-- Shares Facebook Twitter Reddit Email For many years, brominated vegetable oil, or BVO, existed in something of a regulatory gray area. When added in small amounts, the product serves as a stabilizer in some orange-flavored beverages and prevents the citrus flavoring from floating to the top. In the early 1960s, the Food and Drug Administration placed BVO on the agency’s original “GRAS” list, which encompassed ingredients that were “generally recognized as safe.
” BVO also contains bromine —an ingredient found in brominated flame retardants, which are added to products like textiles and building materials to prevent the spread of fire. These wildly disparate uses raised questions among consumer groups and health advocates over whether BVO, while generally recognized as safe by the federal government, was actually safe, and for decades, the FDA maintained that it was (though eventually heavily restricted the amount that could be added to beverages ). However, earlier this month, on July 3, the FDA issued a final rule to revoke the regulation allowing the use of BVO in food.
So, how did we get here and what’s next? Why did the FDA ban BVO? While BVO had been used as a food additive since the 1920s, the FDA, in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health, decided t o reassess the ingredient’s safety for human consumption in 2014. After several years of experiments, researchers published their findings in Food and Chemical Toxicology in 2022. “Past stu.
