working group flavorings

The working group on flavorings consists predominantly of food chemists who work for flavour manufacturers, users of flavourings in the food industry, official food monitoring authorities, commercial laboratories or universities. The regular meetings serve to exchange information and form opinions. Discussions on current topics should preferably lead to consensus views. Where this is not possible, exchanging experiences should help bring the positions closer together or, at the very least, contribute to a better understanding of the other position. The results of the discussions also serve as the basis for publications by the working group.

The working group on flavorings has existed since July 1998 and has comprised approximately 20–25 active members and a fluctuating number of corresponding members ever since.

Until now, three publications by the working group from the early 2000s had addressed natural flavorings. Given the age of these contributions and the fact that the issue of naturalness continues to play a prominent role in the working group’s technical discussions more than 20 years later, the working group decided to review the publications. Ultimately, it was decided to move the 2003 publication “Natural Flavorings” to the archive without replacement, as the topics addressed there in Q&A format are no longer relevant. The publication on enantioselective analysis from 2001 will remain unchanged; for discussions of this method taking into account the current state of science and good practice, readers are referred to the relevant textbooks. In the end, therefore, only the 2004 publication was revised. Apart from expanding the title to “Authenticity of Natural Flavorings”, however, this publication also required only an editorial update to reflect the current legal situation. The updated publication can be found in the “Publications” section under the first bullet point.

Chair

PD Dr. habil. Martin Steinhaus
Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology
at the Technical University of Munich, Freising
martin.steinhaus@tum.de

Deputy

Dr. Andrea Bosse
LANXESS Deutschland, Cologne
andrea.bosse@lanxess.com

Secretary

Frauke Kirsch
Hertz & Selck GmbH & Co, Hamburg
kir@hertz-selck.de

Term of office 2026 - 2028