Health benefit claims on food labels face EU assessment

THE health benefits of hundreds of Irish food products are to be thoroughly examined by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) as part of an international set of standards for food labelling.

A total of 314 health claims were submitted by the Food Safety Authority (FSA) of Ireland for inclusion on an approved list of health claims for the European Community.

Over the next two years, those submissions as well as the thousands submitted from the other EU countries will be assessed by the EFSA before it compiles a statutory list of approved claims, which must be adhered to in the labelling of all food and food supplements.

If the EFSA finds against a submission, any makers of a product which had made the claim of benefit will no longer be able to make reference to it on their labels.

According to Dr Mary Flynn, chief specialist in public health nutrition with the FSA, the drive to have an agreed set of Europe-wide standards is the result of legislation that came into law in 2007.

“Member states were becoming increasingly concerned at the number of products they are seeing and the claims they were making,” she said.

“Those claims must not mislead the consumer.”

Dr Flynn admitted Ireland was one of the last countries to put its requirements from the companies making submissions online. As a result, while Ireland has only 314 claims submitted to Europe, Germany has 10,000. However, she said there was good reason for Ireland’s delay in making the system available.

The FSAI requested a detailed description of the information the submissions would need to contain so it could ask a range of pertinent questions of the companies before they made their request.

The claims on this final approved EU list will be the only health claims allowed on food products from January 31, 2010 onwards.

The full list of health claims from Ireland along with explanatory notes is available at www.fsai.ie.