The special dietary foods industries are proud to provide people with the essential safe and ‎nutritious foods they need to live, grow and thrive. This would not be possible without science. Scientifically formulated foods for special dietary uses (FSDU) support people throughout all stages of life, from the healthy growth and development of infants and young children to the dietary management of the elderly and people with certain diseases.

Industry science underpins food processing, research and innovation, and risk assessments. It also supports regulations and standards, and labelling and claims.

  • Food processing: Processing is fundamental to nutrition and food safety in FSDU, ensuring the stability and uniform distribution of nutrients, improving digestibility and bioavailability, enabling fortification with sensitive ingredients, removing contaminants and ensuring microbiological safety. It also provides solutions, including through the addition of additives, to technical challenges, such as prolonging shelf-life, preventing the separation of ingredients, masking unpalatable tastes, maintaining the physical stability and making foods easier to swallow.
  • Research and innovation: Extensive research and expertise is invested in the advancement of nutrition science, continuous product improvement and innovation. This helps ensure that FSDU are optimised for people with special dietary needs in terms of safety and nutritional adequacy.
  • Risk assessments: Risks related to potential hazards in FSDU, such as contaminants, allergens and toxins, are identified and mitigated. Industry also contributes safety and exposure data to scientific bodies, such as JECFA, that ensure food standards are science-based. This is critical for FSDU as people with special dietary needs are more vulnerable than the general population.
  • Regulations and standards: Our industry contributes scientific and factual information to regulatory processes, sharing information on the latest advances in nutrition science and providing insights into product research and innovation. Furthermore, scientific methods of analysis support food safety and quality by ensuring nutritional value, enabling quality control, detecting harmful substances, ensuring regulatory compliance and supporting innovation.
  • Labels and claims: Science-based labels and claims on FSDU are instruments to ensure food safety, compliance and transparency as they must clearly communicate the product’s intended use, nutritional content and any health claims to avoid misuse and ensure suitability for vulnerable populations. This is crucial as inaccurate or insufficient labels could have significant health implications for people with special dietary needs.

Food safety is everyone’s business

As an industry, we are committed to enforcing the strictest standards and our members take pride in producing foods based on the latest scientific information, accredited food production and manufacturing operations and other global food management systems.

Since 1973, ISDI has supported the work of Codex Alimentarius in establishing science-based ‎food standards, guidelines and codes of practice that ensure food safety and quality. Our expertise in processes, ingredients, systems and data enable us to provide robust scientific information to support risk analysis and decisions taken by Codex and other global, regional and national authoritative bodies. We are committed to working with regulators, policy-makers and other stakeholders to improve the health and well-being of current and future generations.

We support World Food Safety Day as an opportunity to recognise the people who ‎help keep our food safe and celebrate the role of safe and nutritious food in providing for the ‎health and wellbeing of people with special dietary needs around the world.‎