CODEX Archives

Attack on Supplements in Europe

Health Supplements: R.I.P.
by Joanna Blythman
September 14, 2002
The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,790733,00.html

EXCERPT---

ATTACK #1

Attack number one comes in the form of the Food Supplements Directive,
which will set maximum levels for vitamins and minerals...

"This will wipe the most popular and effective higher-dose vitamins and minerals off the shelves," says Sue Croft of Consumers For Health
Choice, the group that successfully campaigned between 1997 and 1998 against the proposed ban on higher-dose vitamin B6.

"Millions of people will have their choices restricted or taken away...

ATTACK #2

The second attack takes the form of the Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products Directive, which says that herbal remedies can only be licensed if they can be shown to be safe and produced to high standards.

That sounds reasonable enough - until you learn that herbal remedies will be licensed in the same way as drugs.

A company making garlic capsules, for example, will have to go through many of the same regulatory hoops as a company producing a new
pharmaceutical drug.

Estimates for the cost of getting these herbal licences vary from £10,000 to several million pounds a product.

This would almost certainly deter all but the largest companies from producing remedies such as St John's wort, kava kava, gingko biloba, red
clover, rhodiola, evening primrose oil and ginger.

There is no prospect of several manufacturers pooling resources to get an ingredient licensed, because each company's formulation will be
treated as individual.

Furthermore, to get a licence, a specific product must have been on the market for 30 years, 15 of which must have been in Europe. The effects of that time bar are dramatic.

Black cohosh, for example, an oestrogenic herb traditionally used by native Americans, has demonstrated results superior to hormone
replacement therapy in the treatment of menopausal symptoms, with women who take the herb reporting fewer adverse events, even than those taking a placebo.

But black cohosh has only been available here for around five years, so, like any product introduced since 1973 - in other words, the most
cutting-edge herbal products - it will become illegal...

ATTACK #3

There's a third prong to the attack, in the form of the Novel Foods Directive, which is already in force.

This was originally designed to control genetically modified foods and new, so-called "functional" foods, such as fish oil-enriched bread, but is now being applied to absolutely everything that is sold under food
law.

Any food product (which includes supplements) that was not on the EU market before May 15 1997 can only be granted approval after submission
of a dossier containing huge amounts of technical and safety data.

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