The European Specialist Sports Nutrition Alliance (ESSNA) has welcomed recommendations from food security expert Professor Chris Elliott that Britain launches a Food Crime Unit. This would help protect consumers from any fraudulent food incidents and would include sports nutrition products.
Professor Elliot’s recommendations include better intelligence gathering and sharing of information to make it difficult for criminals to operate; new and unannounced audit checks by the food industry; the development of a whistleblowing system that would better facilitate the reporting of food crime; improved laboratory testing capacity; and the encouragement of a culture within the food industry that questions the source of its supply chain.
ESSNA, which acts as a ‘police’ of the sports nutrition industry by monitoring and reporting companies throughout the EU that flout European law for commercial advantage and put consumers at risk, believes that the creation of the national framework will go even further towards ensuring that those companies who sell products that put people at risk are swiftly shut down.
UK government ministers have confirmed that all of Professor Elliott’s recommendations, which he has put forward in response to last year’s horsemeat scandal, would be accepted and implemented.
Dr Adam Carey, Chair of ESSNA, said “Although sports nutrition products are extremely tightly regulated, just as with the food industry in general, unfortunately rogue traders do also exist in our industry. Dangerous products masquerading as sports nutrition supplements can have fatal consequences too. We are making tremendous progress in tracking down and eliminating unsafe products, but there is still a way to go.”
He added, “We work closely with the Food Standards Agency, Defra and Trading Standards officers, and we are confident that the creation of a Food Crime Unit will help drive forward our work and will go a long way towards ensuring consumer protection from all food crimes.”
ESSNA (the European Specialist Sports Nutrition Alliance) is the voice of the sports nutrition industry in dialogue with regulators, policy makers, the media and consumers. In addition to policing the industry, its work also focuses on campaigning in favour of proportionate EU legislation that does not adversely affect the sports nutrition sector.
The European Specialist Sports Nutrition Alliance is an alliance of European sports nutrition companies that was formed in December 2003.
Members of the Alliance include Adams Food Ingredients, Aminolabs, Body Temple UK, CLF Distribution, First Milk, Future Nutrition, Iovate Health Sciences, Kinetica, Mass Nutrition Kostexperten, Maxinutrition, myprotein.co.uk, Natrol, NSF, Prometeus, Sci-MX Nutrition, Sports Supplements, Tropicana Health and Fitness, US Nutrition, USN UK, Volac, Weider Germany, NBTY Europe, BodyBuilding.com, Glanbia Performance Nutrition, PhD Nutrition, CytoSport UK, Future Nutrition, Arla Foods Ingredients, Athlete King Sports Nutrition, BULK POWDERS, Grenade, Vitamin Center, High5, DCC Health and Beauty, Healthspark, MP Bio Science, General Nutrition Corporation, Herbs in a Bottle, Scitec Nutrition, Protein World and Kerry.
Associate members of the Alliance include HFMA (The UK Health Food Manufacturers’ Association), Weider Publishing, Fitnessboutique, LGC, Cambridge Commodities, Healthy Inspirations and Nutraveris.
