmed GRAS process will be caught in the crossfire. That’s the very collateral damage we aimed to avoid in the approach we propose in our white paper which is now in the offices of both Secretary Kennedy and Commissioner Makary.

The Real Risk: Losing Access to Healthy Choices

The GRAS system has been around since 1958. It was created so that substances already known to be safe in the food supply wouldn’t get caught up in endless government red tape. Over time, it has also allowed food and supplement companies to bring innovative, health-promoting ingredients to market quickly, benefiting both consumers and public health. (For more background, read our previous article and see our white paper that proposes a way forward that prevents the proverbial baby being thrown out with the bathwater).

Of course, no system is perfect. We should absolutely guard against bad actors who sneak unsafe or entirely new, untested, bioengineered ingredients into our food. But the solution isn’t to apply a blanket “precautionary” rule that assumes risk without fully considering the benefits or the consequences of eliminating whole foods, ingredients contained therein, or specific supplements.

Take vitamin D, for example. High levels might pose a risk for a small number of people. But restricting those levels for everyone would rob the wider population of well-established benefits of higher vitamin D intake, like stronger bones and a reduced risk of certain cancers. Oily fish is another case in point: yes, many sources contain trace amounts of heavy metals, but its omega-3 content offers powerful heart and brain health benefits. Should we ban fish, or oily fish because it tends to accumulate greater levels of toxic metals?

This is where the precautionary principle falls apart.

>>> Download the ANH GRAS Reform media kit, including the white paper

One-Sided Thinking Leads to Lopsided Policy

According to legal scholar Cass Sunstein (whose critiques are shared by many others in the academic community) the precautionary principle only seems useful when we focus on one part of the problem and ignore everything else. When we zero in on a possible risk, it’s easy to miss the bigger picture of overall benefit. If we remove the self-GRAS pathway to protect against the risk of unsafe food ingredients, the unintended consequence is that we lose access to an array of helpful foodstuffs, nutrients, ingredients, and naturally derived substances.

Real-world systems are complex. Trying to remove every possible risk from our food supply is not only impossible—it’s counterproductive. It could mean removing safe ingredients simply because they might cause harm at very high doses, or because a small group of people (like those with allergies) react negatively to something most people tolerate well. If we followed that logic to the extreme, we’d have to ban dairy, wheat, nuts, and fish. How do we manage risk in these cases? We use warning or allergen labeling. Restricting certain ingredients could also lead the food industry to turn to even more dangerous alternatives. We saw this happen when bisphenol-A (BPA) was phased out and replaced with bisphenol-S (BPS), which has been linked to an array of negative health effects even though products using it are marketed as “BPA-free.”

Consequently, because political appointees are loathe to ban, well, everything, because almost everything poses a risk at some level of ingestion, the precautionary principle becomes, as it has in Europe, a veil for achieving any political end. It invites biased enforcement.

And let’s not forget that scientific certainty is always evolving. If we demand proof beyond all doubt before allowing something to be sold, we’ll end up denying people access to ingredients that could improve their health today—all in the name of avoiding a hypothetical risk tomorrow.

John Graham, policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, put it succinctly in a recent article focusing on lessons from the American and European experience:

Given that the dynamics of science are not predictable, it is important to consider the dangers of excessive precaution. One of those is the threat to technological innovation. Imagine it is 1850 and the following version of the precautionary principle is adopted: No innovation shall be approved for use until it is proven safe, with the burden of proving safety placed on the technologist. Under this system, what would have happened to electricity, the internal combustion engine, plastics, pharmaceuticals, the Internet, the cell phone and so forth? By its very nature, technological innovation occurs through a process of trial-and-error and refinement, and this process could be disrupted by an inflexible version of the precautionary principle.

What We Need Is Balance, Not Fear

The goal of food regulation should be simple: protect the public from real harm while still allowing access to benefits. That means evaluating ingredients based on whether they pose a significant or unreasonable risk at levels people actually consume—not based on worst-case scenarios or speculative data.

