Regulations

The Task Force considered a range of voluntary and regulatory options, and members agreed that a regulatory approach was the better option. Among the factors considered were the Danish experience, lessons learned from nutrition labelling and other related initiatives, the need to target the full range of food products, and the need to send a strong and consistent signal to seed growers and oil producers to invest in healthier alternatives.

 

 

"Thanks for supporting the fight against heart disease"

The goal of the Task Force, given the dietary patterns of People (including the amount of food consumed outside the home), was to find a solution that would encompass all foods sold to consumers in retail and food service establishments (e.g. in grocery stores, restaurants, fast food outlets and food service operations), whether purchased from a manufacturer or prepared on-site.

 

To simplify compliance and enforcement, the Trans Fat Task Force recommends that:

 

Enforcement of a regulation limiting the industrially produced trans fat content of all manufactured foods purchased by a retail or food service establishment would best be carried out on a finished product or output basis, as the Canadian Food Inspection Agency already has responsibility for inspecting manufacturing plants and stocks of imported products. The same desire to simplify enforcement would support the regulation of foods prepared on-site by retail or food service establishments on an ingredient or input basis.

 

Regulatory Limits
The following recommendations recognize the progress achieved by the edible oil industry.

The dietary intake modelling conducted by Health Canada indicated that the cumulative effect of these recommendations would result in an average daily trans fat intake by all age and gender groups of less than 1% of energy intake, as recommended by the World Health Organization.

The recommendations focus primarily on the elimination of industrially produced trans fats but are expressed as limits on the total amount of trans fats in foods, since there are no officially accepted analytical methods for distinguishing between the amounts of naturally occurring and industrially produced trans fats in foods. This approach would ensure consistency with the Canadian nutrition labelling regulations, which came into force in December 2005.

 

For all vegetable oils and soft, spreadable (tub-type) margarines purchased by a retail or food service establishment for sale to consumers or for use as an ingredient in the preparation of foods on-site, the Trans Fat Task Force recommends that:

 

For all other foods purchased by a retail or food service establishment for sale to consumers or for use as an ingredient in the preparation of foods on-site, the Trans Fat Task

 

Force recommends that:

 

This limit does not apply to food products for which the fat originates exclusively from ruminant meat or dairy products.

 

This set of regulations has been developed to apply equally to all foods, domestic or imported, purchased by a retail or food service establishmentin Canada, as per other food and drug regulations. These regulations do not apply to ingredients sold to food manufacturers, as limits have already been set for the finished products they sell to a retail or food service establishment.

 

Timing for Compliance
New product development is an expensive process. To comply with the new regulations, some enterprises may need to replace or reformulate more than 25% of their products, and this figure could be as high as 100% in some baking enterprises. The significant upfront costs likely mean that some enterprises, particularly small businesses, may have difficulty with a sudden transition to a market where the amount of trans fat is limited. If some firms are given a longer period for compliance, as happened when the nutrition labelling legislation was introduced, they will be able to spread out the cost of developing new products.

 

The Trans Fat Task Force recommends that timelines be staged to reflect legitimate challenges to implementation and to optimize public health benefits. Adjustments can be made quickly for certain oil uses (especially frying), but small businesses and certain baking applications may need more time to adjust. The Task Force estimates that it would take 12 to 18 months to develop a sufficient supply of high-oleic oils to respond to clear food service demand, expressed through signed contracts.

 

Some members of the Task Force also pointed out the need to avoid a situation where competition for a limited supply of the available alternatives drives up costs, hurting both industry and consumers.

An enterprise's size, the complexity of the operation, the number of products and the availability of alternatives must all be factored in when deciding timelines and extensions. These considerations were beyond the Task Force's analytical capacity. The compliance timelines for different types of enterprises should be determined through the business impact test, which is a standard government procedure when regulations are drafted.

 

Based on these considerations, the Task Force proposed a "2 + 2" approach: two years to develop regulations and up to two years for implementation.

 

The recommendations that the Task Force sets out in this report are provided in the context of an overall, balanced diet as described in Canada's Food Guide to Healthy Eating. Throughout its deliberations the Task Force has kept in mind that consumption of saturated fats should not increase significantly as a result of limitations on trans fats.

 

Companies should be encouraged to: