The EU health claims regulation and its impact on the marketing of organic food.

Kurzfassung

The so-called EU health claims regulation changes the legal framework for all health-related statements on food and in advertising. As health reasons are a major motive for purchasing organic food, organic market actors have to consider the opportunities and threats posed by the new regulation. This contribution discusses the relationship between the organic attribute and the health claim attribute on the basis of a literature review and expert interviews. We argued that there is no scientific basis for depicting organic products as ‘healthy as such’. The use of health claims for and on organic food can be problematic as well as promotive. Whether health claims are favourable or not depends, among other things, on product characteristics, the target consumer group and the future use of claims on competing conventional products.