That, in fact, is the law. The Food Drug and Cosmetic Act nowhere mentions, let alone authorizes, a drastic change in policy that would make the precautionary principle the governing rule over all foods and dietary supplements. Indeed, in the adulteration provisions of the Act pertaining to dietary ingredients and supplements, for example, 21 USC 342(f), FDA is required to evaluate whether a dietary ingredient under labeled conditions for use or common use, in the absence of labeling, presents a “significant or unreasonable risk of illness or injury.” That standard is based on the Paracelsian principle. The Paracelsian principle stands for the proposition that dose determines toxicity (“the dose makes the poison”). It stands on the basic recognition (ignored in the context of the precautionary principle) that everything is toxic at some dose level, so the distinguishing principle must be based on dose. Ignoring that essential principle, advocates of precaution end up without a true distinguishing principle, having to rely on political bias or prejudice to drive out of the market substances declared toxic at some dose level (a truism for every substance and, thus, not a basis for distinction).

We also need to ask ourselves: Is it the system that’s broken, or the agency that has ultimate oversight? If all the nasties in the food supply had exclusively found their way into the market via the ‘Self-GRAS’ pathway, that would be a compelling reason to disband Self-GRAS. But that’s just not the case. Take Yellow #5 or tartrazine, associated with ADHD in children. Or Blue #1. These were both approved for use by the FDA during the flower power era, in 1969, when hyperactive kids were thought to be nothing more than more ebullient than the norm. Another example is methyl paraben, which was last assessed in 1972, yet has more recently been found to be an endocrine disrupting chemical.  

We should absolutely reform the GRAS system to ensure transparency and prevent abuse. But we also need to change the way assessments are carried out and prioritized, another central theme of our white paper. But let’s not deny consumers sovereignty and freedom of choice in the process. A smarter approach would keep what works, fix what doesn’t, and stay focused on the actual risks that matter. These are the kinds of solutions we outline in our new white paper, where we put forward a system that prioritizes transparency and the removal of truly dangerous ingredients while avoiding unnecessary regulatory hurdles for safe and healthy ingredients.

Secretary Kennedy has long been a passionate advocate for healthier food. That’s a good thing. But if we adopt the precautionary principle (despite its absence in law), we will end up with a food system that’s technically “safer”—but also less healthy, less diverse, and less responsive to consumer needs. But that’s not all. We will also violate the law.

>>> Download the ANH GRAS Reform media kit, including the white paper

Falling Foul of Major Questions Doctrine

The Supreme Court has ruled that federal agencies lack the delegated authority to change the law fundamentally such that it imposes significant costs and burdens on the regulated class without an act of Congress. That rule, known as the “major questions doctrine” applies in this instance. A move so sweeping as to make the precautionary principle the rule of governance over all foods, including functional foods, medical foods, and dietary supplements, would cause a significant number of vital foods and dietary ingredients to be removed from the market, as has happened in Europe. Indeed, such a move would be akin to a Europeanization of the American marketplace, placing bureaucrats in charge of food and dietary supplement manufacturing choices as never before and removing options at the point of sale regularly relied upon by health-conscious consumers to improve health, or protect themselves from, or fend off, disease.

Sometimes, it seems, playing it too safe presents the biggest risk of all.

Editor’s note: We’ve sent this op-ed to officials at HHS and the FDA. Now we need your help to get this across to lawmakers across the country. Take action by using the form below to send this message to your elected officials.

The post The Precautionary Trap: Safety Extremism Is Itself Harmful first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

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.

Listen to the audio version of this article:

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!

The post ANH Leads Charge to Fix America’s Toxic Food Problem first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

Apeel’s organic produce coatings may seem harmless, but hidden synthetic ingredients and transparency issues raise serious concerns about the erosion of true organic standards.

Listen to the audio version of this article:

THE TOPLINE

• Apeel Sciences, a company partnered with the Gates Foundation, produces coatings like Organipeel for fruits and vegetables to reduce spoilage.
• The lack of clear labeling of products that are covered with these products prevents consumers from knowing exactly what is on their food, particularly for those concerned with potential allergens or synthetic substances.
• The use of substances like glycerides, permitted under loopholes, is part of a broader trend of Big Food weakening organic regulations. This threatens the integrity of the organic label, which was originally meant to ensure transparency and natural, non-chemical farming and food production methods.

When you see the word “organic” on your food, you might expect your food to be grown in harmony with nature, free of synthetic chemicals, additives, and unnecessary processing. Right? Well, no longer. The rise of corporate interests in the organic food industry threatens to dilute the very essence of organic standards. Big Food is increasingly finding ways to capitalize on the organic label without adhering to the principles that make organic agriculture a healthier, more sustainable option. One such example is the use of products like Apeel’s Organipeel, which raises serious questions about transparency and the integrity of organic labeling.

