May 2, 2025 – Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) is working on legislation that would tighten some rules around food additives and preempt a patchwork of state laws currently cropping up around the country, which gained momentum as a result of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement.
Marshall is planning on calling the legislation the Food Ingredient Transparency (FIT) Act, a legislative assistant, Lacy Pitts, said at a food policy event hosted by the Institute of Food Technologists’ D.C. chapter on Tuesday.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced in March that he was directing the FDA to look into changing the rules around ingredients the agency calls GRAS, or “generally recognized as safe.”
Currently, companies can add their own ingredients to the list without obtaining FDA approval, but Kennedy hinted then that he would need the law to change to get some of that work done. Kennedy said he was hoping to work with Congress to “completely close the loophole.”
Marshall’s bill will require “mandatory notification” for new GRAS additives, according to Pitts. Companies would have to submit paperwork to the FDA alerting regulators to the use of a new additive in a product, but those additives still would not go through an approval process.
The bill will also include provisions related to a plan the FDA proposed last year to strengthen the review of food chemicals already on the market, including those on the GRAS list. Finally, she said it will include language that prevents states from passing laws that contradict the federal regulations.
“We know it’s much easier for food manufacturers in the industry to get products across state lines if they have one united framework to follow,” Pitts said.
Last December, Marshall created the Senate’s MAHA Caucus with a key purpose to “work with RFK Jr. to be the legislative force that ensures the key pillars of MAHA are executed.”
Pitts said that Marshall’s experience as an OB-GYN informed his interest in food-as-medicine, an approach to chronic disease prevention that was championed during the Biden administration at the White House Conference on Hunger, Health, and Nutrition.
“He has long worked on food-as-medicine,” she said. “Now, going into the Trump administration, food-as-medicine has kind of been rebranded to the Make America Healthy Again movement.”
A report on addressing childhood chronic disease that President Trump directed the MAHA Commission to deliver is set to come out “within the month,” said Pitts. The Commission is made up of cabinet officials and is led by Kennedy.
“We’re waiting on direction from them,” she said. “After that comes out, then it’ll come to the Hill, [and] we’ll have discussions amongst ourselves about what is going to be done regulatory and what’s going to be done by a statute.” As a result, more MAHA-inspired legislation will likely be on the table. (Link to this post.)
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