EU Food Supplements Directive
Keith Parkins | 16.06.2003 12:12
Our ability to pop into a local food store and pick up a jar of St John's Wort or a bottle of vitamin C may all soon change due to an EU Directive, if it is ratified by the UK.
EU Food Supplements Directive
'The drug companies are buying up the vitamin companies. It's all about big fish eating the little fish.' -- Frank Wiewal, People Against Cancer
'Studies in the US show that when so-called fit and healthy older people are given considerable doses of supplements they are healthier in every respect.' -- Paul Kingsley
'There are several thousand valid scientific papers every year that demonstrate the importance and value of nutritional supplements to treat and prevent a wide range of diseases.' -- Damien Downing, editor of The
Journal of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine
'The simple fact is that the pharmaceuticals don't want people to get healthy. Degenerative disease is the single biggest money-spinner of all time.' -- Lynne McTaggart
Imagine if flowers essences like Rescue Remedy were illegal? If you couldn't buy high dose vitamin C when you had a cold? If many types of selenium were banned? If you couldn't buy St John's Wort over the counter
any more? Just imagine if you were put in prison for buying vitamins?
All this and more, if passed into British law, EU directives that will sharply curtail your access to many health supplements and types of alternative medicine.
Many people take vitamins, minerals and other food supplements. This is in part a rejection of drugs peddled by the big pharmas. A point that has not gone unnoticed by these pharmas who now own and control over 70% of the
vitamin and food supplement market.
Our ability to pop into a local food store and pick up a jar of St John's Wort or a bottle of vitamin C may all soon change due to an EU Directive, if it is ratified by the UK.
There is a discrepancy in the market across the EU, in the UK we can buy these vitamins in a local food store, in other EU countries a prescription is necessary. It does not really matter, but it does to Big Business which
likes to see a common market.
The EU directive will only allow small doses to be on sale, usually around the recommended daily allowance (RDA) for general nutrition, whereas in the UK we can currently buy Vitamin C in 1,000 mg doses. Many pills and potions
will be removed off the market, often only the least effective will remain. On the other hand the big companies will be allowed to use some fairly obnoxious manufacturing processes. To drive the small companies of the market, very high licence fees will be charged.
The EU directive will lead to the banning of some 300 popular supplements - such as boron, many types of calcium, many times of chromium, copper, mixed
tocopherols, iron, vanadium, zinc etc. It will also severely lower the upper limit of many of the most popular vitamins, like vitamin C, despite exhaustive evidence of safety. Anything not on the 'positive list' when the
directive comes into effect in three years' time will be banned throughout Europe.
What we will be left with on the 'positive list' are the cheapest (to manufacture) and least efficacious supplements (from which big pharma can make the most money). The only form of vitamin E on the 'positive list' is the alpha tocopheral variant, which has lower bioavailability than the variants to be banned.
Do we need these vitamins and pills anyway? Surely not if we are healthy and eat a balanced diet. Therein lies the rub. Are we healthy, do we eat a balanced diet?
Our food, processed food to one side, does not have the mineral and vitamin content it used to have.
In 1940, the UK Medical Research Council published a report, The Chemical Composition of Food. In 1991 it repeated the research. It found out of 28 raw and 44 cooked vegetables, 17 fruits and 10 types of meat, poultry and game, that vegetables had lost up to 75% of nutrients like manganese, meats had lost about half their minerals, and fruits had lost about two thirds. You would have to eat ten tomatoes in 1991 to get the same copper as eating
one in 1940, and three oranges to get the same iron as one orange in 1940.
A similar study in the US by the Department of Agriculture, has shown that over a period of 25 years, vitamins have drastically declined in fruit and
vegetables.
This loss is a direct consequence of industrialised agriculture. The loss of vitamins and minerals is more than made up by a cocktail of pesticides, herbicides and antibiotics, many of which are known to be hazardous to
health and the environment, many are allegedly banned from use. Genetic engineered foodstuffs will make a bad situation even worse.
The vitamins we may need to maintain normal health (and the levels set decades ago to avoid ill-health, such as scurvy and rickets, not to maintain optimum health), may not be what we need when we are unwell. Increasingly vitamins and minerals are being used as treatment, not just to maintain health.
What we need to maintain health, may not be what we need for medicinal purposes when we are ill.
Members of the British Society for Allergy, Nutritional and Environmental Medicine routinely use high doses to treat from asthma to cancer. Paul Kingsley, who has successfully treated multiple sclerosis and cancer says
that RDA is not only inadequate for the average person, it is totally inadequate when they are unwell: 'The more unwell they are, the more of the nutrients they need to correct their unwell metabolism.' The US Journal of
Medicine advises doctors to prescribe vitamins and minerals as necessary for human health.
Holland and Barrett, who have driven many independent health food stores off the High Street, and bought and destroyed the once excellent Neals Yard Wholefoods, being themselves owned by big pharma, are being somewhat
two-faced on this. Some stores have information on this directive (it may be local initiatives), but they are refusing to stock campaign material from the Health Freedom Movement.
