The Food and Drug Administration can't keep up with all the new food additives that Americans are ingesting every day.
The FDA won't call its backlog a crisis, though.
"We aren't saying we have a public health crisis," Michael Taylor, the FDA's deputy commissioner for food, told The Washington Post. "But we do have questions about whether we can do what people expect of us."
The people want answers about why certain substances in their foods are causing asthmatic attacks, serious bouts of vomiting, intestinal tract disorders and other health problems. The FDA has received thousands of complaints due to the increase in new food additives and less oversight from the federal agency, according to The Washington Post.
Food-safety advocates and some federal regulators fear too many companies may be taking advantage of an expedited certification process. The voluntary certification system was put in place 17 years ago to help businesses and required a more formal, time-consuming review. Now, the companies certify a food's safety rather than the FDA.
"We simply do not have the information to vouch for the safety of many of these chemicals," Taylor said.
Congress passed the Food Additives amendment in 1958 that required manufacturers of new food additives to establish safety, according to the FDA. Since then, the number of additives has increased from 800 to 9,000 and covers everything from salt to green-tea extracts, according to the Post. Americans eating more processed foods for their daily nutrition can partially explain the rise in additives.
The advocacy group Center for Food Safety filed a lawsuit against the FDA in February over the additive problem. The group went after the FDA's proposed rule that would deem certain substances as "generally recognized as safe" or GRAS, according to the CFS website.
"It has been 15 years since FDA handed authority to determine GRAS status over to the corporations it is meant to regulate. FDA has an obligation to provide the regulatory scrutiny the public deserves," said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director for CFS.
"FDA's failure to appropriately regulate food additives has had serious consequences, exposing the public to risky products without adequate due process."
Top officials at the FDA and in the food industry have taken notice of the food additives spike in the last six months, according to The Washington Post. They acknowledge that new steps must be taken to address the problem.
