EU legislation seeks to protect consumers from food and food that carries the potential for danger. However, with the “Novel Food Regulation”, this goal shoots beyond the target. Originally, it was used to test novel foods, such as Fruit from genetically modified seeds, technically modified foods and novel food additives. However, such valuable natural products as algae, vegetables and exotic fruits have been included in the implementation, such as e.g. the noni fruit. Even fruits and vegetables traditionally eaten and consumed for centuries, vegetables, grains and seafood are suddenly declared as a potential “danger”. Many natural high-quality foods that are grown or grown outside the EU must not be traded since then or only after extremely expensive testing procedures. Since these are correspondingly expensive, we run the risk in Germany and Europe of losing many good foods or even not getting to know them. The main criterion is which of these “novel” foods were already on the market in the autumn of 1997 to a significant degree. All others are no longer allowed. This regulation applies irrespective of whether these foods have been consumed and appreciated in non-European countries for centuries. The NEM e.V. is committed to ensuring that high-quality food and nutritional supplements continue to be freely tradable or can be traded again in the future. The president of the association, Manfred Scheffler, says: “I do not want to be forbidden to eat what I want.”
