| Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006, 20 December 2006, requires functional foods manufacturers operating in Europe to provide evidence that the health claims reported on the packaging are truthful. However, most applications reviewed by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) have been rejected, leaving food manufacturers with the option of either selling products deprived of their claims or discontinuing their production. This paper analyzes changes in welfare (both producers’ and consumers’) that would occur if the implementation of Reg. (EC) No 1924/2006 resulted in a large-scale health-claim de-labeling of functional food products. To that end, we use one year (2007) of monthly scanner data of sales of conventional and functional yogurt in the Italian... |
