
Food supplement sanctions
One of the most competitive advantages that LegaleGo Nutrition has, is the team that make up this food safety consulting. In addition to technicians and specialists, the team consists of lawyers specialized in food law. More specifically, in special food such as food supplements in sports nutrition and natural nutrition.
In addition to reviewing technical data sheets, preparing, translating and revising labeling, preparing self-control systems, our food safety consultancy answers requirements of health authorities with legal arguments, defends the company against abuses of the Administration, wins legal proceedings against inspectors and eliminates or reduces penalties in food supplements. Thus, we have managed to reduce a financial penalty of 11,000.- € to 6,100.- € for a Granada company dedicated to the manufacture of food supplements.
The Ministry of Health imposed a penalty of € 11,000.- on the company with respect to a single product for: 1.- Do not make the mandatory notification: 4.000.- € 2.- Include a nutritional statement described: 6,000.- € 3.- Labeling deficiencies: € 1,000.- As a food safety consultancy, we assist and defend the company during the entire judicial procedure and after the trial, we managed to see the Judge that although the infractions had been committed, the sanctions in food supplements were disproportionate to the events that occurred. For this reason, although there are many formal arguments (expiration, prescription, competence, etc.) and substantive (principle of typicity, guilt, good faith, etc.) to cancel a sanction and not have to pay anything finally, in many
There is no doubt that the sanction has been correctly imposed and must be paid. In these cases, and with an absolutely subsidiary nature to the annulment of the sanction, we must resort to the principle of proportionality violated almost always by the Public Administrations in order to reduce as much as possible the amount of the sanction as has happened in the case We have won.
The principle of proportionality is one of the principles of the sanctioning power of the Public Administrations that is normatively included for the entire sanctioning administrative order in article 131.3 of Law 30/1992, of November 26, on the Legal Regime of Administrations Public and Common Administrative Procedure. In accordance with this precept, when an Administration imposes a sanction, it must keep the appropriate adjustment between the seriousness of the act constituting the infraction and the sanction applied, especially considering the following criteria:
- The existence of intentionality or repetition.
- The nature of the damages caused.
- The recidivism, by the commission within one year of more than one infraction of the same nature when it has been so declared by firm resolution.
This principle, given its configuration, constitutes a firm guarantee of people against the frequent excesses and illegal practices of Public Administrations in the imposition of sanctions. Precisely because of this, the allegation or argumentation of this principle has become an annoying reality for the Administration. As a food safety consultancy, in addition to doing the same for this activity, we eliminate or reduce administrative burdens such as sanctions in continuous food supplements that are unfairly imposed on companies. In our team, we have a contentious administrative lawyer, the lawyer specialized in this type of judicial proceedings.