Nutrition and health claims are an essential part of food marketing. For years, businesses have used claims that are available for everyone. Now however, many companies want to stand out from the competition with their own, brand new health claims. If an applicant has performed sufficient studies to support a new claim and the claim is granted protection of proprietary data, the applicant may use this claim exclusively for a period of five years.
In the recent years, a massive amount of new information on the impact of food products on health has been discovered, and many companies have realised that this is the perfect time to utilise the new scientific information also in the marketing of food products. This in turn challenges food business operators to find out what this could mean in practice.
Fortunately, nowadays there are many guides written by the authorities as well as plenty of practical experience available on what it takes to get a health claim approved. Also, the tight assessment criteria by the European Food Safety Authority EFSA have become clearer during the years.
In this webinar, Mari Lyyra, Head of Operations at the Food, Feed and Cosmetics Unit at Medfiles and our Senior Regulatory Affairs Expert Pia Karjalainen provide a general overview of the health claim approval process and the related requirements in the EU. Practical examples of interesting cases will also be showcased in the webinar.
In this webinar, you will learn
- How much and what kind of scientific research is needed for a claim application
- What should be taken into account when planning the studies
- How to get the five-year period of protection of proprietary data for your claim
- What are the requirements for the application documentation
- And how important is their good quality
- How the applicant should notify EFSA of their studies.
You can watch the webinar right away after your order.
Medfiles health claim services
The EU health claims regulation (EC) 1924/2006 came into force in 2007. Mari Lyyra, Head of Operations at the Medfiles Food, Feed and Cosmetics Unit, and Senior Regulatory Affairs Expert Pia Karjalainen have been following the preparation and implementation of the regulation ever since. Today, the Medfiles regulatory experts work daily with health claims and help companies to use existing claims for food products on the market or plan for new claims already at the product development phase.
For new claims, we conduct literature searches and reviews and make sure that the application contains all the available, required information. We can review the application and guide you on which parts still need to be complemented and what would be the best claim wording to optimise the chances of the application being approved. Our Clinical Trials Team has extensive experience and competence in clinical food trials aimed at substantiating health claims, from the design phase to writing scientific publications. Medfiles helps and guides companies at all stages of the process.
Our over 20 years of practical experience and our commitment to continuously develop our competence ensure our place as the leading health claim experts in the Nordic countries and Northern Europe. Our expertise covers different foods, such as plant- and cereal-based ingredients, fibres and prebiotics, fats and oils, marine products (such as fish, crustaceans and algae), fungi and microorganisms (such as probiotics).