What is Apeel and its Organipeel Product?

Apeel Sciences is a company that’s partnered with the Gates Foundation that produces coatings, like Organipeel and Edipeel, which are applied to fruits and vegetables to slow down spoilage. These coatings are derived primarily from plant oils. While the goal—reducing food waste—may seem commendable, the methods and ingredients used raise significant concerns, particularly when it comes to organic produce. It also begs other questions: how far should we go to extend the lifespan of vegetables and fruits? Should we be trying to cheat Nature’s sell by dates?

Organipeel, intended for use on organic produce, is registered with the EPA under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act as a pesticide, with citric acid listed as its active ingredient. The so-called “inert” ingredients include sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) and mono- and diglycerides. It’s the latter that should raise red flags for consumers, especially those trying to adhere to a truly organic diet.

The Hidden Ingredients in Apeel’s Coatings

The majority of Organipeel’s ingredients are monoglycerides and diglycerides—fatty acids commonly found in ultra-processed foods like candy, ice cream, and gum. While these substances are not unusual in processed foods, they are certainly not something you expect to find on fresh fruits and vegetables, especially those labeled as organic.

The fatty acids used in these coatings are extracted from grapeseed oil through a process that, according to their own documents, involves catalysts and solvents. Note that the grapeseed oil used by Apeel has already gone through an extraction process, using a procedure involving high temperatures and chemicals. Although the company claims that solvents are no longer used in their current manufacturing process, there is still no requirement for this level of transparency on the label of the food you’re buying.

Organic Loopholes

The glycerides that make up the bulk of Apeel’s product are on a list of synthetic substances allowed in organic production, but only for the purpose of “drum drying of foods”—not as a coating. A simple reading of this regulation suggests that Organipeel should not be allowed for this use on organic produce at all. But nonetheless, this highlights a longstanding trend we’ve been highlighting almost since the inception of the USDA’s organic program: the undermining of real organic standards by Big Food.

Consider the following:

• Hydroponically grown (soil-less) food is now allowed to be labeled organic, even though enhancing soil biological activity is a hallmark of organic agriculture.
• Half of all organic eggs and organic milk come from factory farms that make a mockery of real, regenerative organic practices.
• Organic poultry standards allow factory farms to slap the organic label on their products, deceiving consumers who are trying to make informed decisions.

Transparency: What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You

The lack of labeling for edible coatings is another major concern. Consumers have the right to know exactly what they’re feeding their families, especially when it comes to potential allergens or hidden synthetic ingredients. While Apeel claims that its coatings are free of all major allergens, the proprietary nature of their formulation makes it impossible to verify the safety of these coatings for sensitive individuals.

The presence of hidden ingredients in so-called organic products threatens the integrity of the entire organic movement, which was built on transparency and the rejection of unnecessary chemicals. Consumers deserve better.

The Bigger Picture: The Erosion of Organic Standards

Apeel’s Organipeel is just one example of how Big Food and corporate interests are finding ways to sidestep organic principles while still profiting from the organic label. By allowing non-organic substances like mono- and diglycerides on organic produce, we risk watering down the meaning of organic to the point that it no longer reflects a cleaner, healthier alternative.

We must protect the organic movement from becoming yet another marketing term co-opted by corporate interests. True organic integrity means adhering to farming and food production practices that nourish both people and the planet—not hiding behind coatings and synthetic chemicals.

The time has come for all of us to push back against the industrialization of organic foods and reclaim the purity and transparency that made organic such a desirable option in the first place. Consumers deserve nothing less.

The post Protecting Organic Integrity: A Closer Look at Apeel and Its Coatings first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

Reach out to Congress with a simple message: we need to stop poisoning our children. Action Alert!

Listen to the audio version of this article:

THE TOPLINE

• American children are regularly exposed to dangerous toxins, such as glyphosate, heavy metals, and PFAS in their school meals, leading to proven and serious health risks like cancer, neurotoxicity, and liver disease.
• ANH-USA and coalition partners have urged the EPA to address the dangers of glyphosate, highlighting the agency’s failure to consider the full toxicity of pesticide formulations and their harmful impact on human and environmental health.
• The Safe School Meals Act of 2024, introduced by Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ), aims to limit these toxins in school meals by banning glyphosate, PFAS, and harmful packaging materials, taking a critical step toward protecting children’s health.

