Health claim allowed | Food producers can officially say flax lowers cholesterol and risk of heart disease
The Flax Council of Canada hopes to win new customers by appealing to both their hearts and their doctors.
The organization announced last week that its submission to Health Canada for a health claim that links daily consumption of flaxseed to lower cholesterol has been approved.
Industry and food producers can now use flaxseed to appeal to Canadians concerned about cholesterol levels and the risk for heart disease.
It becomes one of a handful of ingredients, including oats and barley, which can be marketed in Canada with a health claim on its label.
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Will Hill, president of the Flax Council of Canada, is confident the claim, and subsequent promotional efforts, will be a boon for the flax industry.
“We spend a lot time promoting the health benefits of flax, so we’ve always been focused on that. What this does is really gives us that validation of what we’re saying,” said Hill.
“So how are we different from someone else that’s saying their product is healthy? Well, we have a health claim and they don’t.”
Acres dedicated to flax dipped in 2011 and 2012 after the presence of Triffid, a genetically modified variety, shut down exports to Europe.
Acres have started to rebound recently, in part because of growing demand for flax from food processors.
“That part of our business is growing,” Hill said at CropSphere in Saskatoon last week.
“It’s gone from zero to about 25 percent of the market if you go back historically, and that trend is going to continue.”
Kelley Fitzpatrick of Nutritech Consulting, who worked with the council on the submission, said the label approval will differentiate flaxseed in a “messy market,” where health-conscious consumers are inundated with information, claims and science of varying quality and accuracy.
The Health Canada claim, which puts daily flaxseed consumption at five tablespoons, lends credibility to the promotional efforts, said officials.
Fitzpatrick hopes the claim will gain the attention of physicians and health-care professionals.
“Let’s not forget how important it was when canola first went into the U.S. with the low saturated fat. We went after dieticians at that point,” she said. “That’s what we will do with this flax health claim.”
The health claim covers only the marketing of flaxseed in Canada, but Fitzpatrick was enthusiastic about the value of the Canadian claim on social media, which could have a widespread effect.
Flax was a hot topic at CropSphere, where industry officials and analysts touted the demand for the crop as well as its competitive pricing.
Agriculture Canada is forecasting flax supplies to rise 23 percent following the 2013-14 growing season, offsetting low carry-in stocks.
Chuck Penner of LeftField Commodity Research told CropSphere that flax acres will grow 30 to 50 percent with prices of $11 to $13 per bushel, making it a money maker for growers.
More than one million acres of flax were seeded in Canada last year, 85 percent of which was in Saskatchewan
“I’m not worried about over-producing flax for the marketplace because the growth potential is very good,” said Hill.
“As long as we’re at a spread to current market conditions to canola, which we’ve seen in the last two and three years, we could easily have a doubling of acreage before we’re going to have a price impact.”
Canadian producers seeded more than 1.6 million acres to the crop in 2009, before Triffid was discovered. Acres bottomed out at 740,000 acres in 2011.
