Keeping up with developments in regulations and implementing them in good time are challenges faced by cosmetics companies to ensure their products comply with legal sales requirements. This is the conclusion drawn by Viviane Handler-Kunze, consultant and business partner of Pfeiffer Consulting. In her lecture at CosmeticBusiness entitled "Quo Vadis Cosmetics", she illustrated which regulatory challenges the industry will need to face in the coming years and the relevant areas of expertise involved. Furthermore, she also concluded that an increasing number of legal fields are becoming relevant to cosmetic products.

Paradigm Shift in Responsibility

According to Handler-Kunze, the most significant issue is the accreditation of ingredients. The reason for this significance is a paradigm shift in the responsibility for product safety. The Cosmetics Directive has been replaced by the Cosmetics Regulation, thus shifting responsibility to the manufacturer. Before this change, it was the job of the authorities to prove any risk due to ingredients, whereas it is now down to the cosmetics companies themselves to document the safety of their products. The crucial factor in this is that companies must provide a sufficiently large database on which the Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety (SCCS) can base its risk analysis and make a decision on approving the product as marketable or not.

Numerous ingredients are currently undergoing this kind of analysis. These include nanomaterials and active agents that may affect hormones, as well as CMR substances that are suspected of being carcinogenic (causing cancer), mutagenic (causing genetic mutations) or reprotoxic (hazardous to the reproductive process). Cosmetics manufacturers must stay informed about any decisions on prohibited and approved ingredients when using these in their formulas.

New Legal Fields Becoming Increasingly Relevant

As emphasised by Handler-Kunze, there is more to all this than just the regulations on ingredients. Other issues are becoming increasingly significant. Examples include the ethical sourcing of raw materials and the use of environmentally friendly ingredients as regulated by the EU as a result of the European Green Deal. Handler-Kunze considers the use of mandatory labels for product disposal to be particularly challenging. In her opinion, the problem lies in the numerous different regulations in various EU countries which must be complied with in each country in order to sell products there. Last but not least, cosmetics products are even affected by food legislation. An example of this is the ingredient titanium dioxide, which was classified as an unsafe additive when used in oral-intake products. Since it is also used in lipsticks, the cosmetics industry will have to expect a new evaluation by the SCCS here too, Handler-Kunze adds.

Vision and the Ability to Implement Change Are Essential

All in all, the regulatory challenges for the cosmetics industry are not getting less. More than anything, they require companies to look beyond their own industry and be able to react quickly to new demands.

The lecture is available to registered users in the media library at https://www.cosmetic-business.com/program/cosmeticbusiness/4785 .