Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS), is the FDA’s way of allowing an ever growing number of food additives into the US food supply without specific FDA testing. It allows the vendor/manufacturer to certify an additive is GRAS rather than proving it.

It would seem that the GRAS approach is reasonable, given the the ever growing number of additives and and the minimal risk of true harm. But, there are other countries that do take the time to evaluate some additives in their food systems and then determine those additives are not safe by whatever standards they are using. This would seem to me to remove the additive from the Generally Regarded As Safe category and should require the FDA to certify the safety of the additive independently of the vendor certification.

The FDA may very well find that the additive is SAFE by our standards and allow it to be in our food supply, but it should not be on the GRAS list.