Europe’s food watchdog has finished its evaluation of almost 3,000 health claims put forward by manufacturers for use on their products. The process has had its critics but, now that it is complete, what will be the impact on the industry? MJ Deschamps reports.
After three years of painstaking scientific work, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has finished assessing 2,758 health claims made by EU food manufacturers about their products.
The companies appear not to have covered themselves in glory. A breathtaking 80% of food-related general health claims were found by EFSA’s panel on dietetic products, nutrition and allergies to be either plain wrong, or not proved by the documentary evidence supplied.
Given many of these claims are currently in use, the next six months could prove disruptive to many manufacturers. The European Commission and EU member states represented by the EU standing committee on the food chain and animal health will now decide whether to ban these claims. Brussels has said it wants to complete this by the end of the year.
An EFSA note provided some reasons for the failure rate. Where companies failed to supply enough data, this was particularly common for claims about probiotics or dietary fibre, even extending to companies not specifying what fibre they were talking about.
An important failure was the use of assumptions about ingredients. An example are foods those with supposed antioxidant properties. To make health claims for these foods, companies needed to provide medical data showing evidence that consumption changes consumers’ bodies in a positive way. In many cases, firms just had not done their homework.
How well do you really know your competitors?
Access the most comprehensive Company Profiles on the market, powered by GlobalData. Save hours of research. Gain competitive edge.

Thank you!
Your download email will arrive shortly
Not ready to buy yet? Download a free sample
We are confident about the unique quality of our Company Profiles. However, we want you to make the most beneficial decision for your business, so we offer a free sample that you can download by submitting the below form
By GlobalDataThe same problems afflicted the framing of claims – they were often so imprecise, scientific proof was just about impossible. EFSA said this was a particular issue for claims referring to terms such as ‘energy’ and ‘vitality’, or claims on women’s health or mental energy.
Similarly, companies often made claims about food groups that were so broad, their diversity made making scientifically-valid health claims most dubious. They were, said, the authority, “too broad – such as ‘fruits and vegetables’ and ‘dairy products’ – to be linked to specific effects”. What EFSA wanted most of all was “human studies with reliable measures of the claimed health benefit”. Often, its panel did not get these.
If the Commission and EU member states agree, then they will ban the rejected claims, or block their future use. Companies can appeal, and submit more information to EFSA to request a new assessment but if that does not work then only a case at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) will get these claims onto packaging. And that is an expensive and risky process, with companies having to prove the EU institutions have broken their own food claim regulations.
So what did get approved? EFSA said that sufficient evidence was supplied for claims on a number of ingredients and health benefits. These included vitamins and minerals; specific dietary fibres related to blood glucose control, blood cholesterol, or weight management; and live yoghurt cultures and lactose digestion;
Enough evidence was also submitted, for instance, on claims on the antioxidant effects of polyphenols in olive oil, on walnuts and the improved function of blood vessels and on meal replacement and weight control. Manufacturers also submitted sufficient evidence on claims around fatty acids and heart health and the role of sugar replacers (such as xylitol and sorbitol) in maintaining tooth mineralisation or lowering the increase of blood glucose levels after meals.
Industry reaction, however, has been mixed. Patrick Coppens, secretary general of the European Responsible Nutrition Alliance of major European food supplement manufacturers and suppliers, says there was “mounting concern” among the scientific community due to the way claims had to be submitted.
Many claims were receiving negative EFSA opinions as the format used to submit them was not consistent with the format adopted by the authority to assess them, Coppens said. “This is the result of no guidance being available for industry on the submission of claims,” he says. He adds that this “may ultimately affect the credibility of the European system”.
Claudia Meissner, a spokesperson for food ingredients maker Beneo, which is owned by German sugar refiner Suedzucker, says revoking a large number of health claims had tarnished the industry somewhat.
“As in all industries there might have been a few black sheep misleading the consumer with promising health claims that were not substantiated, but today it looks like the whole industry is a flock of black sheep, which definitely is not the case.”
She warns that the European food market could become weaker overall, and less innovative. “It has become very difficult to build a reasonable return on investment in Europe in the food market [even before the EFSA process]. As a consequence, food and nutrition innovation will not come out of Europe anymore. It will not be an easy job to keep or regain consumer confidence with regard to products that communicated via a health benefit.”
Graham Keen, executive director of the UK’s Health Food Manufacturers Association (HFMA) agrees. “Some companies will move centres of innovation elsewhere in the world where the regulatory environment is less draconian,” he says. “To draw an analogy, between 2000 and 2006, the proportion of the world’s pharmaceutical clinical trials conducted in the UK fell from 6% to 2%, in large part because of more attractive regulation elsewhere in the world.”
Jonathan Shorts, managing director at London based Gee Lawson Ltd – a leading European seller, marketer and distributor of quality raw materials to the nutritional and chemical sectors – speculates that companies might delay submitting health claim dossiers for products until it becomes clearer what is needed to succeed. “The EFSA rulings and their implications are only just being understood.”
The EFSA process has been frustrating for the industry but most wrinkles are now smoothed out, according to Roger Clarke, an operating board member of the Association of the Food Industries for Particular Nutritional Uses of the European Union (IDACE), which represents the views of a number of dietetic food industry associations from EU member states. “EFSA is much more consistent now than at the start,” he says. “As rules become more precise and transparent, it will help manufacturers in years to come.”
Unsurprisingly, consumer groups have welcomed developments. “We are quite happy with EFSA’s work,” says a spokesman for BEUC, the European Consumers’ Organisation. “The fact that 80% of the health claims have been disproved is proof that they really did a good job checking scientific evidence.” In future, consumers would be able to really trust information on the food they were buying, the spokesman adds.
A leading consultant sympathises with this view. “There is going to be less rubbish,” insists Nigel Baldwin, director of scientific and regulatory consulting for Europe at Intertek Cantox, which assists food companies with documentation and submissions for health claims. “Anything new will be really seriously thought out before just marketing it. I think maybe trust will return to the industry, especially if companies are really allowed to market the fact that the claim is EU approved.”
Some manufacturers fear that the depth of supportive evidence required for claims will play into the hands of large multinationals.
Citing one industry estimate that starting a dossier from zero would cost at least EUR5m, HFMA’s Keen warns: “SMEs were intended to benefit from the Nutrition and Health Claims Regulation (NHCR) but will be unable to afford the very high costs of accumulating substantial scientific data. Alternatively, they will focus their diminishing resources on ‘working around’ the NHCR – for example, by using ‘meaningless’ health claims – or substituting soft branding for tangible information.”
Consumers might then notice the absence of reassuring claims for products that they know are effective based on long-established advice, Keen says. “And wild claims will still be able to be made for products sourced from outside the EU, such as the Channel Islands and Switzerland.”