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In a regime of harmonized permitted health claims under Regulation 1924/20061 (the Claims Regulation), differentiating commercial communications from others has become a challenge in the food industry. The Flexibility Principle, laid down in Recital (9) of Regulation 432/2012,2,3 plays a key role here, allowing for the use of a wording different from that expressly authorized. The use of health claims referring directly to the brand name of a product (Brand-specific Claims), instead of the specific nutrient or other substance subject of the authorized claim, is expressly prohibited in the recommendations on general principles on flexibility of wording for health claims4 (Flexibility Guidance). This article examines the legality of such outright prohibition in the light of EU law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Parliament and the Council Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 modifies existing food labelling provisions in the European Union to allow consumers to make informed choices and to make safe use of food, while at the same time ensure the free movement of legally produced and marketed food. It entered into force on 12 December 2011. It shall apply starting from 13 December 2014. Following an informal working practice, the Commission's Health and Consumer Directorate General has published a document ["Questions and Answers on the application of Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 on the provision of food information to consumers"] in order to provide answers to a series of questions concerning the application of the Regulation. This document aims at assisting all players in the food chain as well as the competent national authorities to better understand and correctly apply the above-mentioned Regulation. However, it has no formal legal status and in the event of a dispute, ultimate responsibility for the interpretation of the law lies with the Court of Justice of the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Switzerland is not a Member State of the European Union and European Law is not applicable in Switzerland. However, several legal provisions in Swiss law contain references to European Regulations and Directives. Other Swiss provisions are transcripts of European regulations, the so called "autonomous adaptation" of European Law into Swiss Law. In this way Switzerland has been able to adopt most of the content of European Food Law, but it was also able to choose from the European provisions or to interpret and correct them. In 2010 Switzerland started to revise completely its Federal Act of 9 October 1992 on Foodstuffs and Utility Articles (Foodstuffs Act, FSA). One aim of this revision is the adoption of the principles of Regulation (EC) No 178/2002 which have not been implemented in Swiss Food Law yet. The message and the draft of the revised act were published in May 2011. This revision can be seen as an acknowledgment of the achievements of the European General Food Law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The most fundamental notion underlying ten years of reform of EU food safety law has been codified in Article 14(1) of Regulation (EC) 178/2002: food shall not be placed on the market if it is unsafe. This notion has been elaborated in most of the rest of EU food law, first and foremost in the other paragraphs of Article 14. This contribution analyses Article 14 and argues in favour of a text-conform interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The EU is currently struggling to implement coherent coexistence regulations on genetically modified (GM) and non-GM crops in all member states. While it stresses that any approach needs to be “proportionate to the aim of achieving coexistence”, very few studies have actually attempted to assess whether the proposed spatial ex ante coexistence regulations (SEACERs) satisfy this proportionality condition. In this article, we propose a spatial framework based on an existing landscape and introduce the concept of shadow factor as a measure for the opportunity costs induced by SEACERs. Our empirical findings led us to advance the proposition that flexible SEACERs based on pollen barriers are more likely to respect the proportionality condition than rigid SEACERs based on isolation distances. Particularly in early adoption stages, imposing rigid SEACERs may substantially slow down GM crop adoption. Our findings argue for incorporating a certain degree of flexibility into SEACERs by advising pollen barrier agreements between farmers rather than imposing rigid isolation distances on GM farmers. The empirical questions of proportionality and flexibility have been largely ignored in the literature on coexistence and provide timely information for EU policy makers. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The Proposal for the Provision of Information to Consumers is best known for its aim to tackle obesity by providing clear information to consumers. However it is also being used as a way in which to address what has been described as "an missed opportunity" by the European Court of Justice in the Lidl, Italia case to set out the different responsibilities of food business operators through out the food chain. This article analysis these new proposed provisions and its potential impact on the laws of the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]