Closing the gap: Improving additives safety evaluation to reflect human health concerns

Food additives play important roles in modern food manufacturing including adding color and flavor and extending shelf-life as well as improving processing, storing and transportation of food. This review examines a number of issues that have recently been raised in food additives safety assessments including the concepts of adverse and cumulative effects and whether the current testing approaches are adequately evaluating health outcomes of concern. We include recommendations for how food safety evaluations could be improved including- 1) adopting methods to comply with the statutory requirement to include cumulative effects of chemicals in the diet to the safety assessment of additives, 2) the inclusion of more sensitive endpoints in hazard assessments that better represent human health outcomes, 3) the use of systematic review methods to improve regulatory decision making, and 4) the use of improved screening methods to prioritize chemical evaluations.