Botanicals as food ?
Hi All,
If an alcoholic beverages manufacturer starts to sell, botanicals to other manufacturers, as ingredients to their alcoholic beverages (the seller repacks and relabels the products before selling on) , does that mean the selling company becomes a food business / distributor ?
i found that in the European market , two legal status' for botanicals co exist ,
A) botanicals as traditional herbal medicinal products
B) botanicals as foods, per / food supplements
so , in my understanding , the botanicals sold as ingredients, for alcoholic beverages doesn't meet the above criteria / fall into these categories, so is the business in this scenario, a food business ?
also, what is the labelling criteria ?
Many thanks,
If you're selling them for potential use in food products then I believe that the regulatory position is that they are subject to food regulation - whilst EFSA acknowledges that there is no proper framework for authorisation of botanicals, their view does seem to be that they're within the scope of regulation (EC) 178/2002.
Before selling anything I'd also check the novel foods catalogue, as I've seen a few manufacturers of botanicals "accidentally" market extracts from some plants to the food sector without checking that they're actually currently able to be used - just to make life simple, for some ingredients there is permission to use in food supplements but not in foods...
See http://ec.europa.eu/...ublic/index.cfm
As for the labelling, this is a fairly broad question as it'll depend on what you're extracting and how - this could include e.g. "x extract" or "natural x flavouring", or possibly something altogether different if your extraction process is focussed on a very specific compound or set of compounds.
It's probably not a direct comparison based on what you're saying, and has the relatively unusual position of there actually being a clear and defined position, but consider e.g stevia and steviol glycosides.
Hi,
Thank you very much for your time on this.
Unfortunately i am still unsure.
We won't sell the botanicals (e.g. orange peel, almond powder) to the final customers. The manufacturers (our customers) will make for example other ingredients or starter material to food products, using our botanicals, but at that point these botanicals are still not added to food. I'm also pretty sure they are not falling in to the novel food category.
(EC) 178/2002 Reg says: ‘Food’ includes drink, chewing gum and any substance, including water, intentionally incorporated into the food during its manufacture, preparation or treatment."
In our case or even our customer won't "intentionally incorporate" the botanicals "into the food"
That is my concern, because if we are not a food business we don't have to implement HACCP system etc ?
Do you or anyone know(s) where can we get an advise before our business goes into this project?
Thank you very much.
There is a bit of info from EFSA here: https://www.efsa.eur...opic/botanicals
If they're knowingly potentially going to end up in food then I suspect that you will find you are within the scope of the food regs, but it's worth checking with the people who will potentially be responsible for regulating you - give your local environmental health department a call. They and Trading Standards will probably appreciate you taking the initiative and be happy to talk it through with you. If you need something more solid then lots of them now offer "assured advice" at extremely reasonable prices compared to most such services.
Otherwise you could try contacting someone like Leatherhead Food Research, who will be able to give a more detailed breakdown of their views on the regulatory position, but this will cost you a significant amount more than speaking to your local EHO.
thank you very much. appreciate the guidance on this !