Every day, millions of American children are exposed to harmful toxins in their school lunches — toxins that have been linked to cancer, neurological damage, liver disease, and more. From glyphosate to heavy metals and PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as ‘forever chemicals’), these contaminants are showing up in the very food that’s meant to nourish our kids. The time has come to address this crisis — and a new bill could finally help turn the tide.

A delegation from ANH-USA, Moms Across America, the Organic Consumers Association, and others met with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Washington, D.C. earlier this week, urging regulators to take immediate action to protect American children from the negative health effects of toxins in our food. ANH Founder Rob Verkerk, PhD joined Zen Honeycutt of Moms Across America, Kelly Ryerson of Glyphosatefacts.com, Alexis Baden-Mayer of the Organic Consumers Association, and Ruth Westreich of the Westreich Foundation to provide scientific evidence and insights on how escalating amounts of glyphosate and other toxins are damaging the guts, brains, metabolism and immune systems of children, while poisoning the soil and foods they consume.

While EPA staff listened diligently to the evidence while taking copious notes on the accumulating evidence incriminating glyphosate, the truth is that the agency’s track record on glyphosate is abysmal. The most important actions taken by the EPA have been to keep glyphosate on the market and to maintain that there is “insufficient evidence” linking glyphosate to “any human diseases.”

Pictured from left to right: Zen Honeycutt (Moms Across America), Rob Verkerk (ANH), Ruth Westreich (Westreich Foundation), Kelly Ryerson (Glyphosatefacts.com), and Alexis Baden-Mayer (Organic Consumers Association)

Such delegations and briefings might appear futile on the surface, but they stand as key markers in the sand in any future legal proceedings because the agency can not then claim ignorance of the evidence. Ultimately, this issue must be taken out of the agency’s hands.

The Hidden Dangers in Your Child’s Lunch

While glyphosate is widely known to be the world’s most widely used weedkiller that protects crops from invasive weeds, few still recognize that the highest levels of residue comes from its common use as a crop desiccant — a chemical sprayed on crops just before harvest to make them dry out more evenly. Glyphosate residues on crops have had no capacity to be broken down by soil microbes and end up in disturbingly high concentrations in your breakfast, in your child’s school lunch, and everywhere else in between.

Back in 2018, ANH-USA brought attention to this alarming issue when we published test results showing how much glyphosate was present in common breakfast foods, including cereals. But glyphosate is just the beginning of the problem. Recent tests from Moms Across America found shocking levels of contamination in school lunches, including heavy metals, pesticides, and even veterinary drugs. Some of these heavy metal levels were found to be 6,293 times higher than the EPA’s limits for drinking water!

The presence of these toxins in our children’s food should be unacceptable to everyone. How can we expect our kids to thrive when we’re allowing them to be poisoned, meal after meal?

The Many Dangers of Glyphosate

ANH-USA, along with our coalition partners, has been calling for a ban on glyphosate for years. This toxic herbicide has been linked to a wide range of devastating health effects, including cancer, neurotoxicity, liver disease, and hormone disruption. And the problem is worse than the EPA is letting on. The agency has consistently refused to look at the whole formulation of pesticides, focusing only on the toxicity of the active ingredient itself. Research has shown that the so-called “inert” ingredients added to pesticides can make them up to 1,000 times more toxic than just the active ingredient alone.

It’s not just human health that’s affected either. Scientific research, presented by ANH Founder Rob Verkerk, PhD and other experts, showed that glyphosate disrupts soil microbial communities as well as the beneficial bacteria in the human gut, contributing to a wide range of health and ecological problems.

A Step in the Right Direction: The Safe School Meals Act of 2024

But there’s some good news to report! Lawmakers are starting to take this issue seriously. Just a few days ago, Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) introduced the Safe School Meals Act of 2024, which aims to protect our children from these harmful substances. This critical piece of legislation would:

• Direct the EPA to set limits for heavy metals in school meals.
• Ban glyphosate and other pesticide residues in school meals.
• Ban PFAS, phthalates, and bisphenols (such as BPA) from packaging in school meals.
• Direct the FDA to reevaluate the use of artificial food dyes and other harmful additives in school meals.

While a full ban on glyphosate and PFAS is what’s ultimately needed to get to the root of the problem, this bill is an essential step in the right direction. It would, at the very least, establish meaningful safeguards for our children’s health, reducing their exposure to some of the most dangerous toxins found in their food.

