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Enforcement of the Nutrition and Health Claim Regulation

Alie de Boer, Miriam Urlings, Ellen Vos, Aalt Bast


The nutrition and health claim regulation (NHCR) aims to protect consumers against false or incorrect nutrition and health claims by requesting scientific substantiation. It also aims to establish a level playing field in the internal market for all food producers. European regulations such as the NHCR require national authorities to enforce these acts. Regulation (EC) No 882/2004 requires national authorities to adopt a risk-based enforcement approach for controls on compliance with feed and food law requirements. Our analysis shows fragmented national enforcement practices. So, 18 Member States have developed 13 different guidance documents on the flexibility of wording and/or compliance with the NHCR, whilst the Member State authorities have also taken diverging actions. The NHCR is therefore currently unable to establish a level playing field. An EU-wide approach in enforcement should be developed to ensure such fair competition in the internal market.

Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Faculty of Health Medicine and Life Sciences, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands.
Department of Complex Genetics, Faculty of Health Medicine and Life Sciences, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands.
Department of European and International Law, Faculty of Law, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands. The authors gratefully acknowledge the participants to the workshop 'Inclusive Food Research Programming and Implementation' for fruitful discussions on this research and specifically thank ms. Joanna Jaskolska, Prof. Dr. Hans Verhagen, Dr. Ir. Martin Kooijman and Dr. mr. Harry Bremmers for their input.

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