New York’s GRAS Bill is a Deeply Flawed Approach to Food Safety
As food retailers and consumers are feeling the significant strain of rising costs, lawmakers are considering so-called GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) legislation allowing the state to second-guess ingredients already deemed safe under federal standards, which could make those costs even higher.
To put it plainly, New York should reject this GRAS bill. It would sacrifice affordability and decrease product availability for working New Yorkers: all without making food meaningfully safer.
The Food Safety and Chemical Disclosure Act would create a separate New York GRAS program for certain food ingredients already governed under federal rules. The result would be a new state compliance system layered on top of the existing federal one, with added costs and complexity that are likely to reach consumers in the form of higher prices and fewer choices.
The problem is simple. Food does not move through a New York-only supply chain. A loaf of bread sold in Albany can contain ingredients sourced from multiple states, processed elsewhere, and distributed across the region. This bill would confront manufacturers with New York-specific standards that differ from the rest of the country.
For smaller producers and regional brands, the extra cost for creating and selling New York-only products may not be feasible. Some could decide it is no longer worth keeping certain products on New York shelves.
Retailers would feel those effects immediately. A neighborhood grocery store or specialty food shop does not control how products are made, but it still pays the price when items become harder to source, more expensive to stock, or tied up in new state requirements.
For consumers, the effect would undoubtedly be higher prices at checkout and fewer choices. Familiar products could become more expensive or harder to find, not because they are unsafe, but because this bill would make the system for selling them more burdensome and more complicated.
The bill also creates new disclosure requirements without resolving basic questions about how those requirements would be implemented and enforced. Companies could find themselves caught between overlapping state and federal expectations, with no clear guidance on how the two systems are supposed to fit together. They would also have to figure out how to meet disclosure obligations without exposing proprietary information related to research, testing, and formulation.
Most importantly, the bill has not shown why a separate New York regime would produce better food safety outcomes than the system already in place. Food ingredients are already governed through a longstanding federal framework built around scientific review. Adding a new state-specific layer, without clear coordination or implementation guidance, risks creating duplication and confusion rather than a more effective system.
A better food safety system should reduce uncertainty, not create more of it, and it should strengthen consumer confidence without raising costs for families already under strain. New York can pursue reforms that consider supply chains, small businesses and household costs. Those are the kind of ideas all New Yorkers could get behind.
Michael Durant, President and CEO, Food Industry Alliance of New York
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