Sarah Gonzalez

It was never properly tested for safety.

The U.S.

Food and Drug Administration didn't even know this new additive had made its way into the U.S.

food supply.

It was only after hundreds of people got sick, liver dysfunction, liver failure, gastrointestinal injuries, that the FDA even became aware of this new secret food ingredient.

42 people had to go under the knife, have their gallbladders removed.

And this mass poisoning, it bankrupted the company and all the other companies involved.

No, just kidding.

That did not happen.

Everything that happened here was the system working exactly as it's been designed to work.

Hello and welcome to Planet Money.

I'm Sarah Gonzalez.

In the US, we typically put new ingredients, new chemicals on store shelves first and then take them off if people get sick or die.

It's kind of the opposite of what is known as the precautionary principle, where the government verifies everything is tested for safety before it's sold to humans to eat.

Today on the show, the secret door that food and chemical makers in the U.S.

get to sneak their ingredients through, how the FDA has weakened its own food safety regulations, and probably the best example of a perverse incentive to keep chemicals secret.

So this lentil and leek crumble mass poisoning, again, was not a case of a contaminated batch of lentils or something like that.

It was that a brand new substance never before used in the U.S.

was added to the lentils.

And that additive turned out to be not okay for some humans.