The European novel food regulation, updated to simplify the authorisation procedure in order to encourage innovation and allow these foodstuffs to be brought to the market more quickly, came into force on 1 January 2018.
EU Regulation 2015/2283 repeals Regulation 258/97 on novel foods and novel food ingredients.
Novel foods are foodstuffs, such as extract of magnolia bark, phytosterols, guar gum, noni juice and Baobab dried fruit pulp which had not been consumed to any significant degree in the EU prior to May 1997, that is to say before the novel food regulation came into force, and, in particular, foodstuffs derived from new techniques and technologies, including those that use nanomaterials.
The legislation now in force puts in place a single, centralised authorisation procedure for novel foods and for traditional foods from third countries, contains a list of all the novel foods authorised in the EU and explicitly covers nanomaterials and foods derived from cloned animals until the entry into force of specific rules. It also contains data protection provisions for companies that have applied for authorisation of their products.
The initial version of the revised draft regulation, on the table since 2008, remained long deadlocked. The text was relaunched by the Commission in December 2013 as part of a new legislative package which included two draft directives on cloning animals for food supply (see EUROPE 10988). It was the failure, in 2011, of the European Parliament-Council negotiations on arrangements for banning foods from cloned animals and their offspring that occasioned the deadlock (see EUROPE 10347). (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)