The Standing Committee was informed that milks intended for young children from the age of 1 year were on their market for the last two years. These products were either specially prepared milks enriched with vitamins, minerals and polyunsaturated fatty acids or ordinary cow's milks enriched with a number of nutrients.
According to the Member State concerned these products should not be classified as foods for particular nutritional uses because they do not satisfy any particular nutritional requirements of the persons they are intended for. In the discussion that followed it emerged that these products were not on the market in all Member States. However, in some of them the products were marketed as foods for particular nutritional uses under the procedure of Article 9 of Directive 89/398/EEC. It was not clear whether the products marketed in the different Member States were identical and in particular whether they were specially manufactured products or ordinary enriched cow's milk. In the absence of clear examples of labels of these products there were also questions about their presentation as foods for particular nutritional uses.
For the above reasons the discussion was not conclusive. It was agreed that Member States would provide by the end of July 2001, detailed information about the products that were marketed in their territory, their classification as foods for particular nutritional uses or not and the rational for this classification. The Commission would compile a document on the basis of that information which would serve for a more in depth discussion on the matter.