The battle over what should be allowed into baby formula is spreading to other foods.
The Food Standards Safety Authority alerted consumers to Nutricia's Karicare Gold Plus Infant Formula and Follow-On Formula on Monday, saying both contain fructo-oligosaccharidespre-biotic (FOS), an additive not yet tested in New Zealand, which may affect infant bowel movements.
The NZFSA says some dairy and soy drinks contain the same additive, or its parent ingredient inulin, for nutrition reasons.
However, as manufacturers are not cleared for its use, products such as Activate yoghurt, Vitasoy soy milk and breakfast drinks like Sanitarium's Up & Go, may now be in the gun.
"At the moment we're not a 100% sure with some of these products whether it should be in the product," says Food Safety Authority spokesperson Jenny Reid.
Nevertheless, manufacturers like Nutricia say their products are compliant and are confident consumers will continue to buy it.
"We maintain that it's a permitted food ingredient and we know because of that it has been safety assessed and (we) believe that our product is completely safe," says Toni Brendish.
The NZFSA says it has made the right move to tell consumers the ingredients have not been tested in New Zealand.
"For infants, infant formula can be their sole source of nutrition, they're a very vulnerable group and for a number of infants it's actually preterm infants, that's babies born premature, that will be consuming this product," says Reid.
The New South Wales Food Safety Authority in Australia made a similar statement about Karicare Gold Plus a month ago, but Nutricia says that has not affected sales.
Now it's up to Kiwi consumers to make their choice.
