The National Health Surveillance Agency (ANVISA in Portuguese) has published Normative Instruction IN No. 275, which amends Normative Instruction No. 28, dated July 26, 2018, establishing the lists of constituents, limits of use, declarations and supplementary labeling of food supplements.
It establishes the age groups and maximum levels for D-ribose.
This Normative Instruction comes into force on the date of its publication.
Brazil – ANVISA publishes instructions for regularizing the different categories of food and packaging
The National Health Surveillance Agency (ANVISA in Portuguese) publishes Normative Instruction IN No. 281, which establishes how the different categories of food and packaging are regularized and the respective documentation that must be submitted.
This Normative Instruction comes into force on September 1, 2024.
Brazil – Anvisa adopts new regulatory approach for the food area
The National Health Surveillance Agency (ANVISA in Portuguese) published the new regulatory framework for food regularization in the National Health Surveillance System (SNVS). Collegiate Council Resolution (RDC) 843/2024 and Normative Instruction (IN) 281/2024 improve the pre-marketing control of food, based on risk criteria.
The measure reduces the administrative burden for both the regulatory agency and the food sector, in cases of lower risk, and maintains or increases the rigor, when dealing with high-risk products or with a history of complaints and denunciations.
The new rules define three forms of regularization:
1) Registration with Anvisa.
2) Notification with Anvisa.
3) Notification to the local health surveillance bodies at the beginning of manufacture or importation.
Article – Monitoring health and nutrition claims on food labels in Brazil
Introduction: The monitoring of nutrition and health claims on food and beverage labels has been proposed by international and national organizations because it can collaborate with the development of public policies to regulate food labeling and marketing strategies. One way of carrying out this monitoring is by using data collected by private companies.
Objective: To compare information on nutrition and health claims available in a commercial database of a private company that monitors the launch of new foods and beverages in Brazilian food retailers with information on those same claims manually coded by trained research assistants.
Methods: This is a cross-sectional observational study using a data sample of newly launched food and beverages available at a commercial database from 2018 to 2021. We compared the information on health and nutrition claims available on the commercial dataset with reliable information on the same nutrition and health claims manually coded by trained research assistants using a tested taxonomy to classify such claims. We used Gwet’s Kappa AC1 with 95% CI and percentage agreement to compare both data sources and calculated sensitivity and specificity of the compared data.
Results: A total of 6,722 foods and beverages were analyzed. Mintel-GNPD presented 36.28% (n = 2,439) of nutrition claims, while in the trained researchers’ coding, it was 33.73% (n = 2,267). We found a prevalence of 5.4% (n = 362) for health claims in Mintel-GNPD and 10.8% (n = 723) in the researchers’ coding. All subcategories of nutrition and health claims showed high agreement (Kappa >0.81). Health claims presented kappa = 0.89 with 33.7% sensitivity and 98.0% specificity while nutrition claims showed kappa = 0.86 with 92.9% sensitivity and 92.5% specificity.
Conclusion: Nutrition and health claims showed high agreement, with great results in nutrition claims, indicating that Mintel-GPND is suitable for monitoring such claims on food and beverage packaging in Brazil. Additionally, our findings show a high prevalence of nutrition and health claims on food packages launched in the Brazilian food retail, highlighting the need to monitor these to develop public policies to regulate food marketing on packaging in Brazil.
Mexico – Senate of the Republic Senate recognizes the importance of Amaranth
With 83 votes in favor, the Mexican Senate approved declaring October 15 of each year as “National Amaranth Day”. The initiative seeks to recognize the cultural, ecological, social and agricultural contribution of this food in Mexico.
The ruling highlights the properties of amaranth, such as its protein content and bioavailability in the seeds, as well as the high content of calcium, magnesium and vitamin C in the leaves. It highlights its role in the fight against obesity and overweight, contributing to dietary variation and the recovery of food sovereignty.
The ruling has been sent to the Chamber of Deputies for its analysis and corresponding ruling, marking an important step in the recognition and promotion of amaranth in Mexico.
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