Review of the FSANZ assessment and approval process

As part of its responsibilities, FRSC recently completed a review on ways to expedite the FSANZ assessment and approval process and ensure appropriate protections for confidential commercial information, while protecting the public interest in accordance with the object of the Food Standards Australia New Zealand Act 1991 (the Act) and the prescribed objectives of FSANZ.

This resulted in a number of recommendations being agreed to by the Ministerial Council. These recommendations related to:

• FSANZ implementing administrative change that improve standard development processes quickly; and
• initiatives that would require an amendment to the FSANZ Act were referred to the Australian Government for further consideration and consultation before being implemented in legislation. In brief these relate to:
  • prescribing the form of an application, including full substantiation requirements, in order to cut down on the number of times additional information has to be requested from applicants;
  • reforming the assessment and consultation processes - so that the complexity and nature of applications and proposals links to the level of consultation required;
  • the Ministerial Council - particularly in relation to reducing the number of rounds of reviews, ‘stop the clock' provisions, and giving ‘directions' to FSANZ; and
  • the protection of commercially valuable information in relation to health claims