the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Jan 6, 2025
Recently, the Los Angeles Times reported that food manufacturers exploit a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) loophole to add potentially harmful ingredients to the products we eat. In fact, since 2000, nearly 99% of all food chemicals added to food products by the food industry have not been approved by the FDA as safe, according to an Environmental Working Group (EWG) analysis done in 2022.
Under the FDA’s so-called “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) rule, food makers can declare whether certain novel ingredients are safe, without any oversight or independent scientific evidence. Because of this loophole, chemicals harmful to our health, including suspected carcinogens, are added to products such as cereals, yogurt, baked goods, ice cream, potato chips, and chewing gum.
In 2022, hundreds of people ate Daily Harvest’s French Lentil + Leek Crumbles and got sick. These consumers suffered severe abdominal pain, fever, chills, and acute liver failure. More than one hundred were hospitalized! Daily Harvest blamed an ingredient called tara flour, which the company added to this food product. Two years after the incident, the FDA finally declared this ingredient unsafe.
Also, under the GRAS loophole, when companies use novel ingredients, they can list them on food labels using generic terms like “flavors”, “colors”, or indecipherable acronyms. Under such guise, it becomes impossible for consumers to know that something new has been added to their food.
The federal government created the GRAS loophole so food manufacturers could freely exploit us for their profits.