Food Safety: FDA Should Strengthen Its Oversight of Food Ingredients Determined to Be Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS)

The United States Government Accountability Office published this report calling for the Food and Drug Administration to strengthen its oversight of food ingredients generally recognized as safe (GRAS), including food ingredients containing engineered nanoparticles. The report calls for the FDA to develop a strategy to require any company that conducts a GRAS determination to provide the FDA with basic information about the product, and to make this information available via a public website, and to develop a strategy to conduct reconsiderations of the safety of GRAS substances in a more systematic matter, and to develop a strategy to develop an agency wide definition of engineered nanomaterials, and to require companies to inform the FDA if their GRAS determinations involve engineered nanomaterials.