FDA SCOGS petfood history

FDA's SCOGS (Select Committee on GRAS Substances) database preserves opinions and conclusions from 115 SCOGS reports published between 1972 and 1980 on the safety of over 370 GRAS food substances, commissioned in response to a 1969 White House directive by President Nixon. SCOGS entries relevant to pet food preservatives and processing aids (parsed corpus of 381 entries, with report number, year, conclusion type and CFR citation): butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) — report 55 (1978), conclusion type 3, 21 CFR 182.3169; butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) — report 2 (1973), conclusion type 3, 21 CFR 172.115; propylene glycol — report 27 (1973), conclusion type 1, 21 CFR 184.1666; tocopherols — report 36 (1975), conclusion type 1, 21 CFR 184.1890. Ethoxyquin is not a SCOGS substance — it is regulated as a feed additive under 21 CFR 573.380 — and the report numbers cited in the earlier draft (opinions 87, 85/86, 69) do not exist in the database. SCOGS opinions are advisory rather than binding regulation, but they remain cited in GRAS determinations; note that propylene glycol's later cat-food prohibition (21 CFR 589.1001, due to Heinz body formation in cats) came through FDA rulemaking, not AAFCO. Modern pet food safety assessments generally rely on more current toxicological data than the 1972-1980 SCOGS reviews.