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PECB signs a partnership agreement with Chimera Systems

PECB, a reputable certification body, has pleasingly engaged into a partnership with Chimera Systems to upgrade its presence in South Africa by offering the distribution of PECB training courses on a wide range of international standards.

“We are looking forward to working with Chimera Systems to integrate their expertise and help customers achieve higher levels of satisfaction. We are very excited for this agreement, and we have always welcomed partnership opportunities with such companies that are consistent with and appropriate to our mission,” said Eric Lachapelle, CEO of PECB. “The relationship with Chimera Systems represents a powerful opportunity for PECB to significantly expand our presence in South Africa, a vibrant and very important market, and extend it to other parts of the world over time,” concluded Lachapelle.

David James Scott, and Gillian Katinka de Villiers, Directors, Chimera Systems
Chimera Systems is delighted to be in partnership with PECB, an international company of global repute. In today’s worldwide economy there is increasing concern to ensure the integrity of products and services. Companies are under immense pressure to show due diligence and demonstrate compliance to international standards. Chimera Systems’ core focus in this business venture with PECB will be expanding the reach of Health, Safety, Environment and Quality Management Systems within Southern Africa. To this end we are dedicated to the development of organisations and their personnel in the field of management systems in achieving global recognition through accredited PECB certification. Integral to our vision is the development of PECB brand awareness and their presence in Southern Africa. Chimera Systems and its directors are excited at the opportunity that partnership with PECB affords to provide peace of mind to South African company owners and consumers through international certification.

About PECB
PECB is a certification body for persons, management systems, and products on a wide range of international standards. As a global provider of training, examination, audit, and certification services, PECB offers its expertise on multiple fields, including but not limited to Information Security, IT, Business Continuity, Service Management, Quality Management Systems, Risk & Management, Health, Safety, and Environment.

We help professionals and organizations to show commitment and competence with internationally recognized standards by providing this assurance through the education, evaluation and certification against rigorous, internationally recognized competence requirements. Our mission is to provide our clients comprehensive services that inspire trust, continual improvement, demonstrate recognition, and benefit society as a whole. For further information regarding PECB principal objectives and activities, visit www.pecb.com.

About Chimera Systems
Chimera Systems was founded as an independent consultancy specialising in the areas of quality management systems, and labelling, and is based in Cape Town, South Africa. We provide our clients with the support, training and other dedicated services required to fulfil the unique needs of each project. With a wide background in local and international regulations and standards, we provide assistance to the industry in understanding the quality, legal and safety obligations concerning the products they provide.

Chimera Systems offers support to food manufacturers striving for food safety to implement a reliable Food Safety Management System certifiable to internationally recognised standards. All of our products and services come with the training packages required by these standards to manage and implement an effective Food safety Management System. We provide refresher training where required to ensure continual maintenance and improvement of each management system. Chimera Systems offers gap analysis and pre-certification auditing to verify efficacy of the management system prior to certification.

To ensure compliance of products at market level we offer a wide range of label compliance reviews for local and export markets. These reviews enable our clients to keep abreast of the legal requirements and standards around labelling and advertising of their products.

Claims

Healthy & Wholesome — A regulatory perspective

Health claims were first introduced into legislation with the introduction of R146 in 2010. This legislation has a standard list of specific claims and also a list of words that indicate some form of health claim that may not be used.

The prohibited words are: health, healthy, wholesome, nutritious and any indication that a food can provide balanced or complete nutrition. In the course of consulting I have regularly encountered food marketers who insist that their food is healthy, wholesome or nutritious so why can they not say so?

The simple answer is no food is in itself healthy. Any given food can only be considered healthy if part of a balanced diet. Nobody can argue with the fact that water is necessary for daily life and therefore is healthy. But it is only healthy as part of a balanced diet that includes numerous other foods. Conversely sodium is considered unhealthy by many, but a diet that excludes sodium in its entirety would be harmful. These simple examples hopefully illustrate why no single food can be labelled using any of the above mentioned words.

Industry has attempted to get around this law with numerous methods, two commonly used (or attempted) are the use of endorsements and registering words as a brand.

The regulations published in 2010 closed the gap on endorsements. No product may be endorsed by a health practitioner or related organisation or even individuals that may insinuate a specific health aspect of food. There is exception made for organisations who are registered with the Department of Health for use of specific logos. This has not stopped companies still using this methodology of marketing whether it be by using a reference to a certain diet or having an Olympian training in the background of advertisements. Some of these products have been removed from the market, but walking through the supermarket many of these products are still on the shelf. This is indicative more of a lack of enforcement on the ground than a retraction of this part of the regulation.

The second avenue, registration of words as trademarks, is dealt with in the current draft regulation where this practice is outlawed. There is some indication that a grace period will be given for those brand names registered prior to 1995, although the dates given in the draft are now long come and gone. It will be interesting to see how far this regulation is taken. Will only specific use of words be targeted or any hint of the use? Words such ‘Pure’, ‘Fresh’ and ‘Natural’ appearing in brand names come to mind.

An issue with how nutrient content claims are currently dealt with is that generally only one requirement needs to be fulfilled e.g. for low fat a product simply has to have less than 3 g of fat per 100 g. This allowed manufacturers to push up for example sugar levels and use synthetic substitutes to make up for mouth feel and taste while still being low fat. Ultimately this does not make for a “healthier” product. A nutrient profile calculator has been introduced in the draft regulations requiring a food product to achieve a certain score before a claim can be applied to the product. The score takes into account total energy contribution, sugar, fats, sodium, protein, fibre, fruit and vegetable content. This can almost be seen as an attempt to create a scoring system for the term healthy, although this word may not be used.

A criticism of this system in previous drafts has been that some seemingly “healthy” foods would then not be allowed to carry a claim. This has been largely solved by having different categories of food products namely beverages, naturally high fat foods (e.g. oils and cheeses) and other food products.
Although no system is perfect this has gone some way to close the gaps in the regulation.

The use of any term on a label must be substantiated by sufficient scientific evidence, normally some form of laboratory study. Where no specific test can be associated with a claim e.g. there is no test that can prove “healthy”. So as a food marketer if you can’t substantiate a claim through legal reference the chances are that the specific word may not be used.

Article by: Norah Hayes