At the recent European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) gut/immune function meeting in Amsterdam, Stephan Bischoff, PhD, professor and chair at the Department of Nutritional Medicine at the University of Hohenheim, said EFSA’s very own health claims panel could be a good place to start.
Professor Bischoff called on the Panel on Dietietic Products, Nutrition and Allergies (NDA) to address this and other “open questions”.
“The question to me is whether the panel is ready to work on these open questions or whether they have the expectation that the scientists and the companies have to solve all these questions,” he said. “Somebody has to solve it, this is very clear now.”
An example is antibiotic associated diarrhoea, which Dr Bischoff believes should be treated as a risk factor to disease, not a disease itself.
“The scientists [on the NDA panel] should stand up and say, this is not possible what you are asking us. They should realise there are limitations to fulfil the criteria of the regulation.”