Health Canada plans changes to infant food standards
Canada
Oct 25, 2024
Health Canada has published a proposed compositional requirements for infant foods and foods currently regulated as foods for special dietary use. The scope of this proposal is limited to the compositional requirements pertaining to infant foods as well as foods currently regulated as FSDU. In response to the 2023 consultation, the Department received comments from 84 stakeholders and many of these addressed aspects aside from compositional requirements. These comments continue to be analyzed and will be addressed in a broader regulatory modernization proposal that will be pre-published in the Canada Gazette, Part I.
The current proposal only includes details on the categories of foods that will have prescribed compositional requirements. Section 2.0 pertains to FSDP and compositional requirements are proposed for infant formula and medical foods for ages one or more. Under the medical food category, distinct compositional requirements are proposed for products intended for total diet replacement (TDR) for weight reduction. The compositional requirements for most FSDP would allow for deviations when medically justified.
Although they would be categorized as FSDP, this proposal does not address prepackaged human milk or medical foods for infants. As stated in the 2023 consultation paper, compositional requirements would not be proposed for prepackaged human milk given the natural variation in composition of human milk and the difficulty in meeting a standard set of compositional requirements. Regarding medical foods for infants, while Health Canada intends to permit their fortification, in the 2023 consultation paper it was proposed that compositional requirements would not be prescribed. Instead, premarket authorization would be required for all medical foods for infants, except for non-fortified products like modulars and thickeners. By requiring premarket authorization similar to infant formula, the goal is to establish appropriate safeguards and ensure the production of safe products that meet the specific dietary needs of vulnerable infants.
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