EU Novel Food Regulation

Since 1997 the EU Novel Food Regulation (NFR) has been in place to regulate the placing of novel foods in the 15 member states of the EU. The objective of the Regulation is to protect public health by ensuring food safety. The NFR defines novel foods as food ingredients that were not used for human consumption to a significant degree within the EU before 15 May 1997. Apart from food products that result from novel processes or sources, the NFR also concerns the majority of exotic traditional foods, many of which originate from underutilised species and from developing countries and have only recently started to make their way into foreign markets. The stringent food safety assessment required by the NFR are essentially inspired by precautionary principles adopted for genetically modified organisms and places an unreasonable high burden of proof on those bringing traditional food products from the South to the EU market.

The NFR represents a non-tariff barrier to trade with these products. Under its remit, EU market authorisation has been denied to a range of products that have for centuries or even millennia been part of the human diet outside the EU. The Regulation has a particular impact on small producers and entrepreneurs in developing countries for which the export of these products is a good opportunity to generate foreign exchange income and to sustainably use agricultural biodiversity. The efforts of many development cooperation programmes to promote trade with developing countries are in jeopardy.

In a joint effort, CFF (through its predecessor institution GFU), the UNCTAD BioTrade Facilitation Programme, the Dutch Centre for the Promotion of Imports from Developing Countries (CBI), Bioversity International and several developing countries have lobbied for the revised NFR to accommodate developing country and biotrade concerns, while at the same time ensuring consumer safety in the EU. A range of commentaries, recommendations and publications, which are presented below, resulted from this effort.

The following lists provide selected EU texts to facilitate the understanding how the NFR functions. We have also compiled a list of relevant literature that has appeared in recent years. Much of the compiled literature addresses how the NFR could be reformed taking into account producer country interests without cutting down on consumer protection.

In 2006, the EU Commission launched a consultation aiming at gathering the views from the public and the Member States, in preparation of the mandated revision of the NFR. In 2008, the Commission presented the draft for the revision, and requested further comment. However, in March 2011, the final round of conciliation talks ended without agreement on the new EU Novel Foods Regulation. As a result, the current Novel Food Regulation, adopted in 1997, will remain in force for the time being.

Selected EU documents