REACH chemicals Regulation catches ingredients suppliers on the hop

Scores of ingredients that the food industry had widely assumed would be exempt from the REACH chemicals Regulation (EC1907/2006) may now fall under its remit, prompting panic amongst ingredients suppliers.

Suppliers had been led to believe that ingredients that had already been approved under food safety legislation, such as E-numbers, would automatically be exempted from REACH.

However, if approved/safe food ingredients are also to be used in other applications such as cosmetics, they will need to be pre-registered this year under REACH, requiring the submission of detailed dossiers that prove their safety.Food trade association the CIAA said this had caused widespread panic amongst members, many of whom sold products that were used in cosmetics, personal and household care products, even if their primary use was in food.

In a letter to the EU legal officer in charge of REACH, CIAA’s director of scientific and regulatory affairs Beate Kettlitz, said: “It will be extremely costly and burdensome if they are required to register under REACH some of the products they manufacture such as sugars which have non-food applications even though these products can be shown to have a long safe history of use and consumption by humans and animals.”

She added: “We strongly believe that annex IV [which lists ingredients exempted from REACH] should be extended to comprise food and food ingredients/products irrespective of their intended use. Most of our members’ products primarily intended for food and food use are recognised through their long history of use as being intrinsically safe for humans and therefore the type of detailed toxicological and safety assessment data required in the Commission criteria would not exist.”

Annex IV was in any case riddled with inconsistencies, she claimed: “The list in the current annex is somewhat piecemeal - covering, for example, glucose and sucrose but not fructose and sunflower oil and rape oil but not palm oil, with no clear explanation as to why.”

The CIAA had “not been consulted in the determination of the criteria for inclusion of substances in annex IV, which we understand have been developed by the Commission together with stakeholders, including the chemical industry, but not the food manufacturing sector”, she added. “We therefore urge you to extend the November 30 [2007] deadline to allow us to fully contribute to the updating of this very important section of REACH.

“We suggest that the annex is extended to include all substances within a recognised group, for example, sugars - this group would include all sugars not just the few which are currently highlighted.”

One industry source said a recent review of the annex had “opened up a Pandora’s box”. He added: “Rather than adding things to the exemption list, it looks like things will be gradually removed until nothing is exempted except water and oxygen. It’s also really inconsistent. We supply seaweed extracts, for example. Some are exempt; some are not. There is no logical reason why this is the case.”

He added. “If you don’t pre-register your product between June 1 and December 1 2008, and it is not exempted from this Regulation, you won’t be able to sell it anymore. Let’s just say that this is causing a major panic.”