RFK Jr. weighing FDA crackdown on food additives under Trump
CBSN
Advisers to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are weighing a significant rewrite to the Food and Drug Administration's rules governing food additives, to fulfill Kennedy and President-elect Donald Trump's "Make America Healthy Again" pledge to get toxic chemicals out of the food supply.
The proposed crackdown, which is still in its early stages and will need to get a sign-off from Trump and his transition team, targets a provision in the FDA's regulations on which food additives are considered by the agency to be "generally recognized as safe," or GRAS.
Advisers to Kennedy, Trump's pick for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, have also floated other approaches to curbing the use of food additives, including working with agricultural producers to change the subsidies and incentives offered by the government for certain kinds of foods Kennedy argues are unhealthy.
The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday that the U.S. food supply is still "one of the safest in the world," in the wake of a number of foodborne disease outbreaks affecting items ranging from organic carrots to deli meats to McDonald's Quarter Pounders. E. coli, listeria and other contaminants have sickened thousands of people and forced a number of recalls in recent months.
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