New guide for food law change applications

Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) is responsible for making changes to and maintaining the Food Standards Code. for Australia and New Zealand This Code contains the national food law and includes; food safety, composition and labelling, amongst other issues.

Changes to the Code are made through either Proposals by Ministers or FSANZ, or through Applications made by industry or individuals.

There is a strict process used for each method to ensure that all parties have an opportunity to have a say and that rigorous testing is done to ensure that food safety and legal issues are maintained.The process includes review and feedback steps.

FSANZ has just released an update to the guide for making applications. The following is the media release on this release and is included here with permission from FSANZ.

This alert is to advise you that amendments to Part 3 of the Handbook, which contains the mandatory information and format requirements for applications to amend the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code, were registered on the Federal Register of Legislative Instruments on 5 January 2016.  The amendments take effect on 1 March 2016. All applications received by FSANZ on or after 1 March 2016 are required to comply with the requirements in this version (Amendment No.7 – 2016).

The instrument can be found on the ComLaw website at https://www.comlaw.gov.au/Series/F2007L02114/Amendments. An updated Part 3 compilation will be available on ComLaw in the next few days.

Submissions on the amendments and FSANZ’s responses to those comments are available on http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/code/changes/applying/Pages/consultationopportun3880.aspx.

Parts 1 and 2 of the Handbook are for information only and are not included in the legislative instrument relating to the changes to Part 3, or the compilation on ComLaw.

However, to assist stakeholders, FSANZ publishes an unofficial compilation of Parts 1, 2 and 3 as one document, which is now available on the FSANZ website at http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/code/changes/pages/applicationshandbook.aspx