Check out your local health store which may have cards with which to lobby MPs. If not, ask why not, do they wish to be driven out of business?
But more is yet to come. The Food Supplements Directive, has been passed at EU level, it has not yet been ratified by the UK Parliament (expected some time in July).
The Traditional Herbal Medicinal Product Directive
Currently being considered by the EU, this directive seeks to force herbal medicines and even substances like flower essences into regulatory procedures similar to those governing the pharmaceutical industry. If passed as it now stands, the THMPD will effectively ban many herbs which have been safely used outside of Europe for many years
or wipe them off the shelves because the companies who produce them will not be able to afford the costly regulatory process. The net effect would be the disappearance of many safe and proven herbals and flower essences from health shop shelves and the sharp
curtailment of innovative natural substances. Equally alarming, animal testing has become a mandatory part of the process.
An amendment to the Medicines Act
EU is currently considering a proposal to amend the main EU laws defining a medicinal product and setting out the licensing system for such products. This originally was designed as a simple exercise in 'tidying up' the law.
However, it appears that the pharmaceutical industry and the regulatory agencies have used this as an opportunity to extend the definitions of a medicinal product to include all products, natural or otherwise, that have
'therapeutic benefit'.
If accepted as currently worded, this Directive would allow medicines regulators to insist that many food supplements not covered by the FSD are legally medicines requiring a licence even if they are intended to be
covered by other EU directives which define them as food products. It would also give regulatory agencies like Britain's Medicines Control Agency sweeping powers, in effect to classify any healthcare product it chooses as
a 'drug'.
Theoretically, the MCA could regulate such alternative medicines as homeopathy and aromatherapy.
Apart from severely limiting consumer choice, the net result of these directives will lead to further loss of independent health food stores (and possibly even major chains like Holland & Barrett), further consolidation
of the stranglehold on the vitamin and food supplements market by big pharma, greater incident of ill-health, more visits to the doctor, extra costs to an already overburdened NHS, and greater profits for big pharma
(the intended outcome).
We need a common vitamins policy as much as we need a common monetary policy or a common agricultural policy. The vitamin requirements of a fat overfed British inner-city kid brought up on a diet of burgers, chips and
coke is going to be vastly different to an active rural kid living on a self-sufficient farm in rural Greece.
Yet one more reason to leave the EU.
http://www.healthfreedommovement.com
http://www.healthchoice.org.uk
http://www.heureka.clara.net/gaia/pharmas.htm
http://www.heureka.clara.net/gaia/genetics.htm
http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/pri/en/oj/dat/2002/l_183/l_18320020712en00510057.pdf
'The drug companies are buying up the vitamin companies. It's all about big fish eating the little fish.' -- Frank Wiewal, People Against Cancer
'Studies in the US show that when so-called fit and healthy older people are given considerable doses of supplements they are healthier in every respect.' -- Paul Kingsley
'There are several thousand valid scientific papers every year that demonstrate the importance and value of nutritional supplements to treat and prevent a wide range of diseases.' -- Damien Downing, editor of The
Journal of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine
'The simple fact is that the pharmaceuticals don't want people to get healthy. Degenerative disease is the single biggest money-spinner of all time.' -- Lynne McTaggart
Imagine if flowers essences like Rescue Remedy were illegal? If you couldn't buy high dose vitamin C when you had a cold? If many types of selenium were banned? If you couldn't buy St John's Wort over the counter
any more? Just imagine if you were put in prison for buying vitamins?
All this and more, if passed into British law, EU directives that will sharply curtail your access to many health supplements and types of alternative medicine.
Many people take vitamins, minerals and other food supplements. This is in part a rejection of drugs peddled by the big pharmas. A point that has not gone unnoticed by these pharmas who now own and control over 70% of the
vitamin and food supplement market.
Our ability to pop into a local food store and pick up a jar of St John's Wort or a bottle of vitamin C may all soon change due to an EU Directive, if it is ratified by the UK.
There is a discrepancy in the market across the EU, in the UK we can buy these vitamins in a local food store, in other EU countries a prescription is necessary. It does not really matter, but it does to Big Business which
likes to see a common market.
The EU directive will only allow small doses to be on sale, usually around the recommended daily allowance (RDA) for general nutrition, whereas in the UK we can currently buy Vitamin C in 1,000 mg doses. Many pills and potions
will be removed off the market, often only the least effective will remain. On the other hand the big companies will be allowed to use some fairly obnoxious manufacturing processes. To drive the small companies of the market, very high licence fees will be charged.
The EU directive will lead to the banning of some 300 popular supplements - such as boron, many types of calcium, many times of chromium, copper, mixed
tocopherols, iron, vanadium, zinc etc. It will also severely lower the upper limit of many of the most popular vitamins, like vitamin C, despite exhaustive evidence of safety. Anything not on the 'positive list' when the
directive comes into effect in three years' time will be banned throughout Europe.
