Scientists at the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) looked at 180 health claims for the supplements.
Last week the European Food Safety Authority (Efsa) initiated a public consultation on its draft guidance.
Testbiotech emphasises that EFSA and BfR have their own vested interests in this discussion.
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Dr Flynn argues that there is no agreement on the daily amount, so the EFSA has been conservative.
ECONOMIST: The way health claims about food are regulated is changing
However, he added that in an earlier report about animals in laboratories, the EFSA had recommended improving the welfare for these animals.
Yet another problem the lipid biologists have is with the amount of long-chain omega-3s that the EFSA has recommended it is desirable to consume.
ECONOMIST: The way health claims about food are regulated is changing
Not surprisingly, Big Food are savvy marketers, and Facebook and Twitter let them get away with making claims that even the EFSA would frown upon.
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Albert Flynn, who chairs the EFSA panel which looked at these claims, said the first stage had been to look at general health claims for the products.
"The panel of independent experts at EFSA spent six months studying all the evidence before concluding that current use of neonicotinoids posed an unacceptable risk to bees, " he observed.
But a spokesman for the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) said that while the organisation had concluded that fish could feel pain, in the EU, decapods were not classified as sentient species.
Rather than a comprehensive evaluation of all available research, EFSA cherry-picked the studies and proceeded to their conclusion in spite of an acknowledged gap in not only the data they analyzed but their understanding of it.
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"Not only had the commission incorrectly based their rationale on recent EFSA reviews of these products, they had failed to make the appropriate impact assessments of any decisions they proposed on the broader interests of European stakeholders, " it added.
As the ingredients of food become ever more characterised and understood, and their links to human health established, the EFSA has a difficult problem applying a scientifically rigorous approach to health-related claims without assuming the weighty bureaucracy of a pharmaceuticals regulator.
ECONOMIST: The way health claims about food are regulated is changing
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) published their opinion on a French study that found severe impacts on the health of rats fed with genetically engineered maize or exposed to a low dosage of herbicides.
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Albert Flynn, the chairman of the EFSA panel, says this point will be resolved when a product requires authorisation for a health claim derived from its omega-3 content, as only those products containing long-chain omega-3s are likely to be able to provide any evidence to support such claims.
ECONOMIST: The way health claims about food are regulated is changing
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