Food Legislation
Background
The majority of our national food legislation derives from Ireland’s membership of the European Union. Government Departments, primarily the Department of Health and Children and the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, participate in the negotiation of these laws. Government Departments are responsible for giving legal effect to the decisions, directives and regulations agreed in the EU. This Department has produced 48 Statutory Instruments in respect of foodstuffs since 2005.
The Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) is the single, regulatory authority with responsibility for the enforcement of food safety legislation in Ireland. This responsibility for enforcement is managed through a series of service contracts with official agencies.
Statutory Instrument (S.I) No. 355 of 2010.
European Communities (Food Supplements) (Amendment) Regulations 2010.
This S.I. gives legal effect to Article 1 of Commission Regulation (EC) No. 1170/2009 amending Directive 2002/46/EC of the European Parliament and of Council and Regulation (EC) No 1925/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards the lists of vitamin and minerals and their forms that can be added to foods, including food supplements.
Article 1 of Commission Regulation (EC) No. 1170/2009 provides that the Annexes to Directive 2002/46/EC on food supplements are replaced by Annexes I and II to 1170/2009. The Annexes provide that only vitamins and minerals listed in Annex I in the forms listed in Annex II may be used in the manufacture of food supplements.
The S.I. also gives further legal effect to Directive 2002/46/EC on food supplements in relation to penalties and legal proceedings.
Food supplements are defined as foodstuffs the purpose of which is to supplement the normal diet and which are concentrated sources of nutrients or other substances with a nutritional or physiological effect, alone or in combination, marketed in dose form, namely forms such as capsules, pastilles, tablets, pills and other similar forms, sachets of powder, ampoules of liquids, drop dispensing bottles, and other similar forms of liquids and powders designed to be taken in measured small unit quantities.
View the Statutory Instrument (S.I.) No. 355 of 2010
Statutory Instrument (S.I) No. 218 of 2010.
European Communities (Certain Contaminants in Foodstuffs) Regulations 2010.
The principal effect of these Regulations is to provide for the enforcement of the maximum levels for certain contaminants in foodstuffs set in Commission Regulation (EC) No. 1881/2006, as amended, and to provide for the enforcement of the methods of sampling, and for the sample preparation and methods of analysis for the official control of the levels of certain contaminants in foodstuffs which methods are set out in the Annexes to Commission Regulations (EC) Nos. 401/2006, as amended, 1882/2006, 1883/2006 and 333/2007.
For the purposes of these Regulations, a contaminant is defined as any substance not intentionally added to food which is present in such food as a result of the production (including operations carried out in crop husbandry, animal husbandry and veterinary medicine), manufacture, processing, preparation, treatment, packing, packaging, transport or holding of such food, or as a result of environmental contamination. (It does not include extraneous matter such as insect fragments, animal hair, etc.).
Community measures have been introduced for the following contaminants: mycotoxins (aflatoxins, ochratoxin A, fusarium-toxins, patulin), metals (cadmium, lead, mercury, inorganic tin), dioxins and PCBs, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH, 3-MCPD and nitrates).
View the Statutory Instrument (S.I.) No. 218 of 2010
See all the DOHC Statutory Instruments since 1997
More food legislation from FSAI
