Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the reply by Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen on 1 March (HL deb, col 789), what was the outcome of the review by the Committee on Toxicity of maximum intakes of folic acid.

At its April 2018 meeting, the Committee on the Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer products and the Environment (COT) considered a scoping paper on the current Tolerable Upper Level (TUL) of intake recommended for folic acid and the implications of the recently published paper Public health failure in the prevention of neural tube defects: time to abandon the tolerable upper intake level of folate by Wald et al. A copy is attached.

As the scientific database on the effects of folic acid is extensive and the science in several areas has developed significantly since the TUL was last considered in the early 2000s, the COT agreed that the basis of the current TUL for folic acid should be examined. The first detailed discussion paper will be considered at the next COT meeting in July 2018.