For brands selling into the European Union
The Hive is the free compliance and ordering platform from Supplement Factory, a UK supplement manufacturer: claim registers, market rules, regulatory alerts, and every quote, order and document you sign, in one account.
What may be said is common ground: the European Commission’s register, resting on EFSA opinions, states the claim, the wording, the conditions of use and whether it was authorised or refused. What is not common ground is how a product gets on sale. That stays national, several member states require a notification before first sale, and a notification is recorded rather than approved — no response is not a yes. The Hive holds the register, the Union list of novel foods and the market-by-market requirements in one account.
No card. Unlimited regulatory alerts, your document vault, and quotes and orders never gated, on the free tier.
What is actually in there
The European register is the spine of it, mirrored from the Commission’s own published file under CC BY 4.0 and re-imported on a schedule. Around it sit the registers of the markets European brands export to, so one account answers both questions.
Regulation (EU) 2017/2470
Which novel foods are authorised for the Union, with their conditions of use, specifications and labelling requirements. An ingredient that is not on the list, and not covered by a valid authorisation, is not one you can place on the market while you argue about it.
The Hive’s Market Registrations tool
What each covered market expects before first sale: whether a notification or declaration is required, to which authority, what has to accompany it, and who actually enforces afterwards. Stated plainly, including the part operators most often get wrong — that being recorded is not being approved.
The published GB register on GOV.UK
Held separately, because since divergence it is a separate list. If you ship in both directions, the Hive will tell you which register an answer came from rather than letting you assume they agree.
over 9,000 entries across these sources, every one of them attributed.
Mirrored
European health claim entries, permitted and not permitted
European Commission register, on EFSA opinions · CC BY 4.0
The register this page is about: authorised and non-authorised entries together, each carrying its conditions of use, its EFSA opinion reference and the Commission Regulation behind it.
over 1,300
GRAS notices for the United States
US Food and Drug Administration · public domain
The most common export question after the Union, and the one where an ingredient’s American standing is decided.
over 1,300
new dietary ingredient notifications for the United States
US Food and Drug Administration · public domain
Its counterpart for anything that was not already in the United States market before their 1994 cutoff.
over 5,000
permissible ingredients for the Australian market
Therapeutic Goods Administration · CC BY 4.0
Australia works from a closed list of what may be used at all, so it fails formulas that Europe would only have made you re-word.
over 1,000
permitted indications for the Australian market
Therapeutic Goods Administration · CC BY 4.0
And its claims are picked from a determination rather than composed.
over 1,000
Proposition 65 listed chemicals for California
California OEHHA · source terms apply
A Californian obligation that sits on top of federal compliance and is frequently triggered by contamination rather than by anything on your ingredient list.
Figures are stated as "over" because the registers are re-imported on a schedule and grow. The European claim register itself is described without a figure on purpose: it is held and refreshed, but its row count is not settled enough internally to publish, and a number we cannot stand behind is worse than no number. The Hive also holds national datasets that are not counted here, including ones we do not publish figures for because their source licence does not permit it.
The local part
The claims rules are the part everyone studies. The gap is usually somewhere else: in the conditions attached to a claim, or in the difference between the Union rule and the national door.
Where a member state requires a product to be notified or declared before first sale, the authority records it. It does not assess it, endorse it, or confirm that it complies. Silence afterwards is not approval, and the product sits on the market under the operator’s responsibility exactly as it did before.
Entries carry a status, and "non-authorised" is one of them, with the reasons for non-authorisation recorded alongside. Those entries are the ones a general web search is worst at surfacing and the ones your risk is concentrated in.
Every authorised entry carries conditions of use, and many of them are a minimum quantity per serving. Drop below it — to hit a price, to fit a capsule, to clear a supplier minimum — and the claim goes with it, even though the ingredient is still printed on the pack.
Maximum amounts for vitamins and minerals are not harmonised across the Union. Some markets set legally binding limits; others publish guidance values that are not legally binding at all. A dose that is unremarkable in one member state can be the reason a product is stopped in another.
The Union list is a list of authorisations with conditions attached, not a summary of what is generally considered safe. If an ingredient is not authorised for the use you intend, the answer is not a stronger dossier in your own files. It is a different ingredient, or a different market, until the authorisation exists.
Great Britain maintains its own claims register now. European brands shipping into the UK, and UK brands shipping into the Union, both need the entry from the register that governs the sale — which is why the Hive keeps them apart and labels every answer with its source.
