INTERNATIONAL REGULATION
The European food and beverage industry is pushing for a set of proposed changes to the European Union’s Novel Foods Regulation commission, complaining that the current system restricts innovation.
The move is important in the U.S. as that country’s own Food and Drug Administration is in the midst of a series of hearings on the potential overhaul of its system of evaluating functional foods.
According to a spokesman for the Confederation of the Food and Drink Industries of the EU, “the revision of the regulation should stimulate innovation in the food and drink industry.”
The EU has had problems with its Novel Foods Regulation process since it was introduced in 1997. It currently takes five times as long to get a new food or beverage product approved than it does in the U.S.
Problems with regulations aren’t just restricted to Europe, however. Across the globe, terms like “natural ingredients” remain fairly ambiguous, according to Dr. Landry Le Chevanton, a scientist with DSM Nutritional Products.
Speaking at the Natural Ingredients Symposium earlier this summer, Le Chevanton noted that “There is guidance in the area in the European Union… but there is nothing uniform.”