Government push on food additives

By MARTIN JOHNSTON, health reporter

The Government is considering the mandatory addition of folate and iodine to foods to reduce disorders or birth defects.

Australian and NZ food safety ministers have agreed to the writing of draft standards on fortification of foods with the two additives.

The New Zealand minister, Annette King, said yesterday that a standard on folate fortification being developed by transtasman agency Food Standards Australia New Zealand could be in place within a year.

In pregnant women, a deficiency of folate can cause neural tube defects, which usually manifests as the birth defect spina bifida.

Folate is present in green leafy vegetables and some other foods.

It is already added voluntarily to some commercially baked breads, breakfast cereals, fruit juices and soy products.

Taking it as a dietary supplement tablet called folic acid is recommended from four weeks before conception until the 12th week of pregnancy, but this fails to address the risk of defects from unplanned pregnancies.

CCS, formerly the Crippled Children's Society, has been campaigning for fortification for more than a decade.

Ms King said it was estimated that 50 babies a year were born with spina bifida. "CCS believe we could reduce it to just a handful of cases by folate fortification," she said.

"Folate is mandated in the United States in flour and has been since about 1998 and they have seen a huge drop in neural tube defects."

Iodine is added to most general-purpose table salt, but not to specialty lines. Studies have revealed increased levels of iodine deficiency in New Zealand children. At the severe end this can cause goitre (a swelling of the thyroid gland in the neck), mental deficiencies and other problems.

Food manufacturers and consumers are turning to non-iodised salt and at least one baking chain uses it exclusively in its breads.

Ms King said bread had been mentioned as a possible food for iodine fortification.

A spokesman for the Nutrition Foundation, Professor Cliff Tasman-Jones, said it supported the addition of folate and iodine to foods, but with iodine questions remained about what food to use and how universally it was consumed.

Medical Association GP council chairman Dr Peter Foley said the association had no policy on mandatory fortification with the two additives. Personally he would support it if there was no alternative, but for folate, people ought to be encouraged to eat green leafy vegetables.

The food safety ministers also:

* Decided that food manufacturers who wish to claim health benefits for their products, like maintaining healthy cholesterol levels, will first have to prove the claims to the transtasman agency.

* Considered an agency report on labelling of genetically modified food, which said the transtasman regime was among the world's most comprehensive.

But Green Party health spokeswoman Sue Kedgley said the regime was "misleading and deceptive in that it exempts hundreds of GE ingredients from being declared on a label".


DEFICIENCY TOLL

* Folate deficiency can cause neural tube defects in babies, which usually manifest as spina bifida.

* A lack of iodine can cause goitre, mental deficiencies and other problems.