Madison Area Lyme Support Group

https://anh-usa.org/action-center/  Go here to send message to reps

Action Alert: Support Real GRAS Reform

Alliance for Natural Health

Earlier this year, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary touted “GRAS reform” among his first 100 day accomplishments, saying the agency is “exploring rulemaking” to “stop industry’s long-standing practice of introducing ingredients into the food supply without FDA knowledge or oversight.” The practice Commissioner Makary is referring to is known as self-affirmed GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) or self-GRAS.

THE TOPLINE

• Proposed changes to the FDA’s GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) rules—backed by RFK Jr.’s push to clean up junk and ultra-processed foods—could create a sweeping pre-approval system that threatens access to thousands of safe, natural supplement ingredients.
• While reform is needed to curb harmful additives, past FDA decisions show the agency has approved questionable synthetic ingredients—raising concerns that new authority could unfairly target natural products instead.
• This is a pivotal moment for health freedom: without public pushback, regulatory overreach could restrict supplement access under the guise of food safety reform.

It’s true that the GRAS system is deeply flawed. It’s also true that many, if not all, of the problematic ingredients in the food supply that are often cited by critics as evidence of the need for GRAS reform were explicitly approved by the FDA—not snuck in by industry under self-GRAS. The solution isn’t to eliminate the self-affirmed GRAS pathway. It’s to bring it into the light, as we argued in our white paper released in April of this year that outlined a rational approach to reforming GRAS without erecting unnecessary regulatory hurdles for ingredients that have a well-established safety record.

Help us restore integrity to the entire system that governs what we eat. Write to Congress and the FDA calling for rational reforms to the GRAS process without eliminating the self-GRAS pathway.