Chemicals in Your Promo Food Are Not FDA Approved

During the pandemic, the size flexibility of gifting for one, a few, or many, made food a great choice for the huge growth in virtual and hybrid meetings, and chances are good those food gifting trends are continuing — after all they do make very cool gifts. But have you thought about what you might be giving your clients along with the food and candy gifts you’re sourcing? Even if a food gift is easy, it still needs to be safe — and that’s what we’re talking about here today.

While everyone understands the sweet power of everything from personalized images on Oreos to engravings on a Popsicle stick, you may not have given much thought before now to the chemicals in the foods you’re preparing for gifting by your clients. So why am I suggesting now that you might want to quiz your suppliers a little more about exactly what’s in those irresistible sweets? It’s because according to a new analysis from the Environmental Working Group, the data shows that a whopping 99 percent of chemicals added to food since 2000 were greenlighted for use by the chemical and food industry itself — not by federal regulators. That sounds safe.

How could this happen? The analysis by the Environment Working Group exposes a little-known loophole in laws governing the Food and Drug Administration that allows chemicals that are “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) by their manufacturers to avoid FDA oversight. Originally intended to cover widely used ingredients like flour, vinegar, and sugar, the loophole known as GRAS has been stretched over time to include human-made compounds that their just own manufacturers say are safe for use in food.

“This is just a process that is fundamentally broken,” EWG legislative attorney Melanie Benesh, who conducted the review, told E&E News. “It is frankly terrifying that for over 20 years nearly 99 percent of new chemicals have been added to our food supply and it has been industry deciding what is safe, not FDA.” EWG’s analysis doesn’t even show the full picture of chemicals added to the food supply without FDA review because the environmental health nonprofit couldn’t track how frequently companies chose not to notify the FDA of new chemicals they alone determined are safe. Comforting, isn’t it?

One example is butylated hydroxy anisole (BHA), which the European Union classifies as an endocrine disrupter and the National Toxicology Program calls “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen.” And you guessed it, BHA is currently found in popular snack foods like potato chips and preserved meats, thanks to the GRAS process.

“It is shocking to most people that the food industry is by and large deciding what is safe for chemicals we feed to our children every day,” Benesh said. If it’s not shocking, it certainly should be!

But it’s not just health advocacy groups who say GRAS is not protecting public health. The Government Accountability Office twice examined the GRAS process, once in 1980 and then again in 2010. Most recently, the GAO concluded, “FDA’s oversight process does not help ensure the safety of all new GRAS determinations.” An FDA spokesperson defended the GRAS process, saying the agency “can question the basis for an independent GRAS conclusion and take action as appropriate.”

The FDA is charged with protecting the food in the U.S. but the agency has fallen short when it comes to tracking and warning about new chemical additives. Even Michael Taylor, a former FDA deputy commissioner for food, admits that the FDA “simply doesn’t have the information to vouch for the safety of many of these chemicals.” It’s time to close the loophole and stop chemicals from being added through what amounts to a side door, one that prevents FDA oversight.The good news, however, is that baby steps are being taken. A bill introduced by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the Toxic Free Food Act, would require the FDA to narrow the loophole by making the GRAS process more transparent, with public input and robust data requirements. The Food Chemical Reassessment Act of 2021, introduced by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), aims to address inadequacies in food additive rules by requiring the FDA to regularly review and reassess food chemicals, many of which have not been reevaluated in decades.

While legislators should act quickly to close the loopholes, there’s something you can do to protect your clients and their customers right now. Like so many of other issues with product safety in promotional products, you can employ the tried and true concept of trust but verify. Trust your vendor partners, but make darn sure you verify that what they say is true, and safe, actually is. Keeping your customers safe means making sure your suppliers use full disclosure on the food promos you’re sourcing. If they can’t tell you what’s in them, it’s time to find another source. Your clients depend on you to know.