Novel Foods and Ingredients: Laws and Regulations in USA and Canada

Novel foods and food ingredients are products that have not previously been used as food or products that result from a process that has not previously been used for the manufacturing of foods. These new foods and ingredients must be evaluated for their safety before they are allowed to be marketed into the food supply. In the USA and Canada, different approaches are taken for the safety assessment of novel foods and ingredients. Canada has a novel foods regulation, while the USA does not. Instead, the USA relies upon a long-standing approach where new food ingredients whether novel or not are assessed for their Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) status for specific uses. While the regulatory approaches differ, the outcomes are frequently similar. The role and responsibilities of government regulatory authorities are greater in Canada, while the process in the USA is driven by industry proponents of the novel food or food ingredient with voluntary regulatory oversight. This chapter will describe the two different approaches to the safety assessment of novel foods and ingredients.