3. Compositional Aspects

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General Foods
Philippines

This section provides the compositional requirements for the food category and/or food products in scope and information on permitted nutrients, ingredients, and additives.

3.1 Composition Requirements

There are no specific requirements for food ingredients in general. The Food Safety Act [1] stipulates the following prohibitions in the production and trading of food that it shall be unlawful for any person to:

Produce, handle, or manufacture for sale, offer for sale, distribute in commerce, or import into the Philippines any food or food product that is not in compliance with an applicable food quality or safety standard promulgated in accordance with the Food Safety Act;
Produce, handle, or manufacture for sale, offer for sale, distribute in commerce, or import into the Philippines any food or food product that has been declared as a banned food product by a rule promulgated in accordance with the Food Safety Act;
Fail to comply with an order relating to notifications to recall unsafe products;
Adulterate, misbrand, mislabel, falsely advertise any food product which misleads the consumers and carry out any other acts contrary to good manufacturing practices;
Connive with food business operators or food inspectors, which will result in food safety risks to the consumers.

The Philippines adopts some Codex standards as mandatory standards, such as Codex Stan 72-1981 Revised 2007 for infant formula and Codex Stan 156-1987 for follow-up formula.

For the products which have mandatory standards, nutrient profiles must comply with the standards.

3.2 Raw Material Requirements

There are no raw material requirements for the overall category of “General Foods”. Refer to Section 3.2 of specific product Guidebooks for the Philippines.

3.3 Fortification

The Philippines FDA [2] highly encourages the fortification of foods that are widely consumed particularly by at-risk population groups. Based on nutritional surveys, the FDA recognizes that the nutritional deficiency problems in the Philippines are related to energy, iron, vitamin A, thiamin, riboflavin, and iodine levels. The Filipino diet is also deficient in ascorbic acid, calcium, and folate.

Fortification shall be recommended for processed foods replacing or simulating traditional foods to compensate for nutritional inferiority due to the use of substitute ingredients.
Processed foods may be fortified with nutrients that are not considered deficient in the Filipino diet if the purpose is to restore losses in the food due to processing or to preserve/maintain a balance of nutrients in the processed food.
Fortification is appropriate when essential nutrient(s) is (are) added in proportion to the total caloric content of food. Processed foods that contain at least 40 kilocalories per normal serving (that is, 2% of a daily intake of 2000 kilocalories) may be fortified to balance the nutrient-caloric content of the food.
Processed foods that are consumed not for their caloric contribution to the diet (e.g. condiments, seasoning/spices) may be fortified only with essential nutrients that are deficient in the Filipino diet, PROVIDED such foods are appropriate vehicles for the particular nutrient(s) and are widely consumed by the general population or are intended for intervention programs to address micronutrient deficiency in specific target populations.

The fortification level shall be in accordance with the following principles:

For essential nutrients that are deficient in the Filipino diet, the added nutrients shall supply at least 1/3 of the RDA of the target consumer, except that vitamin C shall be supplied at not less than 100% of the RDA in fortified juices/flavored drinks. These levels shall be uniformly distributed in the total number of services likely to be consumed in a day.
For nutrients that are essential but have not been established to be deficient in the Filipino diet, the added nutrients shall supply at least 1/5 (or 20%) of the RDA of the target consumer.
For nutrients that are essential but have no established RDA, the added nutrients shall supply at least 20% of the estimated safe and adequate levels for daily intake as recommended by the Food and Nutrition Board of the U.S. National Research Council.

Nutrient levels for fortificants for processed foods and Philippines RDA values are specified in Annex D and E of the Administrative Order No. 4-A s. 1995 [4].

3.4 Other Permitted Ingredients

There are no other permitted ingredients for the overall category of “General Foods”. Refer to Section 3.4 of specific product Guidebooks for the Philippines.

3.5 Permitted Additives

The use of food additives is guided by Bureau Circular No. 2006-016 [3].

Only those food additives which present no appreciable risk to the health of the consumer at the proposed level of use as found by JECFA and/or other internationally recognized bodies shall be endorsed and are included in the APPENDIX, after proper evaluation by the FDA (previously the Philippines Department of Health-Bureau of Food and Drugs (DOH-BFAD)).

Permitted additives for use in food in general - Table 2
Permitted additives for use in food under specified conditions - Table 3
Permitted additives for use in a limited number of food categories - Table 4
Permitted food processing aids - Table 5
List of mineral salts, amino acids, and vitamin compounds for use in foods (including an advisory list of vitamin compounds for use in foods for infants, children, and adults) - Table 6
Permitted enzymes - Table 7