Health and Related Claims for Food: Feedback Wanted
Tighter controls are proposed over nutrition, health and related claims for food in a new policy paper issued by Food Standards Australia NZ (FSANZ). Manufacturers will also be prohibited from making any health claims at all for some foods, including infant formula and alcohol products.
If the proposed controls are adopted unmodified, there will be two levels of claims in the proposed standard:
- General-level claims - these will cover either the content of a food (e.g., this food is high in calcium), or make a general-level health claim on a non-serious disease (e.g., yoghurt high in X and Y as part of a healthy diet may reduce your risk of stomach upsets).
- High-level health claims - these will describe the function of a nutrient, vitamin, mineral or other substance in relation to a serious disease (e.g., this food is low in sodium. Diets low in sodium may reduce the risk of hypertension).
All claims will require substantiation with scientific evidence and, in the case of high-level claims, they will be assessed by FSANZ before the product goes on the market.
There will be specific criteria for those foods for which claims are allowed. As an example, food carrying a health claim must have limits on the amount of fat, sugar and salt.
In addition there will be specific qualifying criteria for some nutrient content claims (e.g., food described as "low salt" must contain no more than 120mg per 100g for solid food) and there will be additional information on all content and health claims (e.g., the percentage of daily nutritional needs).
FSANZ is proposing a 24-month transition period after the standard becomes law to give industry time to make the required changes to labelling and to alert consumers to the new rules.
Submissions close on 22 February. The document is called "Proposal P293 -Nutrition, Health and Related Claims", and can be downloaded from: http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/standardsdevelopment/proposals/proposalp293nutritionhealthandrelatedclaims/index.cfm |
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