European laws stifle innovation
European food manufacturers are faced with unnecessarily tough new legislation, which is stifling innovation and threatens their international competitiveness, according to a new report.
Recent legislation on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and the current nutrition and health claims proposals are “key examples of legal texts that pose a real threat to future innovative ambitions and are going in the opposite direction compared to our trade partners,” claimed the Confederation of the food and drink industries in the European Union (CIAA).
The CIAA is supported in its fears about the impact of unnecessary regulation on the competitiveness of UK manufacturers by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI).
“We argue for regulation that doesn’t make UK manufacturers uncompetitive,” said Nick Brayshaw, chairman of the CBI’s manufacturing Council and Department of Trade and Industry board member at a recent conference organised by the north west Manufacturing Advisory Service. “We should stop bringing further regulation into the sector and focus our energy on making it more competitive.”
Too little attention is paid to the impact such legislation will have on business activity in the sector, warned the CIAA. Legislation needed to be accompanied by cost benefit analyses, it added. The CIAA would also like to see more consideration given to self-regulation.
“Legislation can have lasting consequences on industry’s activities and perspectives, and it may be difficult to adapt legislative texts to rapid technological change in a flexible manner,” warned the CIAA.
The CIAA is particularly worried about potential damage to development in sectors such as biotechnology and novel foods. “The new EU regulatory provisions have missed the opportunity to follow a clear, science-based approach,” it argued. It feared uncertainty surrounding the future of GM foods in Europe could hit GMO use in processing aids and fermentation products, which “must remain outside the scope of GM-labelling legislation”
The CIAA is scathing about the hurdles presented to manufacturers where a pre-market approval of a novel food can take on average two years to achieve and involve huge costs - typically euro 20-25m for a single product.
It called for a review of existing novel foods legislation with a view to increasing the rapidity, transparency, simplicity and predictability of the authorisation procedure.
The CIAA argued that the EU’s positive list system for authorising food additive use was “burdensome and is more likely to negatively affect industry’s competitiveness”. And it claimed the debate on nutrition and health claims was yet another example of how legislation can hamper the industry’s capacity to innovate.
