Food Standards Australia New Zealand Act 1991 - Application Handbook - Part 3 (Cth)

Part 3

Application guidelines

Subsection 22(2) of the Food Standards Australia New Zealand Act 1991 (Cth) (FSANZ Act) provides that an application for the development or variation of a food regulatory measure must, amongst other things:

* be in the form specified in the application guidelines; and * include all the information specified by the Application guidelines.

The application guidelines set out at this Part 3 of the Application Handbook are guidelines made by legislative instrument in accordance with subsection 23(1) of the FSANZ Act.

For the purposes of these guidelines, an application includes all documents provided to FSANZ in support of the development or variation of a food regulatory measure.

The guidelines outline requirements related to each of the groups of standards in the following list. Applications to vary the Code will generally, but not exclusively, relate to one or more of the following groups of standards. In many cases, an application may seek a change that means the information requirements of several guidelines must be met:

* standards related to labelling and other information requirements * standards related to substances added to food * standards related to contaminants and natural toxins * standards related to new foods * standards related to special purpose foods or standardised foods * standards related to food production * Each of these broad. groups of standards contains a number of individual food standards which relates to specific food matters. For each, there will be different information requirements. Applicants should identify the guidelines that are relevant to their particular application.

An example of when more than one guideline might apply is where an application involves adding a nutritive substance to infant formula. In this case, the information requirements for Guidelines 3.1.1 –General requirements, 3.3.3 – Substances used for a nutritive purpose and 3.6.2 – Special purpose food – Infant formula products, would be relevant.