The US Food and Drug Administration has proposed revoking its regulation authorizing the nationwide use of brominated vegetable oil, or BVO, as an additive in food.
The FDA’s decision comes after California banned the ingredient in October by passing the California Food Safety Act, the first state law in the United States to ban brominated vegetable oil. The additive is already banned in Europe and Japan.
“The agency concluded that the intended use of BVO in food is no longer considered safe after the results of studies conducted in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health … found the potential for adverse health effects in humans,” said James Jones, the FDA’s deputy commissioner for human foods, in a statement.
Alternative title: FDA proposes finally catching up with Europe on food safety
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves
The FDA is maybe thinking about possibly becoming interested in catching up to EU food standards.
Fixed.
In one of thousands of positions.
Just because the EU does something first doesn’t mean they were right to
Aside from a few World Wars, they’ve been right more often than the US.
Regarding public safety restrictions? Or are you just making the mistake that anything the EU does is progress that we will catch up to eventually?
Your phrasing implies that you’re looking to pick a fight. You can do that elsewhere, I’ve got more important things to do.
clearly not
Erroring on the side of public safety seems a whole lot better than erroring on the side of companies only interested in profit.
Fearmongering ain’t freedom. This is America. We don’t trade freedom for safety like bitch ass Europeans, we ride rockets like bucking broncos for fun. Life is cheap, freedom is priceless.
But genuinely, sometimes the EU is just overly cautious. And in the case of the point I was making, again, just because the EU made a regulatory decision doesn’t mean they were right to do so.
You can’t use MOST of our candy flavorings in the EU. Do you genuinely think our candy is poisoning just because it’s artificial, or is that just the naturalistic fallacy talkin
Absolutely, I mean just look at the new privacy bill, which the very latest revision has them hijacking website certificates so they can spy on people as they please.
However, when it comes to food safety, the EU has been far ahead of the US. The US basically dismissed a bunch of concerns back in the 1970s, and outside of California they’re only now just reviewing them and accepting that they aren’t that great. Things under the classification “Generally Recognised As Safe”, or GRAS, which are unlikely to cause accute harm when taken in normal doses, however for many of them there is strong evidence of harm when taken frequently over a long time.
Suffice it to say, food in Europe is generally of a higher quality and standard than the US, because the EU has better regulations in this field.
Don’t worry about the downvote, this is true, especially with their harder stances against GMOs and nuclear power that are based on fearmongering rather than science. We need GMOs and nuclear to reduce climate change.
That said, this isn’t a comment on whether or not BVOs are bad, just that the EU banning something isn’t alone a reason to ban it here
While it’s true that their stance against GMO was largely unfounded, they’ve generally made better calls with most things when it comes to food safety. In some sense, their stance against GMO was still valid, given that it was new technology - the real issue is how readily they move back on that when more evidence comes out.