In August, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s health department told the country it had kept a promise. On its "Promises Made, Promises Kept" page, under August 10, 2026, it added a new win: "Moved to Close the GRAS Loophole."

What the department didn't tell you is that the same rule opens a different door. Buried in the fine print is a change that would let food companies add some chemicals directly into food — as flavorings, preservatives, thickeners and more — after only a shortened review, as long as the dose is tiny and the chemical isn't known to cause cancer.

The Guardian reported on October 10 that food-safety experts are alarmed. Some advocates have accused Kennedy of deception. Here's why.

The loophole Kennedy promised to close

"GRAS" stands for "generally recognized as safe." It is the rule that lets a company decide on its own that a new food ingredient is safe — and start selling it without telling the Food and Drug Administration.

Kennedy made ending that his signature food fight. In March 2025, he directed the FDA to look at getting rid of it, saying:

"For far too long, ingredient manufacturers and sponsors have exploited a loophole that has allowed new ingredients and chemicals, often with unknown safety data, to be introduced into the US food supply without notification to the FDA or the public."

The problem is real. The Environmental Working Group found that companies have signed off on at least 111 food chemicals on their own, without notifying the FDA, for use in products from cereal to snack bars to sports drinks.

On August 10, 2026, the department announced its fix: a proposed rule requiring companies to notify the FDA. The acting FDA commissioner said the agency was "closing critical information gaps." Kennedy said: "President Trump and I promised to Make America Healthy Again, and today we are turning that promise into policy."

Critics say the "closure" was a modest tightening at best. But that's not the worst of it.

What the announcement left out

The press release never mentions a second change inside the same rule. You have to open the proposed rule itself in the Federal Register to find it.

It's called the "threshold of regulation" exemption. Today it covers only things like food packaging and processing equipment. If a chemical in a package might rub off into food, the company can get it waved through without a full food-additive review, as long as:

• it hasn't been shown to cause cancer, and
• it ends up in the diet below a tiny cutoff — 0.5 parts per billion under the current rule.

The FDA's own rule calls this an "abbreviated review process" and says "a full safety narrative is not required."

Kennedy's rule would stretch that shortcut from packaging to anything used in food. In the FDA's words, "any substance used in food (both directly or indirectly added to food)" would be exempt, as long as it is present at levels that pose "no appreciable risk to human health."

The Guardian lists what that could cover: chemicals added directly to food as flavorings, preservatives, emulsifiers, enzymes, stabilizers and binders — the building blocks of ultra-processed food. And there would be no way for you to know if a product you buy contains one.

"Small dose" is not the same as "safe"

The whole idea rests on one assumption: a tiny amount of something can't hurt you. Scientists say that's wrong for a whole class of chemicals.

"The FDA and industry have this position that if there's only a little bit of something in the diet, then it's not going to be problematic, but that isn't supported by science of any kind," Maricel Maffini, an independent food consultant who has worked on these exemptions, told the Guardian.

The rule only screens out chemicals by name if they cause cancer. It has no such screen for chemicals that mess with hormones, harm a child's developing brain, or attack the immune system — the FDA can turn one down only if "available information establishes" that it "may pose a public health risk." Advocates say some phthalates, some bisphenols, some PFAS "forever chemicals" and some flame retardants aren't classed as cancer-causing but can do harm at doses far below 0.5 parts per billion. In theory, any of them could qualify.

Maffini said she was especially worried about flavorings, because ultra-processed food companies use chemicals that "play around with the nervous system and receptors in your mouth to try to make us eat more and more of something."

The rule also ignores how doses add up. One small dose of one chemical might be harmless. Many small doses of many chemicals, every day, is a different question — and the rule doesn't ask it.

"They're widening another loophole, but trying to say they made our food safer," said Maria Doa, a scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund. "They did not make our food safer."

We already know how this ends: rocket fuel in baby cereal

This isn't a guess. The narrow version of this shortcut has already put more of a toxic chemical into children's food.

In 2005, the chemical giant BASF used the exemption to get perchlorate — a chemical used in rocket fuel — approved for giant plastic grain bags called "super sacks." Grain gets poured in and out of those bags at high speed, and bits of the plastic rub off.

After that approval, the FDA's own testing showed the share of baby food dry cereal samples with perchlorate jumped from 5% to 15%, according to the Environmental Defense Fund. Perchlorate "disrupts the thyroid gland's normal function," the group wrote, and cuts the thyroid hormone children need for healthy brain development.

In 2017, the FDA looked at its own data and let perchlorate stay anyway. Its reasoning: across all 250 foods it measured, there was no meaningful increase. Critics pointed out the problem was never all food. It was kids' cereal.

"They put their blinders on and approved the exemption based on data that never considered the harms posed by endocrine disruptors," Tom Neltner, who helped lead the legal fight over perchlorate, told the Guardian.

That is the shortcut Kennedy's rule would widen — from bags that touch food to ingredients that are food.

Who wins

Advocates say the proposal is a major win for big food companies. It fits a pattern. Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, General Mills and Nestlé have been lobbying for GRAS changes and for federal rules that override state food-safety laws — and House Republican Kat Cammack wrote the bill they wanted, a draft that would let a company's safety notice take effect automatically if the FDA doesn't act within 90 days.

It is unclear who added the threshold change to Kennedy's rule. The Guardian reports that the White House or the Office of Management and Budget was involved in negotiating the GRAS rule. But it's Kennedy's rule, announced in Kennedy's name, and it matches how this administration works, Maffini said:

"This administration is not keen on regulating anything."

And it wouldn't be the first time Kennedy's public account left out the part that mattered. He told senators at his confirmation hearings that his 2019 trip to Samoa had "nothing to do with vaccines" — then a letter he wrote before the trip surfaced, asking to study Samoa's MMR vaccines.

The FDA did not respond to the Guardian's request for comment. The rule is still only a proposal; the Federal Register notice says the public comment period runs through December 9, 2026.

What the record shows

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s health department announced on August 10, 2026, that it was closing the "generally recognized as safe" loophole, and listed it under "Promises Kept." The same proposed rule contains a change the announcement never mentioned: it would extend a shortcut that now covers only food packaging to chemicals added directly to food, letting any non-cancer-causing substance at a low enough dose through on an abbreviated review. After the narrower version of that shortcut approved a rocket-fuel chemical for grain bags, the share of baby cereal samples containing it went from 5% to 15%.

Source

FDA may allow some toxic chemicals to be added to food without safety review. Experts are alarmed — The Guardian, October 10, 2026.