Novel Foods - Impact assessment

This research paper was undertaken at the request of the European Parliament’s Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI). It provides a complementary impact assessment, reviewing and updating the 2008 European Commission Impact Assessment of a proposal for a Regulation replacing Regulation (EC) No. 258/97 on Novel Foods and Novel Food Ingredients. In particular, it assesses the impacts of the Commission’s 2013 proposal on the various parties concerned, i.e., EU-level and Member State-level decision-makers, European consumers, and the food industry. This complementary impact assessment focuses on key aspects of the 2013 proposal, namely: the scope of its ‘Novel Foods’ definition; the efficiency and the impact of the centralised authorisation procedures on the various parties concerned; the role of national authorities and agencies in the centralised system, and the proposed Regulation’s coherence with other EU regulatory requirements.