Nutrition and Health Claims Regulation

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Nutrition and Health Claims Regulation

Sat, 19 Mar 2005 12:53:43 -0000

 

Although it appears to be only about food,this EU Directive will

seriously affect health claims made about dietary supplements. It has

already been knocked back once at the European Parliament and just

going through now for the second time. It will severely impact on what

companies can say to consumers, what practitioners can say to patients

about supplements.

 

from www.alliance-natural-health.org

 

Nutrition and Health Claims Regulation

 

The Environment Committee of the European Parliament met on 5 April

2004 to consider the proposed Regulation to prohibit all health and

nutrition claims made on or for foods.

 

It agreed to enact Article 165 of the rules and procedures of the

Parliament to force the regulations back to the drawing board, it

being so problematic.

 

For a news item on this important vote,

 

A claim is any message or representation, including pictorial, graphic

or symbolic, which states, suggests or implies that a food has

particular characteristics (Article 2).

 

A food is any substance or product that is intended or reasonably

expected to be ingested by humans. It does not include live animals,

plants prior to harvesting, medicines, animal feed or tobacco. It does

include foods intended for supply to restaurants, hospitals, schools,

canteens and caterers (Article 1).

 

Serious objections have been raised in the UKas well as other Member

States if this Regulation is implemented in its present form on the

grounds that:

 

1 Consumers will suffer from lack of information – as producers and

retailers will not be allowed to advise them of the benefits of a food

or supplement and secondly from limited product range – as many niche

products will disappear from the market.

 

2 There has been inadequate consultation as it appears that many

businesses were unaware of the implications of the Regulation and, by

the FSA's own admission, no proper account has been taken of the

financial impact on business.

 

3 At the very least 2000 small businesses are estimated to close and

the ripple effect of this will jeopardise many others particularly in

the publishing and advertising sectors.

 

4 As the European Food Safety Authority is being asked to approve any

claim, we do not believe that they will be able to cope with the mass

of applications that will come from UK alone. Our assessment takes no

account of applications from other Member States.

 

5 The effect of the Regulation falls more heavily on small business

and this is contrary to the Lisbon Accord.

 

For these reasons alone it was considered prudent to encourage delay

approval of the Regulation until such time that all the objections

have been examined and realistic solutions devised.

 

The Forum of Private Business in the UK along with several trade

organisations including the ANH has been asking MEPs to delay approval

of the Regulation and consider carefully all the objections raised.

 

 

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