“I worked on the industrial and consumer products side of things in the past, and if you take a new chemical and put it into, say, a tennis racket, you have to notify the E.P.A. before you put it in,” Mr. Neltner said, referring to the Environmental Protection Agency. “But if you put it into food and can document it as recognized as safe by someone expert, you don’t have to tell the F.D.A.”

Michael R. Taylor, deputy commissioner for food and veterinary medicine at the agency, said: “From our standpoint, we do need to look at whether this regime established by Congress almost 60 years ago gives us the information we need. It would be desirable for F.D.A. to have more information on products being added to food.”

The F.D.A. is aware of the controversy surrounding brominated vegetable oil. It took the ingredient off its list of substances “generally recognized as safe” in 1970, after the Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association revoked its approval of it. The group’s expert panel is the primary body for evaluating the safety of flavoring substances added to food; if it rules something is “generally recognized as safe,” the F.D.A. goes along.

John Halligan, senior adviser and general counsel to the organization, said that during the late 1960s and early 1970s, the expert panel was reviewing many older additives that had been grandfathered into “generally recognized as safe” status when the federal law was changed.

“They came to B.V.O. and there had been some new studies done which weren’t definitive,” he said. “The panel looked at data and said it doesn’t look like we have an adequate database here to conclude this substance is generally recognized as safe, so they revoked its status.”

Subsequently, Patricia El-Hinnawy, a spokeswoman for the F.D.A, wrote in an e-mail, the agency asked the association to do studies on brominated vegetable oil in mice, rats, dogs and pigs. She said that the organization made “several submissions of safety data” to the F.D.A. while those studies were going on, roughly from 1971 to 1974.

“F.D.A. determined that the totality of evidence supported the safe use of B.V.O. in fruit-flavored beverages up to 15 parts per million,” Ms. El-Hinnawy wrote.