The Food and Drug Administration has rescinded its 13-year ban on the use of magic sugar or cyclamate saying there is no evidence that the artifical sweetener causes cancer.
“Several reviews made by the World Health Organization Expert Committee on Food Additives and European Food Safety Authority showed that in these countries there have been no safety concerns among its millions of consumers,” the FDA says in a Sun Star Online report.
It has issued an advisory it “will allow the use of magic sugar and in effect revoke BFAD Advisory No. 2000-05.” The importation, distribution, and use of magic sugar–cheaper than regular sugar–was banned in 2000 over “evidence of its carcinogenicity in animals.”
Importers, traders, and distributors will have to secure FDA authorization before bringing in and dealing in magic sugar, however.
Cocaine is meanwhile still banned as evidenced by the seizure of a shipment worth P5 million in a buy-bust operation in Quezon City on Monday.
