July 14, 2025 – House Representatives Jan Schakowsky (D-Illinois) and Rosa DeLauro (D-Connecticut) reintroduced a bill last week that would create a new system for evaluating the safety of food additives at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The Food Chemical Reassessment Act of 2025 would require the FDA to review, every three years, the safety of certain chemicals added to food. The initial list includes the most common food dyes and other controversial additives, like titanium dioxide and butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT).
“Too many chemicals in our food supply haven’t been properly reviewed for safety, or haven’t been looked at in decades,” Jessica Hernandez, the director of the nonprofit Environmental Working Group Policy, said in a statement. “We’re grateful to Rep. Schakowsky and Rep. DeLauro for taking action to make sure the FDA does its job to protect our health.”
The bill is an attempt to crack down on the Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) process, which allows companies to self-certify ingredients as safe to eat. Watchdog groups have been attempting to change it for decades, and their efforts have generally been supported by Democrats in Congress.
Over the past year, that has shifted. Supported by his Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made food additives a central focus of the FDA.
In March, Kennedy directed the FDA to look into revising the GRAS process. (Biden’s FDA had started a process to do so; last fall, the agency began taking public comments on how to better review chemicals already added to food.) Kennedy also rolled out a plan to pressure food companies into removing chemical food dyes from their products, with a goal of eliminating the dyes by 2026.
Since then, some food giants like Nestle, Kraft Heinz, and General Mills have committed to ditching the dyes. The FDA has also been fast-tracking the approval of natural alternatives. It announced the approval of gardenia blue, derived from a flowering evergreen, on Monday.
Amid an emerging patchwork of state laws that ban dyes and other additives, the federal government has mainly stopped short of regulation. Laws passed by Congress could change that. Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) created the Senate MAHA Caucus to provide the legislative force needed to execute Kennedy’s goals.
Marshall’s office has been working on legislation that would also change the GRAS process, but he has not yet introduced the bill. Republicans in the House MAHA Caucus have not yet weighed in on whether they’ll support the Food Chemical Reassessment Act. (Link to this post.)
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