Health Claims and Their Regulation

In this chapter, we discuss health claims as an avenue for the competing demands of science-based regulatory scrutiny, and consumer wants and needs. We compare two regulatory systems, those in Australia and the European Union, to analyse the regulatory strategies and propose solutions that could be effective, efficient as well as fair in regulating food health claims. Misleading claims appear to escape scrutiny in Australia when an industry-standard self-justification process is applied. The European Union, in turn, has a strict and bureaucratic approval process for health claims, which can hamper business innovation. To expand our discussion, and to understand the context for how regulatory issues can be managed and communicated at the business level, we recognise and highlight the realities for companies trying to compete in a difficult global marketplace while they are trying to achieve sales targets in extremely complex and sometimes unstable markets.