It’s Time to Clean Up Our Kids’ Plates

Protecting our kids should not be a partisan issue. Whether you’re a parent, teacher, or simply someone who cares about the future of this country, you should be concerned about the toxic burden we’re placing on the next generation. Congress must pass the Safe School Meals Act of 2024 to ensure our children are not being poisoned every time they sit down for lunch.

If we truly want our kids to flourish — to grow, learn, and achieve their full potential — we must clean up the food they eat. Congress must take this bill seriously and pass it without delay.

Action Alert! Write to Congress and tell them to support the Safe School Meals Act of 2024. Please send your message immediately.

The post Congress: Get Those Toxins Out of Our Kids’ School Meals first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

After a disappointing Supreme Court outcome on June 26, in which legal standing was refused so that the grounds of a landmark free speech on social media case could be ignored, the government is back to business as usual in colluding with Big Tech to censor us. Action Alert!

THE TOPLINE

• The FBI and Justice Department are resuming efforts to work with social media companies to censor content, particularly regarding election integrity and potential foreign influence.
• The FDA’s “Rumor Control” page is designed to combat health misinformation but selectively presents information about vaccines and homeopathic medicines, omitting potential adverse effects and dismissing alternative treatments.
• A “soft” form of authoritarianism is emerging, using psychological manipulation and censorship to enforce conformity in public health matters. It’s essential to oppose these efforts to protect free speech and diverse viewpoints.

Did you think things like ‘mind control’ and the ‘thought police’ were the stuff of dystopian novels? Well, think again, and look what’s going on around us. Powerful special interests, with the help of governments and academic institutions, are trying to build a new world order where, as far as health is concerned, it’s one-size-fits-all medicine, and if you speak out about it, you put your reputation and livelihood in jeopardy.

Information that could improve your health, even save your life, is being wiped by content moderators or shadowbanned—manipulated by algorithms so it doesn’t appear at the top of searches or suggested content. This only stands to get much worse, unless we do something about it.

We recently reported on the outcome of the landmark First Amendment case at the Supreme Court. That case, Murthy v. Missouri, brought to light first-hand evidence that the White House and US Surgeon General’s office bullied or at least coerced social media platforms into censoring content they didn’t like, even if it was true. In deciding the case, the Supreme Court set aside the censorship question and tossed out the case, ruling that the plaintiffs did not have proper standing.

The ruling in Murthy was dated June 26, 2024. Just a few weeks later, on July 12^th, a Justice Department memo openly states that the FBI will resume colluding with Big Tech to censor Americans. The memo states that the “FBI will resume regular meetings in the coming weeks with social media companies to brief and discuss potential [foreign malign influence] threats involving the companies’ platforms.”

As we approach November, “election integrity” is of course the current focus, but what this action tells us is that the government’s apparatus for censoring content is back up and running. After a brief interlude before the Murthy case was reversed, it is now ready to be deployed against any content the censors deem too dangerous for you to be exposed to. And bet your bottom dollar health will be firmly in cross-hairs. The misinformation war, as shown by the work of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab, reported on by our colleagues at ANH International, is focused on three principal areas; politics/elections, health (especially targeting vaccine dissent), and climate change.

Nor are federal agencies resting on their laurels. The FDA has conveniently set up a “Rumor Control” webpage to combat “misinformation.” If you want the facts on mRNA vaccines and homeopathy, just visit the FDA’s page and see the light! Of the four “facts” shared about COVID and COVID vaccines, there is not a single mention of adverse events, myocarditis, or any other safety signals. Quite the opposite: we’re assured that COVID-19 vaccines do not cause COVID-19, monkeypox, flu, or RSV.

The Rumor Control page also informs us that homeopathic medicines are not FDA-approved, so we can’t be sure of their safety or effectiveness. It’s an interesting point coming from an agency with a proven track record of approving drugs that are often dangerous and don’t even work. Consider: One in four Americans over the age of forty-five takes a statin, yet there is evidence that these drugs work for as few as one in fifty people!

It’s also disingenuous to state that we don’t know whether homeopathic medicines are safe. The available evidence indicates that they are. A review of homeopathic adverse events in countries across the world between 1978 and 2010 found a total of 1,159 adverse events. This equates to an average of just over 50 cases per annum across all 17 countries from which studies were conducted.

