The New York State Legislature has passed a bill that, if enacted, would require mandatory disclosures for food ingredients treated as ‘generally recognised as safe’ (GRAS), marking one of the clearest state‑level efforts yet to curb manufacturers’ reliance on self‑determined food ingredient safety conclusions.
According to lawmakers, the bill is meant to close "a loophole that allows food companies to add new chemical ingredients to food without public disclosure of the presence of the ingredients or the science behind the manufacturer’s in-house determination that they are safe".
The Food Safety and Chemical Disclosure Act (SB 1239) cleared both chambers of the state's legislature on 21 April and now heads to the desk of Governor Kathy Hochul (D), who could either sign it into law or veto it.
If enacted, SB 1239 would mandate public disclosure in New York of food ingredients brought to market under the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)'s GRAS framework, which allows manufacturers to self‑affirm the safety of many food ingredients without prior agency review.
The legislation would also prohibit three food ingredients linked to human health effects (see box).
The GRAS scheme has long faced scrutiny for allowing manufacturers to introduce food contact substances and additives without pre-market review, and US Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has made GRAS reform a central plank of his Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda.
But GRAS reform has thus far been slow to take shape at the federal level, prompting state legislatures to address the issue through their own legislation.
According to New York lawmakers, the federal effort "could take years to complete, if it happens at all, and faces stiff opposition from the food industry that has long succeeded in blocking federal legislation and regulatory accountability".
If enacted, SB 1239 would build on that growing wave of state-level momentum by pairing disclosure requirements with explicit enforcement mechanisms and narrowing companies’ ability to rely on federal safety status as a defence.
Bill specifics
As passed by the legislature, SB 1239 would make it unlawful to sell food in New York containing certain GRAS substances unless a company has submitted a safety report to the state’s Department of Agriculture and Markets and that information has been listed in a public, searchable database.
The report would need to disclose the identity of the substance, how and where it is used in food, exposure estimates, scientific evidence supporting its safety determination, and any data or information that could be considered inconsistent with a GRAS conclusion.
Companies would be prohibited from relying on trade secret claims as the basis for GRAS safety determinations. The bill would also bar companies from arguing that FDA recognition of an ingredient as safe shields them from compliance with New York’s requirements.
The measure would empower regulators to block the sale of foods containing noncompliant GRAS ingredients and seek injunctive relief from violating companies.
It would also allow the state to collect fees to recover the costs of reviewing submissions and maintaining the public database.
Exemptions
The reporting requirement would not apply to substances already reviewed by the FDA or recognised under federal regulations, including GRAS substances that have received "no questions" letters from the agency, authorised food contact substances, certain pre‑1958 ingredients, certain dietary ingredients, or substances approved through state rulemaking.
The measure would also allow regulators to exempt additional substances from reporting requirements through future rulemaking, and would address duplicative reporting by permitting companies to rely on a report already submitted to the state for the same substance and conditions of use.
Businesses with fewer than 100 employees would be exempt from the reporting requirements. SB 1239 also includes protections for retailers that rely on written assurances from suppliers that products comply with state law, placing the primary compliance burden on manufacturers and ingredient suppliers.
Under New York’s state constitution, Governor Hochul does not face an immediate deadline to act on the bill.
Substance-specific prohibitions
Alongside its GRAS provisions, SB 1239 would also prohibit the manufacture and sale in New York of food containing three substances that lawmakers said "have been known to cause serious health issues, in some cases for decades":
- Red No 3, a food dye;
- potassium bromate, an agent used to bleach flour; and
- propylparaben, a preservative.
Scientific studies have linked the substances to carcinogenicity and endocrine disruption, according to the bill’s sponsors.
Those restrictions would begin one year after the law takes effect. Retailers would have extra time to sell existing stock – either by the product’s expiration date or three years after the law takes effect, whichever comes first.