Generally Recognised as Safe

Today, I want to talk about food additives. That evil institution despised by crazy UKIP and an increasing number of 'mainstream' conservatives in the UK, the European Union, has very explicit rules stating what can and cannot be added to foods. I'm talking about things like artificial preservatives, colourings, flavourings, etc. While some on the right decry the EU as being a source of unnecessary bureaucracy, designed to stifle business and create jobs for overpaid paper-pushers, these rules can occasionally be rather helpful: to introduce a new additive to the European food chain, it has to go through rather rigorous, long-term safety assessments. This seems pretty reasonable, and I assumed that similar standards were applied here in the US, especially given the highly litigious nature of American society.

A few months ago, I read an opinion piece in Nature magazine (as one does) talking about US food additives regulation. It turns out that, to use an additive in the US, FDA (Food and Drug Administration) rules say that if it is Generally Recognised as Safe (GRAS), it is does not need to be approved by the FDA. According to Wikipedia, the source of all human knowledge:

The substance must be shown to be "generally recognized" as safe under the conditions of its intended use. The proponent of the exemption has the burden of proving that the use of the substance is "generally recognized" as safe. To establish such recognition, the proponent must show that there is a consensus of expert opinion regarding the safety of the use of the substance

Which seems fair enough. However, the Nature news piece (which I thoroughly recommend you read) pointed out some flaws in the system: the manufacturer of the additive is itself responsible for assessing whether a substance qualifies as GRAS after which is it requested (but not legally required) to notify the FDA. There are no data describing how much companies actually comply with these regulations, but the FDA found in 2010 that 4 out of 4 energy drink manufacturers that it inspected had not actually carried out the required checks. Yikes!

A study published in December last year found some startling results:

• Fewer that 38% of GRAS claims were backed up by toxicology studies in animals.
• 80% of additives intentionally added to food lacked information on what the safe levels were
• 93% of additives had no data showing reproductive or developmental toxicity.

The same authors reported in another study that, although GRAS assessments should be made independently to avoid conflicts of interest, none in fact are. Of the assessments the authors examined, 22.4% had been carried out by an employee of the manufacturer, 13.3% were carried out by an employee of a consulting firm selected by the manufacturer, and 64.3% were carried out by an expert panel appointed either by a consultancy firm or the manufacturer. Rather chilling reading!

What does this mean? Well, it explains the discrepancies found between the same foods sold in the US and the EU. Skittles sold in the UK are coloured with natural colourings because the dyes used in the US version are mostly banned in the EU because they cause behavioural deficits in children.

One more reason to reduce the amount of processed food we eat, I guess... (dirty processed food such as 7-11 hot dogs, consumed whilst drunk, don't count!) I'm not arguing here that all food additives in the US are dangerous because that would be unscientific: in most cases, there are no data to support the assertion that they are either good or bad. They're probably not deadly because someone would have noticed by now... in fact, they're generally recognised as safe.