Welcome

Welcome to the November/December price list. We have made this a special edition, leaving some regular features to make room for material concerning two major issues affecting our trade, namely GMO's and the EU Food Supplements Directive. In both cases there is a sense of legislation being pushed through without proper consultation and we must keep fighting for a fair hearing.

GMO's

An extract from the Independent on Sunday via The Genetic Food Alert

Brussels tells Britain: grow more GM food , 7 October 2001

Brussels is mounting a campaign to increase vastly the amount of GM crops and foods grown and eaten in Britain and throughout Europe. The European Commission is calling a meeting next week of the 15 EU governments to persuade them to lift a three-year moratorium on approving new GM varieties.

Documents seen by this newspaper show the EC wants them almost to double the amount of approved GM foods and more than treble the number of permitted GM crops even before a recently agreed directive has been put into force.

In the US and Canada around 50 GMOs [genetically modified organisms] have been approved for use in food, whereas in the European Union, food products derived from only 13 GMOs are permitted to be placed on the market.

Adrian Bebb, GM food campaigner for Friends of the Earth, said: "The EU is trying to rush ahead - under pressure from the United States and the GM industry - disregarding concerns about public health and the environment. The gentlemen's agreements that it is proposing with industry are likely to be worthless, and, in any case, the public will resist having these products forced upon them."

See www.geneticfoodalert.org.uk

The Food Supplements Directive

This proposal on the control of food supplements in the market place has passed the first stages of becoming full European law but it has alarmed many in the Health Food Trade because of its implications.

Extracts from Penny Viner of the HFMA (October 4) (with comments from Ralph Pike of the NAHS inserted in square brackets).

The EU Council of Ministers did adopt a Common Position at their meeting on 27th September.

To quote from a letter from the Food Standards Agency, 'The UK supported the proposed compromise because we considered it to be the best achievable deal, securing primacy for safety considerations and a number of hard won concessions. The Government remains firmly committed to the view that, in the interests of consumer choice the law should allow products which are safe and properly labelled, to be freely marketed'.

The letter goes on to address concerns about the implications of the Directive for products currently on the UK market, and stresses that they would not be immediately 'outlawed' - instead, if their ingredients are not currently listed in the Annexes to the Directive, their continued use will be permitted for seven years pending safety assessments and inclusion in the Annexes.

It also explains that the setting of maximum levels for individual vitamins and minerals is the task of the Commission, acting on the advice of the EU Scientific Committee for Foodstuffs, and is subject to the view of Member States in the Standing Committee for Foodstuffs - and stresses that the position adopted allows but does not require these limits to be purely safety based.

['Article 5 should specify a method of determining the maximum permitted levels of supplement ingredients. Unfortunately, it doesn't.
If the Directive is not agreed by January, then the Presidency of the EU moves onto Spain. We understand that Spain might promote a very restrictive wording of Article 5, probably limiting all nutrients to 3 x RDA.']

The inclusion of ingredients in the Annexes so that they can continue to be used, and the role of the Standing Committee for Foodstuffs in advising the Commission on the final upper safe levels to be set always have been the crucial, and the most difficult, factors for industry to address.

Ingredients not currently in the Annexe can only be included if their safety is proved to the satisfaction of the Scientific Committee for Foods via the presentation of comprehensive dossiers - a difficult and expensive process which relies heavily on the availability of information from the primary manufacturer of the ingredient - who may not consider the expense incurred in preparing the dossier to be matched by their return from the sale of the ingredient.

['The missing ingredients can indeed be sold for a further 7 years. However, unless they are approved by the SCF during that period then they will become illegal after seven years. Secondly, the dossiers have to be submitted within 18 months, even though the product can be sold for 7 years. So if a dossier is submitted after 3 years, it is too late.
This means that 300 separate dossiers will need to be prepared and submitted to the SCF for approval.
There is no guarantee that approval will be forthcoming. Let's say that £20,000 each (dossier) is a realistic average - we are still talking about spending £6,000,000 over the next two years to stand still.']

The final setting of upper safe levels is a process involving not only scientific evaluation of safety by the Scientific Committee for Foods, but also, because of the input of the Standing Committee for Foodstuffs, a political element which will seek to determine whether the supplement is 'needed'. But - how will this be determined? What criteria will be used?

The answers to these questions are not yet forthcoming. In order to maintain 'maximum consumer choice', there is clearly an enormous amount of work ahead for our industry.

['We need to reinforce our message to the Food Standards Agency that this compromise is unacceptable, and that the Directive should mandate that maximum levels are set after consideration of safety - and for no other reason!']

The HFMA and NAHS will be keeping members and interested parties informed of developments and action to be taken.