Industry relieved as chemicals law excludes food, ingredients

The backing is important as the draft legislation must now go before representatives of the individual member states for approval before becoming EU law.

Individual member countries will now have to agree to the proposal, expected later this month, with a view to implementation next year. The legislation has wide implications for industry competitiveness and innovation on the one hand, and health and the environment on the other.

However the food industry will still feel the impact of the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals (REACH) legislation, especially the sections dealing with packaging and cleaning materials.

The EU's food and drink industry had lobbied hard for the exclusion of food, ingredients and feed from the scope of the legislation on the grounds that it would load too great a cost burden on companies and duplicate existing safety regulations covering the sector.

The industry also protested against dumping food into a legislation aimed at chemicals, fearing that the association might harm the sector's image with consumers. However the industry will still be covered under the legislation under the sections dealing with packaging and materials

Kate Snowden, a spokesperson for the UK's Food and Drink Federation, said that while the industry was pleased that its lobbying efforts had paid off, they were still studying all the amendments that had been made to the final proposal yesterday. She said the association would make further comments on the legislation once members had assessed its impact.

The Confederation of the food and drink industries of the EU (CIAA) has consistently said it wanted food, ingredients and feed excluded from the scope of the legislation.

A position paper by the CIAA criticised the original proposals as being inconsistent by including some food ingredients and materials while excluding others on the grounds these were covered by existing legislation.

Existing legislation for the food industry already ensures human health is protected in the bloc, the CIAA argued. Including food and ingredients would avoid confusion between the responsibilities of the EU's food regulator and the new EU Chemicals Agency.

The compromise deal reached by the European Parliament’s main political groups earlier this month, was criticised by consumer groups as weakening the scope of the REACH chemicals bill in industry’s favour. In a two hour session yesterday, the European Parliament's MEPs proposed about 1,000 amendments, accepting at each stage controversial compromise texts.

The amendments passed included the exclusion of food and food ingredients from the scope of the legislation. Snowden said the food and drink industry had argued that the sector was a minor user of chemicals in its processes and products.

The Commission will be able to support a number of amendments tabled by the Parliament on this issue, such as the exemption from registration of waste, food and ores. On the other hand, we cannot accept some other amendments tabled as they would create legislative loopholes

Stavros Dimas, a member of the European Commission responsible for the environment, said before the vote that the administrative body broadly supported the compromise package. By targeting those substances with potentially the highest risk, the compromise improves the workability of the REACH proposal especially for low volume substances, he said.

"The Commission will be able to support a number of amendments tabled by the Parliament on this issue, such as the exemption from registration of waste, food and ores,"​ he said. "On the other hand, we cannot accept some other amendments tabled as they would create legislative loopholes."​

The legislation would require a wide array of businesses to test and register the chemicals used in their processes, products and packaging to ensure their safety to humans and the environment. It would also establish a European Chemicals Agency, a regulatory body to ensure compliance.

The legislation, in effect, transfers the costs and responsibility of testing chemical substances to industry. The European Commission first adopted the REACH ach proposal in October 2003 as a means of forging a new policy to replace the current dual system for assessing risks of "existing" and new chemical substances.

The legislation will also reverse the burden of proof from the authorities to the companies themselves, for the testing and risk assessment of chemicals.

REACH will register and control approximately 30,000 chemical substances, requiring companies to provide health and safety data on every chemical that it manufactures or imports, with the aim of increasing the safety of humans and the environment.

Other compromises reached in the package will reduce the amount of information that producers need to supply on chemicals produced in quantities between one to ten tonnes. A number of tests on chemicals in the ten to 100 tonne categories originally proposed by the Commission have been scrapped.

The deal also allows countries to waive certain data requirement if suppliers can provide ‘adequate justification’. Under another amendment, the European Commission will be required to adopt guidelines on what ‘adequate justification’ will mean within 18 months of REACH coming into force.

MEPs also voted to strengthen the authorisation procedures for REACH, introducing stringent guidelines on substituting dangerous chemicals for safer ones.

An amendment reformulating the rules of chemicals within products was passed by just one vote. The amendment requires producers of articles to register dangerous substances incorporated into their products, and strengthens the powers of the proposed chemicals agency to demand registration of any substance it feels has not been registered for use in a product.

A proposal, called the One Substance One Registration (OSOR), would allows companies to share information on chemical substances, therefore reducing costs. The amendment was specifically included to benefit small businesses.

OSOR is also expected to reduce the number of animal tests carried out in the EU.

The Commission estimated the overall economic impact of REACH on all industry at about €2.3 billion over 11 years, however the figure is disputed by industry.

A study commissioned by the EU's trade union confederation indicated REACH could help avoid 50,000 cases of occupational respiratory diseases and 40,000 cases of occupational skin diseases caused by exposure to dangerous chemicals annually. This would amount to €3.5 billion of savings over a ten year period.

A study by UK regulators on the potential impact of REACH on the food industry concluded that in the area of canning, the economic costs would be minimal.

In a case study the department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) found that REACH would not have a significant impact on the costs faced by industry even if 100 per cent of the costs were passed onto the downstream users.

In a study on the internal coatings used on food cans Defra estimated total additional annual costs of between €640,000 and €2,030,853 per year using a worse case scenario. The figures are based on data from the Metal Packaging Manufacturer’s association.

In order to provide a context to these costs, if all of these annual costs were borne by the UK food can coating sector, the price increase per can produced is between €0.000045 per can and €0.00014 per can. Assuming that the production costs for a typical can are €0.10, this is equivalent to an increase in costs of between 0.045 per cent and 0.14 per cent, Defra estimated.

The study mainly focused on the authorisation of two key building block chemicals – epichlorhydrin and bisphenol A. These are used in the manufacture of epoxy resins, which form the basis of a variety of internal and external can coating systems.