Risky business

Just because an ingredient is legal for inclusion in foods and beverages in Australia doesn’t mean you can use it.

Take the high-intensity sweetener stevia.

Stevia finally received FSANZ approval as an ingredient in both foods and beverages in New Zealand and Australia in 2008; after Central Queensland University (CQU) researched the sweetener for almost a decade and submitted its findings for four years. In early October 2008, FSANZ, the Australian food authority, finally approved stevia.

CQU’s Centre for Plant and Water Science submitted the initial application in Australia for every consumer, user or grower that would potentially be interested in stevia. David Midmore, a professor at the university, explained the stevia application had been developed because it was recognised to be a potential cash crop for farmers.

Midmore has stated the problem with going through the approval process is that no company would hold the patent since it is not a new invention. As a result, no company wants to spend the money and time on a product that would be available for every company’s use.

Both Coca-Cola and Pepsi have developed no-calorie sweeteners from the super-sweet stevia plant and the product is freely available in the Australian marketplace.

So obviously you can include it in your new soft drink, right? Well, not necessarily.

At AusFoodtech in Melbourne last Friday, Janelle Borham, a Principal at Griffith Hack, spoke about stevia in her very interesting presentation ‘The magic ingredient: intellectual property in the Australian food technology industry’.

She explained that manufacturers can’t just use stevia as they may be breaching another company’s patent. Stevia itself is not patentable but combinations of ingredients that include stevia (or any other ingredient) are. Coca-Cola has 30 international patents describing the use of high-potency sweeteners in lots of combinations. In Australia, Coke’s claims actually specify various combinations of 80% purity Rebaudioside A (the least bitter of all the steviol glycosides) with erythritol.

So if the combination of Reb A and erythritol in your new drink matches Coke’s patents, you can expect to hear from Coke’s lawyers.

All ingredient combinations, not just those involving Stevia, are subject to these sorts of patents - for example, Inulin has had 277 patent applications with 123 granted.