FoodLegal

A summary of developments in food law in Australia and internationally, as at June 2021.

The risk of an adverse health effect from feed transferring a hazardous substance into the food chain is one of the lessons learned from the disastrous consequences for the UK beef industry that followed from the BSE outbreak. Thus, assuring safe food also means assuring safe feed for animals. In recent years, Australian scientists have led international efforts to create animal feed supplements that have the effect of reducing methane emissions from cattle (both beef and dairy). Governments and corporations in Australia have invested heavily in the commercial application of this technology. Bromoform is the active substance in the formulation of the feed supplements sourced from seawater algae. While the World Health Organization (WHO) has not done so, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) has assessed bromoform as a probable human carcinogen based on evidence in animal studies. Thus, two important questions arise from the expanded commercial use of feed supplements containing bromoform: 1) Is bromoform likely to end up in the food chain?; 2) Could there be a carcinogenic risk in humans through consumption of milk and meat if bromoform gets transferred from the supplemented feed to the milk or meat?

A recent scientific assessment by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) on 6 May 2021 has recommended that titanium dioxide no longer be considered safe when used as a food additive. This article looks at the decision by Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) in findings published in 2016 to permit the continuing use of nano forms of titanium dioxide and other substances, and a need to review that assessment. A nanoparticle is a piece of matter ranging between 1 and 100 nanometres in size, where a nanometre is one billionth of a metre. Nanoparticles form a part of nanotechnology, which generally refers to the production and usage of materials on a nano-or-atomic-scale.

New Plain English Allergen Labelling (PEAL) requirements specify a new method by which food labels must identify product allergens on the label packaging. There is a new size requirement for any “contains” statement. In this article, we question the way in which this is specified and whether this increases the risk of an unsafe food being sold.