Brussels, 04/09/2013 (Agence Europe) - The European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) is seeking to optimise the harmonisation of health claims for certain food products by demanding that these claims be backed up scientifically.
EFSA will therefore be organising a technical meeting of scientific experts to this end in Palma on 20 November next. These experts will debate how data from human studies (addressing the relationship between the consumption of the food or ingredient and the claimed beneficial effect) should be reported in order scientifically to back up health claims made in applications for authorisation of use.
Operators seeking application authorisation to use healthclaims for their products, under the European regulation on nutrition and health claims (Regulation 1924/2006), must provide detailed submissions. This information meeting seeks to help experts involved in the preparation of submissions or in the work of regulatory bodies operating in the health claims field have a clearer idea on how to proceed.
EFSA nutrition and health experts have noted that the considerable differences in terms of design, methodology, statistics and results mean that requirements in this context are not always met and can lead to delays in the process of scientifically assessing health claims, because EFSA has to request further data, or even prevent full assessment when the additional data required are not available.
The meeting will be conducted only be in English and scientific experts who want to take part should enrol on the EFSA website before the 30 September deadline.
http://registerofquestions.efsa.europa.eu/roqFrontend/meetingsub/meetingid/4 (AN/transl.fl)