Many age-old product category descriptors – including , ‘cough drops’, ‘tonic water’ and ‘digestive biscuit’ – could be banned under the EU Nutrition and Health Claims Regulation (NHCR), warns health campaign group the Alliance for Natural Health.
Monday saw the deadline for interested parties to submit comments to the UK’s Department of Health on European Commission (EC) proposals for one of several unresolved areas of the NHCR. In its comments, submitted yesterday, the ANH – described the EC’s proposals on generic descriptors as “preposterous” and “absurd”
Far from culling current descriptors, ANH says the category should be increased to cover such terms as ‘probiotic’, ‘prebiotic’, ‘antioxidant’ and ‘sports drink’, amongst others.
Commenting on its submission, ANH’s executive and scientific director, Robert Verkerk PhD, said, “It’s as if the European Commission wants to create an approach for the use of generic descriptors that is so restrictive that hardly any will ever make it onto the marketplace.” One of the overriding EC views is that generic descriptors should not be allowed if consumers might interpret them as implying a health or nutritional benefit.
ANH takes particular issue with a view within the Commission that companies should be forced to prove that their chosen generic descriptor does not infer a health or nutritional benefit to the consumer. The group comments that “proving a negative in this way could be both technically very challenging and prohibitively expensive for smaller companies and niche food business operators.”
Picture shows the author’s personal Digestives
