Food Law News - EU - 2001
FSA Letter, 30 March 2001
PARNUTS - Proposed Directive on Food Supplements (2000/0080/COD) - Amended Proposal
Following the previous letter (9 March 2001),
this letter is seeking comments on the text of an amended draft proposal published
by the Commission. The amendments proposed by the Commission take into account
some of the amendments requested by the European Parliament in February. The key
changes are as follows:
- a new statement that data on vitamin and mineral sources omitted from the positive list should be submitted to the Scientific Committee for Food for urgent evaluation (Recital 10)
- the definition of 'food supplement' is extended to cover other substances with a nutritional or physiological function; specific rules shall be developed for these additional substances at a later date (Article 2)
- the definition of 'dose form' has been extended to reflect a wider range of forms in which supplements are sold (Article 2)
- the directive now requires adoption, in the future, of purity criteria for substances listed in Annex II that are not covered by existing EU legislation, in the meantime national rules for these substances continue to apply
- a proposal that upper safe levels should take into account the sensitivities of different population groups
- product labels would need to carry a warning to keep food supplements out of the reach of children, but the requirement to label products "this is not a medicinal product" has been removed (Article 6)
- a provision to enable information about the need for supplementation of specific population groups to be provided has been added (Article 7)
The next meeting to discuss the draft directive will take place on Thursday 19 April.
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