Oct 26th, 2022
3 mins
At a recent FSA Food Industry Liaison Group (FILG) meeting, the issue of ‘grey market’ food and feed products and the risks they pose was discussed.
Grey market products are not formulated, labelled, or intended for the UK market and therefore may be non-compliant with UK domestic and retained EU legislation. However, they regularly appear on the UK market, particularly from the US.
There are differing regulatory requirements between the UK, EU and US and this makes it challenging to source some ingredients and products from the US. This issue ranges from food safety concerns to labelling requirements and mainly covers food additives, novel foods and food supplements. These foods will often not bear the information consumers would expect in the UK in terms of composition and product claims.
Since the UK left the EU there are reports of increases in imports of US products containing non-compliant additives, as well as an increase in EU produced, compliant versions of US products.
The FSA have issued an information paper with further detail highlighting the issues and they are keen to seek industry views on what more can be done to address non-compliance. This paper is available here
They would very much welcome your thoughts on this matter and we would encourage members to consider the questions at the end of the paper. All comments would be most appreciated. Just drop an email to deniserion@bfff.co.uk and we will ensure they are passed back to the FSA.
