Trump officials propose new food additive rules for packaged foods

U.S. health officials at the Department of Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration proposed a rule on Aug. 10 that would require food manufacturers to notify regulators before adding new ingredients or additives to processed or packaged foods. The change would rewrite a decades-old system that has let many substances enter the food supply without a formal notice to the agency.

The proposal targets the FDA’s GRAS system, short for Generally Recognized As Safe. Under the current practice, companies can make their own GRAS determinations and, in some cases, move forward without notifying the agency at all. The new rule would end that approach for new ingredients. The FDA would generally have 180 days to review notifications involving them.

Additives appear in snacks, breakfast cereals, drinks, sauces and ready-to-eat meals, so any tighter notice requirement could force manufacturers to review recipes, submit more data, seek additional approvals and, in some cases, update labels. Importers and retailers would also feel the change if products are reformulated or delayed while companies wait for FDA review.

More than 100 chemicals in food were never reviewed by anyone, the Environmental Working Group says. New York University published an August 2024 explainer that said gaps in FDA oversight let the food industry determine which substances are GRAS.

The issue has been part of the regulatory record for years, including a Federal Register document dated Aug. 17, 2016. The latest proposal follows a broader push from HHS and FDA, which announced on April 22, 2025, that they intended to phase out use of food additives.