The Ministry of Health has published an updated version of the National Official Control Plan for Foods and Their Ingredients Treated with Ionizing Radiation.The document plans in a unified and harmonized manner the official controls on foods and their ingredients treated with ionizing radiation and is an integral part of the Multi-Year National Control Plan (PCNP) provided for in art. 109 of Regulation (EU) No. 625/2017.
Among the updated parts:
- the distribution of matrices of animal/vegetable origin to be subjected to control on the national territory;
- import controls;
- accredited test methods for the identification of irradiated foods.
Official control is related to both Italian products or those from other sources intended to be marketed in the national territory and to those intended to be exported to another EU State or to a third country.
Treatment of food with ionizing radiation
It is a preservation technology that aims to preserve the hygienic quality of foods and prolong their shelf-life.National legislation , in compliance with the provisions of Community directives, establishes:
- the scope of irradiation ,
- the purposes and conditions of the treatment , including the radiation sources that may be used, the doses that may be applied, the hygiene requirements of the products to be subjected to the treatment and the categories of food that may be irradiated.
National legislation requires labelling and monitoring of plants and foods during the marketing phase.
With the National Official Control Plan for Food Additives and Flavourings, approved by the Interregional Coordination, the Ministry of Health plans and coordinates activities aimed at verifying compliance with sector regulations and collecting occurrence data for the purposes of assessing consumer exposure.
Additives and flavourings
They are technological adjuvants of foods.In particular, food additives are substances not normally consumed as food in themselves and not used as an ingredient with nutritional implications; the intentional addition of additives responds to technological purposes in the production, packaging or transport processes (e.g. sweeteners, preservatives, etc.).
Food flavourings are also products not intended to be consumed in their original form , but added to foods to impart or modify an aroma and/or flavour (e.g. heat treatment or smoking flavourings).
Given the large number of food additives and flavourings and the equally numerous combinations on the market, it is up to the Member States to classify them and define the control priority, based on the risk associated with them.
The data collected will also be used to comply with Recommendation (EU) No. 965/2023 on monitoring the intake of technological adjuvants, also with respect to scientific evidence for an admissible daily intake.
This type of official control, like the control on irradiation treatment, is among the activities that the Regional Health Systems must carry out within the LEA (Essential Levels of Assistance). (Source: https:// www.anmvioggi.it/ )