Issue 2/2012 - Editorial

Whis issue presents contributions on ongoing and future legislation. The first two articles deal with practically highly important amendments of the Health Claims Regulation. This new framework for health-related advertising for food provides that the Commission should have had established by 19 January 2009 specific nutritional profiles for food to determine, which foodstuffs may bear nutrition or health claims. This deadline has been missed now for more than three years, with respect to the scientific and legal complexity of this task. Since this year the first part of the community list for health claims will be published, the pressure to establish these nutrition profiles is rising. However, the first article by Alfred Meyer expresses fundamental concerns regarding the legal concept of nutrition profiles.

As already mentioned, the first part of the community list is expected for this year. The second part shall cover botanical ingredients, the scientific evaluation and authorization of claims related to those that have been postponed by the Commission for consideration, if a new legal framework for so-called botanical ingredients is required, especially with respect to the specific legal framework for traditional herbal medicines. The second article by Robert Anton, Mauro Serafini and Luc Delmulle present a concept for the data collection by traditional knowledge for the assessment of health effects for botanicals from a scientific point of view.

Another piece of legislation is the Novel Food Regulation, which came into force in 1997. The practicable impact of this law is permanently growing, as the date to judge the novelty of a food lies more and more in the past, a circumstance which makes it more and more difficult to collect evidence regarding the use for human consumption. Therefore, all stakeholders agree that this regulation should be improved. Chris Jones from the British Food Standard Agency pleads in the third article for a revision of the novel food regulation, which could not be finalized last year for political reasons. The last article by Juanjuan Sun describes the worldwide evaluation of the concept of food safety.

Last but not least, I should like to recommend for reading the case note by Luis Gonzáles Vaquè, member of the Editorial Board of EFFL, on comparative advertising. We also warmly welcome our new country correspondents from Bulgaria and Norway, Elena Todorova and Marie Vaale-Hallberg, who will help us to mirror the developments in all Member States of the European Union.

Andreas Meisterernst