The EU Directorate General Health and Consumer Protection has launched a discussion paper presenting the key issues concerning the harmonisation of health claims permissible on foods. This area is currently driven by scientists and food manufacturers who often feel they are held back by inadequate legislation that prevents them from informing consumers about the health benefits of their products.
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Legislative bodies around the world are under pressure to catch up, and the EU Commission has confirmed that drafting rules governing the classification and conditions for use of nutritional and functional claims have “a very high priority.”
Food Navigator discusses the difficulties impeding progress on this front, stressing that one of the main obstacles encountered when talking about claims is “the lack of common understanding of the terminology used.” The Commission stresses that it is essential to reach a common agreement on a variety of different definitions. The first at the table is the generic term “claim”. The Commission proposes that the “claim” definition provided by the Codex Alimentarius, broader than the EU definition on nutrition claims, serves as a starting point for discussions.
The definition in Codex defines claims as “Any representation which states, suggests or implies that a food has particular characteristics relating to its origin, nutritional properties, nature, production, processing, composition, or any other quality.”
The discussion paper proposed this week does not cover health claims that are described as “disease risk reduction claims.”
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