Sarah Gonzalez

Melanie is stroking her imaginary beard when she says this, OK?

Because this is when companies realize there is something written into the law that can maybe help them.

Built into this great law with only one door is a loophole.

A second door, if you will, for things that are generally recognized as safe, GRAS, or GRAS as it has come to be known.

The GRAS exemption says you can actually bypass the whole long FDA review process and the safety testing verification stuff if your ingredient was commonly used in food prior to 1958 or is generally recognized as safe.

The idea was that the FDA shouldn't get bogged down reviewing things like, you know, sugar, flour, a whole banana.

Yeah, but Melanie says companies started really using or maybe even exploiting this grass exemption because the rule is just that your new ingredient or new chemical needs to be generally recognized as safe through scientific procedure.

which is like tricky language.

It has been interpreted pretty loosely.

OK, the FDA, more and more companies, they took it to mean that your own in-house scientists at your own chemical plant can self-certify that your brand new, never before used chemical or additive is safe.

And then you just like notify the FDA.

You, the food maker, goes, never mind.

Just pretend like we didn't show you anything.

And just use it in food anyway.

And just use it in food anyway.

So companies can ignore the FDA's concerns and just self-certify that their additives are safe.

This is the grass loophole.

So it's not the greatest law.

No, this is a flaw.

This is the flaw.