Supplement and functional food brands should take care to ensure they do not make illegal health claims for products in company webinars. 

That’s the advice of food law expert Mark Tallon, who took up the subject in a post on LinkedIn this week. 

Tallon says health webinar presenters (typically a company nutritionist) and the brands they work for, may not be aware of the legal pitfalls such online events present. 

Tallon says he has attended four such events recently and observed a pattern of concerning issues. He cites one webinar on a menopause theme, where the presenter (a nutritionist) concluded the session with a final slide of products whose ingredients were then promoted for a range of symptoms and conditions. In this instance, Tallon says, the presenter seemed unaware that, as a health professional, they were prohibited from making health claims in commercial marketing. Additionally, he adds, the claims being made were medicinal and, since none of the products was a traditional herbal medicine or carried a marketing authorisation, were therefore illegal. 

Tallon says that as well as the legal implications for brands, nutritionists “may be at risk from their trade associations if they knew claims were being made that were illegal”. 

Tallon has called on regulators and trade bodies to “to take a look at these concerns and act before the broader industry is damaged.”