New Zealand is edging closer to requiring food manufacturers to add the vitamin folate to bread to reduce birth defects.
Food Standards Australia New Zealand expects to produce its final assessment on the proposal next month.
Transtasman food ministers in 2004 asked the joint-governments agency to investigate mandatory fortification of
a range of foods with folate as a possible way to reduce neural tube defects, which include spina bifida.
Babies with spina bifida - in which one or more vertebrae fail to develop completely - usually survive but require extensive medical and surgical care and most suffer lifelong moderate or severe disabilities.
The other main type of neural tube defect is anencephaly, in which the babies have no brain or top of the skull. They usually die within days of their birth.
An estimated 30 live births and stillbirths each year are affected by neural tube defects.
CCS, formerly the Crippled Children's Society, has campaigned for folate fortification of foods for more than a decade.
There is considerable evidence that increasing folate intake in pregnancy reduces the risk of the defects. It is thought that up to 70 per cent could be prevented by increased folate consumption.
Folate is often called folic acid in its synthetic form. It is present in green leafy vegetables and some other foods, but women of child-bearing age consume only half the recommended amount. It is also available in supplement tablets.
Folate fortification of foods has been permitted here since 1996 and it is added voluntarily to some breads, breakfast cereals and other products.
But the food agency says research in 1998 showed average folate consumption had increased only marginally and remained significantly below the recommended levels.
The recommended daily intake for pregnant women is 400 micrograms, twice the level of the general adult population.
Despite the recommendation since 1993 that women take folate supplements around the time of becoming pregnant, most do not do so, the agency says. The reasons include unplanned pregnancies, a lack of knowledge of folate's benefits, and cost.
Folate fortification of foods is mandatory in Canada, the United States, Indonesia and a number of South American and African countries. Britain and some other European countries have a voluntary regime.
New Zealand's Food Safety Minister, Annette King, has championed mandatory addition of folate to foods, noting the "huge drop" in neural tube defects in the US.
