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.
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.