Food legislation and food safety – November 2024
Food Contact Materials (FCMs) – rules and regulations
China: Keller and Heckman reports that the NHC has approved one new resin and expanded usage for four additives and a resin for FCMs.
Montenegro: SGS reports that the government has published regulations (in Montenegrin) for regenerated cellulose film FCMs. The law that transposes Directive 2007/42/EC became effective on 19 October 2024.
US: FPF reports that the FDA has announced that a major reorganisation of its Human Foods Program is now in effect. The reorganisation aims to create a more efficient regulatory structure better able to address the complexities of modern food safety, labelling, and nutrition. The FDA has responded to objections on the agency’s final rule that removed the authorised food contact uses of most phthalates because industry abandoned these uses. The FDA evaluated the objections and concluded that they did not provide a basis for modifying the final rule. SGS reports that the federal government has introduced proposal H.R. 9864, cited as the ‘Keep Food Containers Safe from PFAS Act of 2024’, prohibiting the intentional usage of PFAS in food packaging as of 1 January 2025.
Claims, marking and labelling
NL: The NVWA has recently updated their booklet on food labelling (in Dutch). Nutri-Score (in Dutch) is the government's official food choice logo since the beginning of this year. Participation is voluntary. Through GS1 Data Source (in Dutch), GS1's data pool, food manufacturers can submit the data required for Nutri-Score to the Food Database (in Dutch). GS1 reports (in Dutch) that new fields have been created for this purpose because some data were not yet incorporated in the data pool.
UK: The House of Lords has published a report (2.33 MB) urging the Government to adopt a new food strategy to address the problem of obesity. One of the recommendations is the introduction of mandatory front-of-pack nutrition labelling that clearly distinguishes healthier and less healthy products.
Clamping down on counterfeit food and drinks in the EU
Europol reports that more than €90 million worth of counterfeit and substandard food and beverages was seized in the 2024 edition of operation OPSON. The investigators noticed a continued trend in fraudsters selling expired food that should be destroyed. After erasing and re-printing the expiration dates or attaching new labels, they re-introduce the expired products into the supply chain. As far as counterfeit and wrongly designated foods are concerned, olive oil and wines featuring a protected designation of origin are the most affected types of products. Another investigation supported by Europol, led to the dismantling of a criminal network counterfeiting French Protected Designation of Origin wines in Italy.
Migration of nanoplastics from packaging into food
The widespread use of plastics in food packaging, particularly during heat processing, has raised significant concerns about the release of micro- and nanoplastics into food. In a review article (8.41 MB) published in Food Control, researchers at the Dr. G R Damodaran College of Science examine the sources, detection methods, health impacts, and environmental consequences.
UBC researchers have developed a low-cost, portable tool to accurately measure plastic released from everyday sources like disposable cups and water bottles. For the study, they filled disposable polystyrene cups with distilled, boiling water and let it cool for 30 minutes. The results showed that the cups released hundreds of millions of nanoplastics.
NVC members receive this information with all the relevant links in the monthly NVC Members-only Update. If you have any questions, please contact us: info@nvc.nl, +31-(0)182-512411