What we will be left with on the 'positive list' are the cheapest (to manufacture) and least efficacious supplements (from which big pharma can make the most money). The only form of vitamin E on the 'positive list' is the alpha tocopheral variant, which has lower bioavailability than the variants to be banned.
Do we need these vitamins and pills anyway? Surely not if we are healthy and eat a balanced diet. Therein lies the rub. Are we healthy, do we eat a balanced diet?
Our food, processed food to one side, does not have the mineral and vitamin content it used to have.
In 1940, the UK Medical Research Council published a report, The Chemical Composition of Food. In 1991 it repeated the research. It found out of 28 raw and 44 cooked vegetables, 17 fruits and 10 types of meat, poultry and game, that vegetables had lost up to 75% of nutrients like manganese, meats had lost about half their minerals, and fruits had lost about two thirds. You would have to eat ten tomatoes in 1991 to get the same copper as eating
one in 1940, and three oranges to get the same iron as one orange in 1940.
A similar study in the US by the Department of Agriculture, has shown that over a period of 25 years, vitamins have drastically declined in fruit and
vegetables.
This loss is a direct consequence of industrialised agriculture. The loss of vitamins and minerals is more than made up by a cocktail of pesticides, herbicides and antibiotics, many of which are known to be hazardous to
health and the environment, many are allegedly banned from use. Genetic engineered foodstuffs will make a bad situation even worse.
The vitamins we may need to maintain normal health (and the levels set decades ago to avoid ill-health, such as scurvy and rickets, not to maintain optimum health), may not be what we need when we are unwell. Increasingly vitamins and minerals are being used as treatment, not just to maintain health.
What we need to maintain health, may not be what we need for medicinal purposes when we are ill.
Members of the British Society for Allergy, Nutritional and Environmental Medicine routinely use high doses to treat from asthma to cancer. Paul Kingsley, who has successfully treated multiple sclerosis and cancer says
that RDA is not only inadequate for the average person, it is totally inadequate when they are unwell: 'The more unwell they are, the more of the nutrients they need to correct their unwell metabolism.' The US Journal of
Medicine advises doctors to prescribe vitamins and minerals as necessary for human health.
Holland and Barrett, who have driven many independent health food stores off the High Street, and bought and destroyed the once excellent Neals Yard Wholefoods, being themselves owned by big pharma, are being somewhat
two-faced on this. Some stores have information on this directive (it may be local initiatives), but they are refusing to stock campaign material from the Health Freedom Movement.
Check out your local health store which may have cards with which to lobby MPs. If not, ask why not, do they wish to be driven out of business?
But more is yet to come. The Food Supplements Directive, has been passed at EU level, it has not yet been ratified by the UK Parliament (expected some time in July).
The Traditional Herbal Medicinal Product Directive
Currently being considered by the EU, this directive seeks to force herbal medicines and even substances like flower essences into regulatory procedures similar to those governing the pharmaceutical industry. If passed as it now stands, the THMPD will effectively ban many herbs which have been safely used outside of Europe for many years
or wipe them off the shelves because the companies who produce them will not be able to afford the costly regulatory process. The net effect would be the disappearance of many safe and proven herbals and flower essences from health shop shelves and the sharp
curtailment of innovative natural substances. Equally alarming, animal testing has become a mandatory part of the process.
An amendment to the Medicines Act
EU is currently considering a proposal to amend the main EU laws defining a medicinal product and setting out the licensing system for such products. This originally was designed as a simple exercise in 'tidying up' the law.
However, it appears that the pharmaceutical industry and the regulatory agencies have used this as an opportunity to extend the definitions of a medicinal product to include all products, natural or otherwise, that have
'therapeutic benefit'.
If accepted as currently worded, this Directive would allow medicines regulators to insist that many food supplements not covered by the FSD are legally medicines requiring a licence even if they are intended to be
covered by other EU directives which define them as food products. It would also give regulatory agencies like Britain's Medicines Control Agency sweeping powers, in effect to classify any healthcare product it chooses as
a 'drug'.
Theoretically, the MCA could regulate such alternative medicines as homeopathy and aromatherapy.
Apart from severely limiting consumer choice, the net result of these directives will lead to further loss of independent health food stores (and possibly even major chains like Holland & Barrett), further consolidation
of the stranglehold on the vitamin and food supplements market by big pharma, greater incident of ill-health, more visits to the doctor, extra costs to an already overburdened NHS, and greater profits for big pharma
(the intended outcome).
We need a common vitamins policy as much as we need a common monetary policy or a common agricultural policy. The vitamin requirements of a fat overfed British inner-city kid brought up on a diet of burgers, chips and
coke is going to be vastly different to an active rural kid living on a self-sufficient farm in rural Greece.
Yet one more reason to leave the EU.
http://www.healthfreedommovement.com http://www.healthchoice.org.uk http://www.heureka.clara.net/gaia/pharmas.htm http://www.heureka.clara.net/gaia/genetics.htm http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/pri/en/oj/dat/2002/l_183/l_18320020712en00510057.pdf
Keith Parkins
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