KMU Forschung Austria, led by Senior Researcher Wolfgang Ziniel, carried out the “SafeNEM” project and published an analysis of safety and quality in the food supplements market in 2026.

The safety of food supplements in e-commerce is an increasingly important issue for public health protection. Online sales make it easier for a wide range of suppliers to enter the market, including those with potentially problematic or unlawful business practices. This poses a challenge for both consumers and legitimate market participants and can undermine confidence in reputable suppliers.

Against this backdrop, the KMFA is developing the Alertify toolkit in collaboration with the ÖIAT and the LVA as part of the ACR SafeNEM project. The aim is to identify, in a semi-automated manner, food supplements sold online. These should be flagged if they stand out due to potentially illegal ingredients, inadequate or misleading labelling, or unauthorised health claims.

The first step involves a systematic analysis of the digital market for food supplements. Building on this, Alertify will be developed and tested as a prototype tool. The application will be supported by in-depth investigations of digital distribution channels. Where necessary, supplementary laboratory analyses will be conducted to validate potential regulatory breaches.

(The analyses are only available in German)