Food legislation and food safety – April 2020

FCMs, endocrine disruptors, BPA
The EC has published a draft regulation to amend and correct the food contact plastics regulation (EU) 10/2011. In an article SGS looks at the changes.
The EC has also published a report (1.24 MB) summarising the feedback received from a targeted stakeholder consultation as part of the fitness check of EU legislation with regard to endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs).
FPF reports on the publication of four letters in the April 2020 issue of The Lancet about the ongoing scientific debate on human exposure to BPA.
EFSA has updated its OpenFoodTox database which now includes toxicity data on almost 5,000 chemicals drawn from over 2,000 scientific evaluations carried out by EFSA since 2002.

More news on regulations
EU: On 20 March 2020, the comment period for the EU’s farm to fork strategy closed with over 650 comments submitted. Germany: The government has sent a draft ordinance to the EC amending the Regulation on Prepackaged Products. An amendment is necessary in order to adapt the regulations to developments on a European level and to changes on a national level. South Korea: Keller and Heckman reports that the government has notified the World Trade Organization (WTO) of its proposal to amend the “Standards and Specification for Food Utensils, Containers and Packages.” The most recent version was published in 2019. US: The FDA has extended the comment period on food standards of identity until 20 July 2020. Standards of identity describe in detail what a food product must contain, how it must be proportioned and sometimes how it must be manufactured.
The International Food Information Council (IFIC) Foundation has published an article on the Nutrition Facts label looking at the history, the purpose and the updates that have taken place.

Making healthy choices
Researchers at the University of Nottingham carried out a choice-based survey using the traffic light labelling system to select healthy foods. The results showed that, when deciding on the healthiness of items, sugar was significantly the most important factor for participants. An article (abstract) about the research is published in the Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics.
In an article (332 kB) published in Nutrients, researchers at Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine studied the nutritional quality of UK food and drink products featuring child‐friendly characters on pack. They found that the use of cartoon characters on high in fat, salt and/or sugar products is widespread. They recommend considering policies to restrict the use of such marketing tactics to prevent children being targeted with unhealthy foods and drinks. In another article (466 kB) published in Nutrients, researchers at the University of Calgary give a review and assessment of child-targeted food packaging.

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