ALANUR Supports Latin America Supplements

SÃO PAULO, BrazilThe Latin American Responsible Nutrition Alliance (ALANUR) launched on May 30, 2012, creating Latin America's first regional food supplement association. ALANUR focus is to ensure regulatory guidelines in the region are appropriate for supplements. The group will work to promote regulations that will cover a broad range of safe ingredients with sufficient consumer information and appropriate manufacturing standards and technical requirements, according to chair Tatiana Pires.

ALANURs plans this year include working with regulators and academia across the region to discuss regulatory issues related to food supplements. Decisions are expected this year on key aspects in Brazil and Mexico, and in addition, plans are underway to organize, with the support of the International Alliance of Dietary/Food Supplement Associations (IADSA), regulatory workshops in Colombia, Venezuela and Central America.

ALANUR started with Pires from Herbalife, vice chairs Norma Cavazos from Amway and Mariana Alegre from DSM, and treasurer Antonio Trejo Díaz from Bayer presenting the alliance's goals and work program.

Many countries are in the process of developing new regulatory frameworks, and regulators are increasingly monitoring the successes and challenges of similar initiatives across the region and worldwide," Pires said. Therefore, there is a greater need for high quality scientific and technical regulatory information to be shared among decision-makers, and ALANUR aims to facilitate this flow of information."

Since there is no harmonization in Latin America, challenges for marketing food supplements across the region currently range from different classifications of products in the different countries and restrictive definitions and levels of vitamins and minerals, to broad restrictions on the use of botanicals and challenges relating to the use of health claims, as well as time and resource consuming registrations.

 IADSA coordinated the forming of ALANUR.