Retailers jump flavouring gun
Food retailers are pre-empting new EU regulation and telling suppliers to avoid using certain flavouring substances before they have even been vetted by the authorities, it has emerged.
Under the food improvement agents legislative package, which is currently being scrutinised by the European Parliament, only flavouring substances on an approved 'community list' will in future be allowed in the EU.
Of the 2,800 substances the industry would like to see on the final list, however, about 350 have been sectioned off into a group that has a question mark against it. While this temporary categorisation was due to the chemical structure of these substances and the fact that they were still awaiting assessment, some large food retailers were effectively treating them as if they were already blacklisted, said one flavouring industry source.
"About 500 substances are still awaiting assessment by the European Food Safety Authority [EFSA] of which 350 are on this supposed blacklist as potentially being genotoxic. What is worrying is that many of them are widely used in flavouring, including 4-hydroxy-2, 5-dimethylfuran-3 (strawberry), L-carvone (spearmint) and ionones (raspberry). If you banned citral, which is found naturally in lemons, you'd have to ban lemons as well on the principle they were toxic, which is ridiculous. But instead of waiting for the list to be finalised, some retailers are acting already."
Dr James Ridsdale, senior scientific officer at the UK Food Standards Agency, said he had heard "anecdotal evidence" that this was happening: "It's unfortunate as there is every chance that most, if not all of these substances with a question mark against them will make it onto the final community list."
