Novak: Kraš and Agrokor will have to abandon stevia

Shock, disbelief, and outrage are just some of the feelings that Bruno Novak, deputy head of the Department of Horticulture at the Faculty of Agriculture in Zagreb, does not hide after the announcement of the proposal for Amendments to the Regulation on Food Additives, which scientifically proven beneficial plants stevia and sweet potato are placed in the same group as poisonous plants, and their use in nutrition is drastically crippled.

Although botanically they are not relatives, stevia and sweet potato are connected in terms of usability and nutritional-health applicability by a glycemic index of zero, which is of exceptional importance for improving the quality of nutrition and life for diabetics, as well as for other people in a preventive sense. As a scientist and long-time promoter of the cultivation and use of stevia, and sweet potato, through his work at the Faculty of Agriculture, Novak has been aware for a long time of all the obstacles that stevia has faced in its breakthrough to legal use and market placement, particularly regarding the ban on stevia in the USA, which was persistently insisted upon by the all-powerful FDA (Foods and Drugs Administration). However, after the FDA’s easing at the end of 2008 and partial permission, only for the use of glycoside extracts from stevia solely as a sweetener in the form of so-called ‘white stevia’, Novak believed that reason would prevail in the European Union, and thus now in Croatia, and finally give consumers the opportunity to enjoy all the medicinal properties of stevia and sweet potato, rather than perceiving stevia exclusively as a sweetener and sweet potato as some ‘sweet potato’. However, EFSA (European Food Safety Agency) conducted a reevaluation of the list of permitted food additives at the end of 2011, which included steviol glycosides (sweet extracts from the leaves of stevia), and since then steviol glycosides have officially been designated E-960 on the list of E-numbers for food additives.

However, at that time, Novak says, the famous ‘Codex alimentarius’ re-enters the story as a supposed collection of internationally established standards in food safety, which in the cases of stevia, sweet potato, and a number of already known and proven medicinal herbs, serves more as a perfidious tool and a powerful weapon for complicating the market placement of natural food and medicinal products compared to those backed by the possible pharmaceutical industry and the industry of synthetically produced components for the food industry and in drug production. Thus, along with numerous teas and similar herbal preparations, the so-called ‘green stevia’, which is merely a dried form of stevia leaves, has been expelled from the market in the EU, in which, according to Novak based on numerous scientific studies, there is an abundance of medicinal compounds for treating numerous diseases and alleviating existing conditions, such as diabetes.
– I truly did not believe that our Ministries would now show such humility and blind obedience by literally copying EU directives and regulations. This is absurd, especially since in Croatia, stevia (Stevia rebaudiana) has been on the list of permitted plant species for cultivation since 1920, when many in the world did not even know about it! I have been warning the responsible people in the Ministry of Agriculture and Health for a long time about the general societal benefit of popularizing the use of stevia due to its medicinal properties, but there is no response, as the answer is that our regulations must be aligned with the applicable EU food additive regulations. If there was a will, I am sure that this injustice, which places both stevia and sweet potato on the negative list with poisonous plants, could be rectified. Isn’t it absurd in the EU that it allows the use of steviol glycosides as food additives in numerous food products, while simultaneously banning this plant from market appearance in any other form?

Moreover, there are indications that after 2014, proposals for banning the cultivation of stevia and sweet potato in the EU could emerge, showing how far such harmful legislation goes, said Bruno Novak. The perfidiousness and inconsistency of such a decision, Novak adds, is also seen in the administration’s disclaimer that the ban on marketing stevia and sweet potato does not mean a ban on their consumption in households! As a promoter of stevia cultivation, Novak is largely responsible for the spread of stevia as one of the essential crops that more and more family farms in Croatia are orienting towards cultivating. Family farms, Novak says, will be directly threatened by the announced restriction on the use of stevia only to the white form of sweetener, that is, only to the industrially obtained extract, and their significant investments will be called into question. Given that there are no laboratories in Croatia for extracting steviol glycosides and obtaining the permitted ‘white stevia’ for sweetening, as it involves very large investments, this regulation also favors importers from China and other countries, while destroying domestic agricultural production of this extremely medicinal plant whose time was just supposed to come.

– As far as I know, Kraš has some plans to include green stevia in some of its new products; however, with the adoption of such a Regulation, they will have to abandon that. I do not even know if after this Agrokor will abandon sweetening its Jana water with stevia. Once again, I appeal in the name of science and common sense to consider all the facts regarding stevia and sweet potato, and not to blindly copy absurd regulations, concluded Bruno Novak.