EFSA Health Claim policy and Social Networks

Every day in our business we are facing health indications in social networks, which are not controlled by EFSA or any other authorities.

Last week, in Facebook, a restaurant was claiming the benefits of the chicken, including its content in several actives, like beta-carotene, retinol and Lycopene…

It is true that EFSA is doing a huge job in order to define what can be told or not about a certain ingredient, but, as I already said in one of my posts, the industry needs to limit to claim benefits on everything and everywhere… How a food that has been cooking for 2 hours could still have vitamins or any other actives…

The social networks are doing a huge damage to our industry because of those claims defined without any kind of scientific background. The policy defined by EFSA is not white or black, and a certain limit is always welcome.

The scientific publication, like PubMed or many other scientific web pages, are useful for the people who understand it, but for the normal user, it is too much. One thing is a scientific publication on a general newspaper or on tv, which use to be supported by scientific people, and another one is openly saying that a certain broccoli extract may treat cancer and publish it in Facebook…

We, the industry, need to find a solution that could help everybody, but we need to start from this point: to differentiate serious publications versus the general social networks.

I don’t like EFSA Health Claim Policy, as it is too restrictive, from my point of view, mainly because of the general use of a certain ingredient, but we cannot accept that everybody may claim a certain health benefit without any limitation…

Axel Salomon

European Sales Director