ORAFTI Backs New EU Legislation on Nutrition & Health Claims

ORAFTI Active Food Ingredients welcome the new Regulation on the use of nutrition and health claims on foods adopted by the European Parliament & Council in December 2006 and debate its impact on food labelling in the future.

30/03/07 From 1st July 2007, the Health Claims Regulation will enforce harmonised rules for the use of nutrition and health claims on food and drinks. Orafti said that it will embrace the move, as the world leader in natural prebiotic ingredients, and a company that prides itself on scientifically substantiating all nutrition and health claims. The new legislation aims to ensure fair competition as well as promote and protect innovation in the area of food. Only products offering genuine health or nutritional benefits will be allowed to refer to them on their labels. Wim Caers, Regulatory Manager at ORAFTI comments, “We are hopeful that the adoption of this new legislation will ensure that any claim made on a food label in the EU is clear, accurate and substantiated, thus enabling consumers to make informed and meaningful choices when it comes to food and drinks with nutritional or health benefits.” The use of nutrition health claims will be subject to some restrictions with nutritional profiles as an example.

In recent years, as consumers have become increasingly concerned about what they eat and how this affects their health and well being, the food industry has responded with innovation as well as by providing more detailed nutritional labelling and often making claims about the beneficial effects of certain foods. But without EU rules on labelling, consumers can be misled with claims that have not been substantiated. Wim Caers further comments, “We hope that proper enforcement of the new legislative framework will be effective to preventing abuse in this area”. In reaction to the proliferation of the number and type of claims appearing on food labels and the absence of specific guidelines at a European level, some member states have also adopted independent measures to regulate their use. This has resulted in numerous approaches and discrepancies between claim definitions. The adoption of this new proposal, covering nutrition, health and reduction of disease risk claims, aims to bring harmonisation throughout the 27 members states. Wim Caers continues, “The EU has gone a long way to fill the gap between countries that don’t have any health claim labelling regulation and certain other areas of the world where specific legislation has existed for some time”.

Thanks to ORAFTI’s research-driven approach, the new EU legislation will not dramatically impact upon the way in which it operates. ORAFTI has always dedicated a vast amount of time and resources to scientifically substantiate its proposed health claims - undertaking in excess of 300 studies, including about 100 human intervention studies, on chicory inulin, oligofructose and oligofructose-enriched inulin. Under the new Regulations a list of pre-approved claims will be established (Article 13) and ORAFTI will submit proposals for claims including digestive health and improved regularity, the stimulation of a healthy microflora, and increased calcium absorption and bone mineral density. In time, as more research data becomes available, other submissions under the new procedures will be prepared. Therefore, the efforts that ORAFTI currently put into scientific research will simply become even more important. A number of grey areas do however remain under the new legislation, including clarification of what is deemed to be “scientific evidence” and how the various nutritional profiles will be determined.

ORAFTI is confident that this new legislation will stimulate detailed scientific research in the food industry and this will help European consumers to get more accurate information on the composition and properties of food products. This will in turn allow consumers to make an informed choice whilst purchasing their foodstuffs.