We recently wrote about the “soft” form of authoritarianism that is a growing force in today’s world. This authoritarianism doesn’t control us through overt force, but relies on psychological manipulation and censorship. It was effective: millions of people masked, submitted to lockdowns, received novel mRNA vaccines that were rushed through development and linked with serious safety signals. If you questioned any of these measures, you were ostracized, marginalized or plain shut down.

The crusaders against mis- and disinformation would have us all blindly trusting health “authorities” like the CDC, FDA, and the WHO—the same “authorities” that got so many things outrageously wrong during the COVID pandemic, while trying to silence or marginalize those who presented alternatives or questioned their edicts. This is why our FreeSpeech4Health campaign is so critical. Big Tech platforms have wholly bought into the false notion that truthful health information solely emanates from major health authorities like the NIH or the WHO, mirroring YouTube’s medical misinformation policy.

We cannot let the government and their lackeys silence dissent under the guise of controlling “misinformation.” Sign our petition below as the first part of our wider program to force Google and YouTube to change its defective, free speech-killing medical misinformation policy. If you haven’t already signed, and you care about the ability for us all to share truthful information freely without restriction, please sign now. And given the censorship of our own content, we appeal to you to share this article widely in your own networks!

The post Feds Ramp Up Censorship Machine first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

The FDA has agreed to remove social media posts and webpages advising Americans not to take ivermectin for COVID. Action Alert!

THE TOPLINE

• The FDA has to take down social media posts and its webpage warning consumers not to take ivermectin for COVID.
• To us, the FDA’s previous stance against ivermectin was political rather than science-based because the goal was to get everyone to buy into the vaccines.
• The agency’s stance likely cost countless lives because many doctors refused to prescribe ivermectin for early treatments for fear of disciplinary hearings from medical boards or having their licenses revoked.
• We must oppose efforts to institutionalize the ability of public health authorities to control medical treatments and information during pandemics.

The FDA has settled a lawsuit heard in a southern Texas District Court brought by a group of doctors in 2022, alleging that the agency overstepped its authority and interfered with the doctor-patient relationship in its campaign against ivermectin. This is a tremendous victory for freedom-loving practitioners and members of the public. It’s also an acknowledgment of serious failures and cronyism within public health authorities during the pandemic—failures that undoubtedly cost many, many lives, but have yet to be acknowledged.

The settlement forces the FDA to remove several social media posts warning consumers not to use ivermectin, along with a webpage titled “Why you should not use ivermectin to treat or prevent COVID-19.”

The FDA’s stance on ivermectin made it extremely difficult for sick and dying patients to get the medicine either they wanted or their doctors wanted to prescribe “off-label”. Doctors and hospitals often needed to be sued in order to give patients ivermectin; pharmacists around the country refused to fill prescriptions.

It was our contention during the pandemic that the government health establishment was hostile toward medicines like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine because they were cheap, off-patent drugs that competed with the brand-new mRNA vaccines. It didn’t matter that frontline doctors were saving lives with the off-label use of these medicines. Anything that would threaten vaccine uptake had to be delegitimized and snuffed out.

The studies that public health authorities held up as proof that ivermectin was ineffective were designed to fail, as we noted in previous coverage. There is in fact a substantial amount of evidence supporting ivermectin’s effectiveness in treating and preventing COVID.

While this is an important victory, don’t be fooled into thinking the FDA has learned its lesson. In a statement to the Epoch Times, the FDA doubles down on its position against ivermectin:

“FDA has not admitted any violation of law or any wrongdoing, disagrees with the plaintiffs’ allegation that the agency exceeded its authority in issuing the statements challenged in the lawsuit, and stands by its authority to communicate with the public regarding the products it regulates.”

Translation: when push comes to shove, the FDA will do the exact same thing the next time such an issue arises.

This case underscores why we need to oppose censorship and medicine by diktat—the very measures being debated right now by governments around the world which could hand all responsibility to the World Health Organization in the event of another pandemic. They want to be able to better control public health responses during the next pandemic. They want you to shut up, take your vaccine, and be happy about it. No alternative treatments, and no “misinformation” that makes you doubt what the health overlords have planned for you. We have to prevent this grim future and fight for our health sovereignty!

Action Alert! Write to Congress and tell them you oppose the IHR amendments and the ‘pandemic treaty’ and because you value democracy, any changes that are proposed by the US must undergo Senate scrutiny and ratification. Please send your message immediately.

The post FDA Forced to U-Turn on Ivermectin first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.