The Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) today announces a national consultation on proposed changes to an important piece of European food legislation regulating nutritional food products. The European Commission has recently developed a new proposal to simplify current legislation which is being debated by Ireland and other Member States.  The proposed changes will affect how all nutritional food products are regulated in the future.  This is an opportunity for all interested parties to give their views and comment on the new proposal at an early stage in its development.

The proposed changes affect a wide range of people in Ireland including:

• consumers of nutritional food products;
• food businesses manufacturing, distributing or marketing these products;
• Health Professionals using nutritional food products;
• food law enforcers;
• food law experts.  

Nutritional food products affected by the new proposal cover an extensive variety of foodstuffs including:

• Infant and follow on formulas,
• Processed cereals and other baby foods,
• Foods for special medical purposes (sip feeds, specialised food products),
• Gluten free and very low gluten foods,
• Foods for weight reduction and Very Low Calorie Diets,
• Sports foods,
• Diabetic foods,
• Toddler milks, lactose-free foods etc.

The proposed changes to this legislation will determine which types of rules will be used to regulate certain nutritional food products.  Some categories of nutritional food products will continue to have extensive regulation of composition (e.g. infant formulas).  However, it is planned to regulate other nutritional food products under labelling regulations such as Nutrition and Health Claims Regulation (1924/2006) or the new Food Information Regulation[1]

While the new proposal for regulating nutritional food products will simplify the legislation, it is important that consumers’ best interests are catered for and they are adequately protected.  Decisions on which set of rules will be used to regulate different nutritional food products are important. Issues of safety and adequacy of information provided for consumers need to be considered.  In addition the requirements of food businesses involved in nutritional food products, need to be taken into account to ensure that the burden of regulation is no more onerous than necessary to achieve protection of consumers and that innovation is facilitated.

According to Dr Mary Flynn, FSAI “The feed-back we receive on the new proposal to regulate nutritional food products will help the Department of Health and the FSAI represent the Irish viewpoint in EU discussions”.  She concluded that, “this consultation aims to give all interested parties an opportunity to voice their opinions which will ultimately influence the development of the legislation, its implementation and its impact”. 

The public and interested parties who would like to comment on the proposed changes are invited to complete a questionnaire available on link to PARNUTs Questionnaire  where background information and further detail on this consultation process is also available.  The consultation will run for one month and the closing date for responses is 15 December 2011.

All opinions and views submitted in this consultation will be considered in the development of Ireland’s position on the proposed changes to EU legislation regulating Nutritional Food Products (PARNUTs).

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