Most of us like to categorise things, because it helps us to understand and organise what we do and how we think about the world around us. If you plan your shopping, using words that categorise products is surely helpful. How many of us know what we mean when we talk about superfruits, probiotics, prebiotics, digestives or tonic water?
Closing the last door on commercial free speech in the food sector?
Well, guess what? In deciding how it’s going to handle a category of claims called generic descriptors, Brussels wants to see all of them banned if they give the impression that they might be of benefit to the consumer's health! In our view, this is another step toward totalitarian control both of the food supply, and of the language used to communicate about healthy foods.
Like so many European Union (EU) laws, implementation of the controversial EU Nutrition and Health Claims Regulation occurs in stages. This is another way of making sure the law works to ‘boil the frog slowly’. It allows the most troublesome provisions, like the lists of authorised and non-authorised health claims (botanicals still remain ‘on hold’), to be implemented years after the Regulation’s original passage into effective EU law in July 2007.
One of these delayed provisions relates to ‘generic descriptors’: terms that help companies and consumers to categorise different types of food and beverage products. And yes (horror of horrors!), the Regulation itself acknowledges that these might be construed by the consumer as implying some kind of health benefit.
No implied health claims in generic descriptors allowed
The European Commission’s latest views on the subject amount to some of the greatest impositions on commercial speech yet seen in the food sector. There is a clear intention by the Commission to shut down any wriggle room in the ‘generic descriptors’ provision nestled away within the Regulation. But handled more liberally, the provision could help undo some of the mischief created by the Regulation’s most onerous provisions — notably the extreme difficulty of substantiating health claims using the European Food Safety Authority’s ridiculously inappropriate requirements.
Time for action
Our best chance is to get the public, EU Member States and the European Parliament to see the folly in what the European Commission is planning — and to propose alternatives that are workable.
We’ve kicked off our campaign on this issue with a press release issued today, just after our submission of detailed comments to the UK government.
Depending on the outcome of the Member State consultation, we’ll probably ask you to again write letters to your Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). At the moment, it’s not on their agenda, and we will carry on our work behind the scenes to see if we can help Member State governments to put pressure on the European Commission.
In the meantime, get yourself up to speed on the latest example of Brussels authoritarianism — and get ready to tell your elected representatives how you feel about it!
PRESS RELEASE
30th January 2013 For immediate release
EUROPEAN COMMISSION TRIES CLOSING DOOR ON PRODUCT DESCRIPTORS
ANH-Intl highlights challenges as well as solutions with EC proposals for food and beverage ‘generic descriptors’
Consumers around Europe could be plunged further into the dark as foods and beverages stand to lose hundreds of commonly recognised descriptors. The outcome of a European Commission (EC) consultation could see an end to categorising descriptors, such as ‘digestif’, 'cough drops', 'tonic water' and 'digestive biscuit', under the controversial EU Nutrition and Health Claims Regulation (NHCR).
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 Alliance for Natural Health International (ANH-Intl) – a UK-based campaign organisation that works to promote and protect natural health and consumer choice – described the EC's proposals on generic descriptors as “preposterous” and “absurd”. Far from culling current descriptors, ANH believes that the category should be increased to cover such terms as 'probiotic', 'prebiotic', 'antioxidant' and 'sports drink', amongst others.
Commenting on its submission, ANH-Intl’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.
The EC even suggests that companies should be forced to prove that their chosen generic descriptor does not infer a health or nutritional benefit to the consumer. ANH-Intl stresses that proving a negative in this way could be both technically very challenging and prohibitively expensive for smaller companies and niche food business operators.
Even more remarkably, the Commission suggests that generic descriptors could be limited to the language of the country in which the descriptor was traditionally used. Dr Verkerk said of this, “You’ve got to wonder if the European Commission hasn’t lost the plot with this one. It’s a bit like saying that Indian restaurants that provide after-dinner digestive seed mixes would have to refer to them solely by their Sanskrit term, mukhwas!”
ANH-Intl also believes that some of the EC suggestions are legally disproportionate. This will create adverse affects for smaller companies and niche suppliers that have long used generic descriptors as a means of categorising the food or beverage products they sell.
Finally, ANH-Intl argues that the approach for applications for generic descriptors is premature, given that the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has not yet completed its evaluation of more than 1500 botanical health claims that were put on hold by the EC over 2 years ago.
ENDS.
CONTACTS
Robert Verkerk, PhD, executive and scientific director, ANH-Intl; tel +44 (0)1306 646 600, email [email protected]
EDITOR’S NOTES
Download ANH-Intl comments on the European Commission Working Group’s discussion on generic descriptors: /sites/default/files/130128_ANH_consultation_input_generic_descriptors.pdf
While generic descriptors were always factored into the original text of the EU Regulation, passed in 2007, it’s only now that the EC is trying to reach agreement on how applications should be handled.
Download copy of request for comments from UK Department for Health (dated 17 January 2013, page 2): /sites/default/files/IP_Update_Jan_2013_CWG_Final.pdf
Whilst the ANH-Intl has challenged many of the suggestions made by the European Commission Working Group, it has also offered solutions. This includes the use of disclaimers on labelling and related commercial communications that leave no doubt in the consumer’s mind that any health or nutritional claim implied by the descriptor has not been evaluated by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). ANH-Intl also proposes that conditions of use could be approved alongside the generic descriptor that gave the consumer background information about the traditional use.
