Teethy Grin after ERMA Dental Whitener Announcement

The Food and Grocery Council welcomes the release of today’s decision by the Environmental Risk Management Authority (ERMA) that protects the sale of low risk dental whitening products in supermarkets.

“It’s a common sense decision for a range products that have been readily available to the New Zealand public for years”, says Katherine Rich, Chief Executive of the New Zealand Food and Grocery Council (FGC).

“While the Ministry of Health and the New Zealand Dental Council proposed tightening the rules for selling dental whitening products in New Zealand, FGC argued that the regulatory net had been cast too wide.

“The well-intentioned proposal aimed to address concerns relating to high concentrate hydrogen peroxide dental treatments. In doing so it unintentionally caught a number of everyday grocery products, which shoppers are accustomed to buying from the supermarket shelf”.

“We are delighted that ERMA saw the nonsense of banning such products from sale in supermarkets. Kiwi shoppers certainly would not appreciate having to traipse to the dentist every time they want to buy a number of everyday mouthwash and toothpaste whitening products”, Mrs Rich said.