Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-05-25-Speech-3-204"
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"en.20050525.21.3-204"2
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".
Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the Commission’s proposal on nutrition and health claims has arisen from the possibility of building on the consumer’s growing interest in receiving clear information on the nutritional and health value of foods, and from the need for the food industry to respond to this urgent request with clear, accurate and significant information, which is substantiated scientifically. All of this should take place within a framework of harmonised market regulations, in order to enable food business operators to be competitive according to fair and equitable regulatory criteria.
In setting the nutrient profiles, the Commission will consult both food business operators and consumer groups, in addition to the Agency, which will see its role strengthened as a result of its involvement in the various stages and procedures.
It must be acknowledged, at this stage, that the two years that have passed since the presentation have not been in vain, since all the interested parties – the Commission itself, the Council, Parliament, industry, consumers and the Economic and Social Committee – have recorded significant progress.
The Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety has made many amendments to the Commission’s text, however, in particular by removing Article 4, which, in my opinion, is an extremely important article because it sets out the nutrient profiles. The coherence and complexity of the regulation would, moreover, be of truly little significance if this article were not reintroduced. It is an article that I hope my fellow Members will wish to reintroduce.
Healthy food and good health go hand in hand as benchmarks for the behaviour of consumers, who have a much greater awareness of their diet these days and who are increasingly concerned to know what they are eating and to understand how food products impact on their health.
This is the behaviour of the average consumer, and the food industry has attempted to respond to this behaviour by means of more detailed nutritional labelling, providing claims on the positive benefits, or alleged benefits, of some foods.
It is a fact that the two basic EU directives in force – Directives 2000/13 and 90/496, relating to the labelling and nutrition labelling of foodstuffs respectively – are not only inadequately enforced in the majority of cases, but they also respond poorly to the present
day demands of consumers, since they do not allow any data to be given on the alleged health benefits, and they do not clearly define the conditions of use of the nutrition claims.
The absence of specific provisions at European level has given rise, moreover, to a real proliferation of claims on the labels of food products – claims varying in number and type. The Member States have adopted independent provisions and standards to regulate the use of the various claims. This results in a regulatory mess, with different approaches to the same subject
matter, which has given rise to a state of confusion that leads to neither the effective running of the internal market, nor the safeguarding of public health and consumer health.
Faced with such legal uncertainty, there is a need to harmonise the regulations relating to foodstuffs at Community level and, therefore, a need for a regulation which, without banning any foods, will clearly set out the fundamental conditions to ensure that the claims on foodstuffs are completely accurate for consumers. That is one further step forwards in implementing the nutrition policy included in the objectives proposed by the Commission in 1999 with the White Paper on food safety. In this White Paper it is expressly stated that the Union’s food policy should be built around strict food safety standards that protect and promote the health of the consumer.
To these objectives must be added that of increasing the free movement of food products, in that the creation of a regulation will enable food business operators to be competitive on a fair and equal footing throughout the Member States.
With the document that we are studying, the Commission has proposed the introduction of a new regulatory framework for nutrition and health claims, authorising the use of nutrition claims provided that they comply with the provisions set out in the annex
which contains a list of nutrition claims and specific conditions for the use thereof:
the use of health claims will be subject to an authorisation or notification procedure (if the Commission’s text were to remain unchanged).
Through the procedures laid down by Article 93(2), the Commission proposes to draw up specific nutrient profiles for foods or categories of foods within a period of 18 months, which could rise to as much as 30 months, and, subject to consultation of the Food Safety Agency, specific nutrient profiles for foods or categories of foods, and the adoption of a Community list of health claims which describe the generally accepted role of a nutrient or other substances on the basis of proposals submitted by the Member States."@en1
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