THE CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS - IFEAT

THE FRAGRANCE INDUSTRY’S RESPONSETo this effect the industry has taken a verycourageous decision – to which I am surethat Dave Wilcox, the president of RIFM,who is sitting here in the Conference Hallwill attest. RIFM has taken on thechallenge to transform and progressdramatically on its safety assessmentprogramme, coming from a programme,which was based on what we calledgrouping, and moving now towards asubstance-based approach programme.The importance for you and for theindustry in general is that this substancebasedapproach will be able to addressmore clearly some of the issues that theNGOs or the regulators are pointing out onspecific endpoints. More importantly, itwill enable the industry to put into thesystem the priority ingredients that itwants to see assessed. A priorityingredient does not mean per se that theseare high volume ingredients. Priorityingredients cannot only be priority from asafety point of view, but also they can be -and more importantly - priority from acreative point of view. This means thatevery ingredient is equal, and everyingredient will be judged for its merits onan individual basis. Once they have gonethrough the system they, in exchange withthe independent panel that RIFM operatesOur Response – Overall ScienceProgramOur Response – The Impact of OurValue Chain• Why should the regulator care?– Impress the importance of our industry forjobs and wealth creation– EU, The USA and Global– A major exercise– Well received in EUwith, will come to the point where IFRA may or may not issue a safety standard on this or thatingredient.This was probably one of the biggest steps we took.Nevertheless, we have to continue to go further. Sowe decided to embark on a more thorough reviewof what the industry is about, because although welike to look at ourselves we do not express this tothe outside world. So we decided to embark on asocio-economic analysis (SEA) and very recentlythis analysis was presented to the EuropeanCommission. At the top of the slide is AntonioTajani, vice-president of the European Commission,who actually endorsed our document along withone of the leading MEPs, Amelia Sartori. Thus, theefforts that the industry has been doing over the last18 months to present itself and to present a face tothe regulators is paying off.8220