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Academic and Industry Joint Efforts to Include Vitamins and Minerals in Newly Implemented Regulation in Japan for the Functional Claims of Health Foods named Food with Functional Claims (FFC)
Author(s) -
Amagase Harunobu,
Sueki Kazuo,
Abe Koichi,
Yamauchi Jun,
Wada Akimori,
Ichinose Hiroshi,
Shigeoka Shigeru
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.30.1_supplement.900.2
Subject(s) - government (linguistics) , agency (philosophy) , health claims on food labels , scope (computer science) , functional food , business , food and drug administration , food standards , food industry , scientific evidence , food safety , marketing , political science , risk analysis (engineering) , food science , computer science , law , chemistry , linguistics , epistemology , programming language , philosophy
Within the scope of the Revitalization Strategy policies and elongating healthy life span, government of Japan has set a new labeling system of health claims for foods named Food with Functional Claims (FFC). Separated from Foods for Specified Health Uses (FOSHU), industries can describe functionality based on scientific evidence under their responsibility, without individual reviews by the government. However, unlike global standard practice, vitamins, minerals and other applicable ingredients are excluded from FFC. These excluded food ingredients have been regulated under Dietary Reference Intakes for Japanese. To expand eligible ingredients for FFC, academia helps support industries to prepare materials to let government include these ingredients in FFC to make functional claims. Remaining issues are how to 1) utilize existing scientific monographs, 2) collect scientific literature and research papers, 3) global standard of definition of patient, 4) set dosage issues, 5) adjust to other categories, such as food with nutrition claims, over the counter drugs, and quasi‐drugs, and 6) prepare scientific manuscript for publication including systematic review of each ingredient. Global regulatory information, such as the ones from US, European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) and other countries would be useful to be referred for convincing the regulators and policy makers in the government.