The right chemistry

Richard Ratcliffe tells NGF about the challenges posed by legislation and the possibility of a global regulatory framework.

Additives are one of the most misunderstood elements of the food industry. Media panic over E-numbers and a building public interest in 'natural' food obscure the fact that additives are an essential element in making the food we eat safe, palatable and affordable. For Richard Ratcliffe, Executive Director of the Food Additives and Ingredients Association, the confusion about the role of additives has big impacts both on how they are approach by regulators and consumers.

The additives business is one that has to deal with a heavy and often changing legislative burden. Europe in particular provides a steady stream of new rules and regulations. "The most significant piece across the last couple of years is Food Improvement Agent Package (FIAP)," says Ratcliffe. "That bound together all the previous additive legislation, the emulsifier legislation, enzyme legislation, flavour legislation into one package and updated a significant quantity of it in the process. All additives have to go through a 10 year cycle review session with the European Food Safety Agency. That all got wrapped up in it as well. But the FIAP was really a way of making it simpler." While Ratcliffe emits wry chuckle at the thought of this supposed simplification, he acknowledges that the legislation may have some lasting benefits.

"I suppose in the long run it will do, in terms of making further changes down the road.  But it was a significant piece of business for our members," he continues. "The short term is a lot of work to get everything revamped and to comment on all the minor changes they're making. But it will hopefully make it more expeditious for changes over coming years because of a simpler framework."

Asked about his general impressions of the regulatory framework in the European Union, Ratcliffe admits it is broadly effective, but not without its faults. "There's got to be a system of course, and we strongly support that," he says. "The system we've got in Europe now is as good as we could expect it to be. Of course with Europe you've got the European parliament, and you've got the European commission to organize all the day to day stuff at the behest of their political masters.  They're like the civil service of the European government. In summary we're probably as close to something workable as we're ever going to get. We work with the framework. You can't work against it."

A key concern for Ratcliffe, as for many in the additives business, is that decisions be taken based purely on science rather than by consulting the court of public opinion. "If you look at the situation which occurred with the colours in the so-called Southampton study a couple of years ago the Food Standards Agency took a very pro-consumer view after the consumers had been stirred up by sensationalist reports in the media," he says. "The FSA then sort of went along with all that thinking and started beating the industry around the head over it, ignoring the fact that all of these additives had been tested for safety over many, many years. The whole thing got skewed in the wrong direction. So I think we could see a more supportive pro-industry stance from the Food Standards Agency."

Ratcliffe suggests that the FSA's more consumer-focused attitude might be attributable to perceptions of its predecessor, the Ministry for Agriculture, Fisheries and food (MAFF). "The old wisdom was that MAFF was too pro-industry," he says. "That was always the view. I personally didn't subscribe to that and thought they were generally very fair minded. But the consumers always felt that MAFF was in the industry's pocket. I think that the FSA set its stall out to move away from that perception by the public."

The issue of regulation in a global market place is something that can cause a few headaches. Ratcliffe explains that European authorities are currently trying to move Europe's regulatory system closer towards the international Codex Alimentarius standards, but that a world with one unified regulatory system remains fairly distant. "There's about four or five major overlaying regulatory regimes of food ingredients and food additives," he says. "In some cases there's a 90 percent overlap in common ground, but it's those funny 10 percent differences which have an impact on international trade. We've had all sorts of strange situations over the years with boatloads of biscuits being turned back from being sent to Japan because there was one impurity in one ingredient which the Japanese didn't like. The utopia would be an international harmonization, but I think we're some way off that."

Going South

One of the most significant events to hit the additives industry in recent years, the 2007 Southampton University study into supposed links between certain food colourings and hyperactivity in children is still a source of controversy.

The study took 153 three-year-olds and 144 eight-year-olds living in the city selected from the general population to represent the full range of behaviour, from normal through to hyperactive, and not for any previous behavioural problems or known sensitivities to particular foods. Over the course of six weeks the children were given one of two mixtures of food colours and benzoate preservative, or just fruit juice - with all the drinks looking and tasting identical. The children were then observed in a number of different ways to determine any changes in their behaviour. Research leader Professor Jim Stevenson said: "We now have clear evidence that mixtures of certain food colours and benzoate preservative can adversely influence the behaviour of children. There is some previous evidence that some children with behavioural disorders could benefit from the removal of certain food colours from their diet. We have now shown that for a large group of children in the general population, consumption of certain mixtures of artificial food colours and benzoate preservative can influence their hyperactive behaviour."

The study led the UK Food Standards Agency to recommend an EU ban for the additives. However, critics of the study dispute its findings pointing to shoddy reporting and a lack of transparency in exactly how the study was administered. According to David Pineda of the International Alliance of Dietary/Food Supplement Associations: "While the Southampton study suggested links to hyperactivity in children, EFSA concluded that the study provided limited evidence and that the study's findings could not be used as a basis for altering the acceptable daily intake (ADI) of the respective food colours." Two years later, the debate rumbles on.