The Australian Food and Grocery Council (AFGC) is continuing discussions with health ministers over the draft standard for health and nutrition claims (P293), despite the end of the formal consultation period.
The proposed standard was released by Food Standards Australia and New Zealand (FSANZ) in October, from which time the governments has 60 days to accept or reject it. A major bone of contention with the standard is the inclusion of a Nutrient Profiling Scoring Criteria (NPSC) system, which would be a world first, despite interest in adopting a similar system from the EU.
The NPSC would require food and beverage products to score a certain number of points relating to its nutrient profile in order to be eligible to make general or high-level health claims. As a result, certain dairy products and fruit juices could be banned from making health claims because of their respective high fat and sugar content.
AFGC chief executive Gary Dawson told F&DB that the NPSC is flawed because it’s a diet-based measure being applied to individual foods.
“Branding individual foods as unhealthy or healthy is a fundamentally flawed approach and it’s the same underlying calculator that’s behind the traffic light system, which again is fundamentally flawed,” said Dawson.
“We think that’s problematic and ...because Australia would be the first jurisdiction to apply an NPSC to health claims, there’s a real risk of it impeding innovation and being putting Australian processors and manufacturers at a disadvantage [compared] to their international competitors.
“We’ve been supportive of pre-approved claims and self-substantiation, but [the standard] needs to be a process that is not overly onerous particularly at a time when the industry is under a lot of cost pressure.”
