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dairy innovation has been talking to key people in and around the dairy industry. How would you summarise the current state of health claims legislation? European Dairy Association Secretary General Joop Kleibeuker said that in Europe the Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006 aims to ensure that only nutrition and health claims that can be substantiated by scientific evidence may be made. The regulation covers all forms of commercial advertising and promotion including generic campaigns partly funded with public money. “Health claims, even if approved, can only be on products that are of acceptable nutritional composition as assessed in comparison with a ‘nutrient profile’. This profile has yet to be finalised. The approach so far
www.foodbev.com/dairy Issue 31 - June · July 2010
adopted by the Commission is to base the profile on negative nutrients such as fat and salt. This will discriminate against dairy products. If a product fails one criteria of the nutrient profile then it will not be allowed to bear any health claim. Nutrition claims will be allowed where a single nutrient exceeds the nutrient profile provided that a claim about the ‘failing’ nutrient is displayed with equal prominence on the label. “By 31 January 2009, the Commission had received more than 44,000 Article 13 health claims from Member States national lists which were consolidated into a list of 4,000 health claims and passed on to the European Food Standards Agency for evaluation. EFSA has in the meantime assessed
Joop Kleibeuker whether those claims can proceed into evaluation. EFSA has added different criteria to each claim indicating their status, eg foreseen deadlines for evaluation and publication. EFSA has not been able to evaluate all submitted claims in time to allow the Commission to adopt the Community Register
of permitted Article 13 health claims by the deadline of 31 January 2010.” Paul Donegan, Marketing Manager at dairy industry supplier Carbery Ingredients said the process is moving slowly and is causing some uncertainty for many companies and sectors.
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