Innova Market Insights scanned the EU market and found 10,350 products employing soft claims such as ‘low in’ and ‘light’ in the first of 2010 compared to only 8,747 in the same period in 2009.
New products bearing active health claims fell in the same period from 2189 in 2009 to 1960 in H1, 2010.
No end in sight
The situation bears an element of irony as one of the stated goals of the 2006 nutrition and health claims regulation is to remove vague and soft claims form the marketplace.
“Apart from generic claims of vitamins and minerals, EFSA’s assessment of health claims so far has resulted in mainly negative opinions,” said Lu Ann Williams, head of research at Innova.
“Manufacturers seem hesitant to launch new products with a strong health benefit claim if there is a chance that they will have to make a change to their labeling in the near future. With EFSA now set a new deadline of the end of June 2011 for generic Article 13 claims and opinions on botanicals set to follow at the later stage, this uncertainty is set to last for some time.”
In its analysis Innova also tracked 384 new supplement products in western Europe in the first half of 2010 (January to June 2010), compared to 405 in the corresponding period in 2009. Of those products it found that the top health conditions were weight management (99), immune health (91) and digestive/liver health (86).
Last month EFSA’s health claims panel issued 75 mostly negative health claim opinions relating to 808 claim submissions.
NI Health Claims 2010
These matters and more will be discussed at the second NutraIngredients Health Claims 2010 conference to be held in Brussels on December 1.
Presentations from industry PR veteran Henry Dixon and functional food branding guru, Peter Wennstrom, will mine marketing strategies in the post-EFSA environment.
The conference will deconstruct the latest article 13.1 claim opinions, hear first-hand experience from players like Kellogg’s, and feature comparison with the US claims system from a key figure across the pond.
For more details click here.