- Fluoridated water must be treated as a medicine, and
cannot be used to prepare foods! That is the decision of the European Court
of Justice, in a landmark case dealing with the classification and regulation
of 'functional drinks' in member states of the European Community. (HLH
Warenvertriebs and Orthica (Joined Cases C-211/03, C-299/03, C-316/03 and
C-318/03) 9 June2005)...
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- Implications for international trade in food products...
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- But the ruling also has an equally profound implication
for export trade in processed foods and drinks. The Court stated that
even if a functional food product (or a food containing it) is legally
marketed as a food in one member state, it cannot be exported to any other
member state unless it has a medicinal licence. So any company making
a consumable product using fluoridated water in its preparation or as an
ingredient cannot now export that product to any other state in the EC,
even if their product is permitted in their home state.
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- The economic implications are enormous. Not only does
the ruling ban the use of fluoridated water for all retail catering and
wholesale food processing in the UK and Ireland, it also prohibits such
trade from these states to other member states of the EC.
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- But it goes much further than even this, because if British
and Irish processed foods from fluoridated areas cannot be exported to
the EC, this prohibition must also apply to the importing of such products
into EC member states from any other country that practices water fluoridation.
The decision effectively bans all processed food products from countries
such as the USA, Australia and New Zealand, unless they can be positively
proven to have been prepared using only water that was not fluoridated.
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