About the ANH-Intl [see anhinternational.org for European website]
Alliance for Natural Health International is an internationally active non- governmental organisation working towards protecting and promoting natural approaches to healthcare. ANH-Intl campaigns across a wide range of fields, including for freedom of choice and the use of micronutrients and herbal products in healthcare. It also operates campaigns that aim to end mass fluoridation of water supplies and the use of genetically modified foods. Through its work particularly in Europe (anhinternational.org) and the USA (www.anh-usa.org), the ANH works to accomplish its mission through its unique application of ‘good science’ and ‘good law’. The organisation was founded in 2002 by Dr Robert Verkerk, an internationally acclaimed expert in sustainability, who has headed the organisation since this time. The ANH brought a case against the European directive on food supplements in 2003, which was successfully referred to the European Court of Justice in early 2004. The ruling in 2005 provided significant clarification to areas of EU law affecting food supplements that were previously non-transparent.
Comments
your voice counts
30 January 2013 at 7:59 pm
Let us just get the hell out of this Brussels Fascist Cabal and then work on our own rulers. While you pussyfoot around they are all laughing their way to their multi million pound pensions and their promised consultants jobs from the globalist making the party donations.
It may already be too late as the only country in the world with a real written constitution is slowly seeing theirs dismantled by successive Presidents (especially the current one). Once the USA constitution has gone so is the last vestige of personal freedom in the world.
For those who do not know Fascism is an Italian word and Mussolini said he preferred to describe it as Corporatism. Corporatism is the fusion of big government and big global business to control our lives. Lets call it by the original name, Fascism.
Time is not on our side.
02 February 2013 at 11:27 am
TIME FOR ACTION! That was over 20 years ago when the Brussels Fascist Agenda was revealed to take away all rights and responsibilities and replace them with directives.
You sound like the People's Front of Judea. Attend a meeting? Press release? Writings letters to your MEP? This sounds like Neville Chamberlain waving his bit of paper from Herr Hitler.
One day your children and grandchildren will ask, what did you do when the Brussels Fascist Cabel was stealing away all of your rights and responsibilities? Writing a letter to an MEP?
We need a Churchill now to rally the troops. Is it Nigel Farage,? I do not know but if the ANH is not going to get behind a leader who will fight for our freedoms then you better find an organisation who will if you. The time for writing letters is long gone. THIS IS THE TIME FOR REAL ACTIONS.
RobertRedfern
05 February 2013 at 10:46 am
Dear Robert, with all due respect, we think you're somewhat off the mark with your comments. We can certainly sympathise with the position in which your business finds itself, thanks to efforts being made by UK and EU interests to try to export EU legislation to the Channel Islands. The cost of relocating to Hong Kong must be considerable. We are actively working behind the scenes to prevent the Guernsey legislation from passing, or at least to lessen its worst effects, and we would have appreciated the support of you and your company. And since the Guernsey campaign needs all the supporters it can get, the voice of Good Health Naturally, as a major player in the Guernsey health business sector, would have been a powerful ally. So while we hope that Hong Kong offers a kinder business environment for you, we are disappointed that Good Health Naturally will not be sticking around to fight for a better outcome in Guernsey and elsewhere.
Most of our work, in fact, goes on behind the scenes out of necessity. Letter-writing campaigns and the like are only one aspect of the public face of a successful campaign organisation, but they are absolutely vital to make the ‘powers that be’ aware of public feeling on a particular issue. Elsewhere, to take just two examples, work such as Parliamentary lobbying and preparation for court cases occur out of the public eye – and have led directly to achievements of which you appear to be unaware. Without ANH’s involvement, there would be no scope for EU sale of vitamin and mineral forms other than those listed in Annex II of the Food Supplements Directive; vitamins and minerals in food supplements would probably already be subject to maximum permitted levels, and the flawed science being used to set those levels would remain unexposed; the paltry list of EFSA-approved health claims resulting from the Nutrition and Health Claims Regulation would have gone unchallenged; and dozens of products would have disappeared from EU shelves following unjustified classification by regulators as medicines or novel foods. Perhaps most importantly, given the scale of the task before us, there would be no single, independent organisation actively representing the interests of a diverse range of innovative companies, skilled and conscientious practitioners and concerned, health-conscious consumers (including your customers!) throughout Europe.
What makes our work so rewarding, other than these successes per se, is the feedback we receive from supporters who feel they have benefitted from what we do. We always welcome interaction with our supporters – and even from our detractors! – and it is a little puzzling when people from whom we would have expected a measure of support and encouragement offer only criticism and ridicule. The small team of us at ANH would respectfully suggest that more regular interaction between you and ANH might result in a clearer idea of the true situation, and avoid any further ill-informed criticism.
As for getting out of the EU: again with respect, it ain’t as easy as all that! Our long experience of bureaucrats, in the UK and elsewhere, has made it very clear that those in the relevant positions of power are anti-natural healthcare – full stop. Official attitudes at UK institutions like the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), Department of Health and even the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) are not going to change overnight, even in the event that the UK were to leave the EU.
And while the EU’s future is apparently less certain than it has been for many years, and perhaps since its inception, there are already many groups calling individual Member States to leave the Union. Nigel Farage’s UKIP is just one of them. Rather than shout us down, perhaps you should consider setting up a group of your own and trying to effect the change you wish to see in the world – as we have done, albeit in a slightly different, but nonetheless complementary, area. ANH is not a political party and was not set up to campaign for a breakup of the EU. We’ll stick to what we’re good at: campaigning for the rights of citizens to access and use natural healthcare worldwide. We would be delighted to accept any support that you can offer toward the achievement of that goal.
Your voice counts
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