Health claims and functional foods: how will EU regulation shape our choices?

A report of the March 2009 meeting of the FEC’s Business Forum

Health claims underpin one of the most prominent food industry trends of the past decade: developing and marketing ‘functional foods’. The March 2009 meeting of the Food Ethics Council’s (FEC) Business Forum discussed the challenges and opportunities that new regulation poses.

The meeting was chaired by Christopher Ritson, Professor of Agricultural Marketing at the University of Newcastle and a trustee of the FEC.

We are very grateful to our two speakers: Nigel Baldwin, Senior Scientific & Regulatory Consultant at Cantox; and Sue Davies MBE, Chief Policy Adviser at Which?

Key points from the meeting include:

• Consumers like health claims as long as they feel they can trust them.
• Businesses have an incentive to claim health benefits even where these may not be of benefit to consumers.
• EU rules currently being implemented are designed to crack down on health claims for which there is insufficient evidence, and prevent them on products that have little place in a healthy diet.
• The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has until January 2010 to publish an initial list of approved health claims businesses can use.
• So far, EFSA has approved seven health claims, rejected 35 and has around 4,000 left to review.
• Businesses and consumer groups broadly support the regulation.
• However, businesses are frustrated by the uncertainty surrounding the assessments.
• Consumer groups support EFSA’s approach but are concerned that low nutrition benchmarks and special exemptions will mean health claims are permitted on products that undermine healthy eating advice.
• Some businesses argue EFSA should permit qualified health claims, for which the body of evidence is less substantial. Consumer groups disagree.
• Prohibiting qualified health claims poses an immediate barrier to R&D on functional foods and health claims by small and medium-sized businesses.
• There is little evidence that this constraint will be detrimental to public health or that qualified health claims would promote consumer freedom.