The Contract Research Organization solves the European Food Safety Authority dilemma
In the second part of this special series on global outsourcing trends NutraIngredients explores how the European Union nutrition and health claims regulation (NHCR) is impacting activity in the contract research organisation (CRO) sector.
European nutrition science will go on, but will it earn health claims?
The controversial legislation is changing the relationship between nutrition science and food and food supplements marketing due to the fact so much nutrition science that previously informed health food messaging is being ruled inadmissible by the EU's head science agency.
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) rulings have disturbed the food industry's marketing strategies, and they are also affecting the way nutrition science is being commissioned and conducted across the EU bloc's industry, academic and government labs. CRO activity has also been greatly affected.
With less ambiguity in other regions like North America; and increasing cost-driven competition from places like India, the European nutrition CRO landscape is being altered.
Business opportunities
One side effect of the NHCR rulings that have come in since August, 2008, is a migration into the nutra space by formerly pharma-focused CROs. In theory this may seem a good fit since these CROs are familiar with the medicinal, clinical trial design protocols EFSA has been favouring, but the results have been mixed according to Cédric Bourges, PhD, the founder and managing director of French claims consultancy and trial designer, Nutraveris.
"The pharma CROs have sensed an opportunity and moved in with medical protocols," he said. "They are trying to change and think nutra but the problem is they are often far off the mark and haven't understood the complexities of the NHCR and EFSA's opinions and recommendations. So while there is undoubtedly a lot of good work going on, there are a lot of promises being made about how trials will meet EFSA's expectations that are going to be difficult to keep."
With such trials often costing 100s of 1000s of euros, Bourges said his firm often advises smaller, budget-conscious companies to consider academic labs, where control and delivery schedules may be less controlled, but costs can be significantly reduced.
That said, like NutraVeris (which designs but does not conduct trials), others in the nutra space have recorded a NHCR-fed pick-up in business.