Inside the Hive
Eight tools, each built against a specific mistake. For a European brand the ones that earn their place first are Claims Explorer, Market Registrations and the alerts, because those are where the Union rule and the national door meet.
Closes Mistakes 01 and 02
Search the health claim register by ingredient, by claim or by body system. You see the exact permitted wording, the conditions of use including the dose the claim requires, and the entries that are recorded as not permitted. Its job is to let you rule a claim in or out before a designer ever sets it in type.
Closes Mistake 03
The requirements for each market you are considering, in one place: what has to be notified, what is restricted, what a label has to carry. It answers "can this formulation be sold there" at the point the question is still cheap to ask.
Closes Mistake 05
Regulatory alerts and recall notices, filtered to the categories that apply to you. This is the one that runs while you are not looking, and it is on every account including the free one, because an alert that only reaches paying customers is not a safety system.
Closes Mistakes 01, 02 and 04
Ask a regulatory question in plain English and get an answer grounded in the register, with the entry it came from shown alongside it. It will tell you what the register says. It will not tell you what to do, and every answer carries its source so you can check it yourself.
Closes The mistake of not being able to prove it later
Every signed order, set of terms, specification and certificate filed under your account and retrievable by you. When a retailer asks for documentation in eighteen months, or the person who emailed it to you has moved on, it is still there.
Closes The mistake of claiming what you have not verified
Scan a label, see which accredited tests match the ingredients, see the price on screen, send it in. Results and certificates file straight back into your Vault. Free accounts get five per cent off testing, Hive Plus seven and a half, Hive Pro ten.
Closes Mistake 02, at the last possible moment to catch it
Artwork approval runs inside the Hive with the claim register alongside it, so the words on the label can be checked against their authorised wording before the file goes to plate. Approvals and uploads are on the free account. Design and compliance services are priced separately, per project.
Closes The mistake of not asking
A named route to a person, not a ticket queue. Concierge Lite on Hive Plus is a message and a booked client care call with a next-business-day reply. The full service on Hive Pro adds priority handling and arranges the travel and hospitality benefits for you.
Membership is the same everywhere: a permanent free tier, Hive Plus and Hive Pro, priced in pounds sterling excluding VAT. See the full pricing.
Straight answers
These are answers about how the rules work and what the Hive shows you. They are not advice about your product, and nothing here replaces your own regulatory or legal counsel.
It is the European Commission’s published register of nutrition and health claims, recording for each entry the substance, the claim, its conditions of use, the health relationship, the EFSA opinion behind it, the Commission Regulation and whether it is authorised or non-authorised.
It is the reference point for what may lawfully be said on a supplement sold in the Union. The Hive mirrors the Commission’s own file under CC BY 4.0 and re-imports it on a schedule, so what you search is the register rather than somebody’s summary of it.
In several member states, yes: a notification or declaration to the national authority is required no later than the first placing on the market.
It varies by country, which is the whole difficulty. What does not vary is the meaning of it: the authority records the notification, it does not approve the product, and responsibility for compliance stays with the operator throughout. The Hive keeps the requirements for the markets it covers in one place so the question is answered before you commit to a country.
No. Maximum amounts are set nationally, and member states differ, with some setting legally binding limits and others publishing non-binding guidance values.
For a brand selling across several markets that turns a single formulation decision into several regulatory ones. It is worth settling before a production run rather than after a market rejects a dose the rest of the Union was content with.
Only if it appears on the register as authorised, in wording that carries the same meaning, and only where your product meets its conditions of use.
An EFSA opinion is a step in the process and not the permission itself. The register is where the answer is final, which is why the Hive shows you the entry, its status and its conditions together rather than the science alone.
No. Great Britain maintains its own nutrition and health claims register, separately from the European Commission’s.
The Hive imports both, from their own official sources, and every answer names the register it came from. If you sell in both directions, treat them as two checks rather than one.
The rule changes and your stock does not, which is how a compliant product quietly becomes a non-compliant one.
Changes are published, but they are published across several bodies and nobody sends them to you. PRAS+, the Hive’s alert system, watches regulatory sources and recalls for the categories that apply to you and tells you when something moves. It is on every account, including the free one.
The European register is public, it is well made, and almost nobody in a brand team has it open at the moment the decision is actually taken. That moment is the entire product.
