European Directive Against Vitamins & Minerals

European Directive Against Vitamins & Minerals First 300 key vitamins and minerals axed, now 5 000 supplements banned by "insane" EU Directive. Sam Burcher reports on the right to freedom for the £1.6 billion alternative health industry.

The Alliance of Natural Health (ANH) is set to legally challenge the contentious EU Directive on Food Supplements (FSD). The FSD passed into European law in July 2002 and effectively brings about a ban on 300 nutrients included in 5 000 health products, most of which are in dietary supplements closest to food forms.

In July this year, the House of Commons Standing Committee for FSD Regulations met and voted the Food Supplement Directive through into English, Scottish and Welsh law. Dr Robert Verkerk, executive director of London-based ANH hopes a successful challenge would result in the FSD being overturned by all EU states.

The ANH represent the interests of a number of organisations including the British Association of Complimentary Medicine and the British Society for Allergy Environmental and Nutritional Medicine as well as a number of independent manufactures, suppliers and distributors of vitamins and minerals. Together they suggest the existing Directive be replaced with a revised FSD that allows for high quality, effective supplements across the whole of Europe. This would effectively harmonise to good standards, not bad ones.

Three other Directives concerning Herbal Medicine, Novel Foods and EU Medicines are under consideration, but have not yet been ratified into UK law. The appropriation of traditional products is likely to increase with food supplements, food substances and food/beverages (health drinks and fruit juices) suppressed by EU Directives repackaged as "Nutraceuticals" and sold by pharmaceutical companies. (See box 1)

Two Labour MPs have voiced concerns about the way the Regulations were voted through by the Standing Committee. Kate Hoey MP (Vauxhall) revealed what happened: "I was a member of this committee until I said, very honestly, that I would vote against the regulations." She was, together with five other MPs, "unceremoniously removed" from the committee the night before the vote took place and replaced with MPs who voted in favour of the FSD.

According to Kate Hoey, this gives a clear message that the government cares more for the pharmaceutical industry that it does about ordinary people. Her views are shared by Jeremy Corbyn MP (Islington), he said: "The FSD is a product of ruthless lobbying tactics by the pharmaceutical industry which is not keen on the diversity of supply of vitamin supplements available in health food shops." He backs the ANH move to legally challenge the Directive.

Legal challenges are seldom made to the 40 000 EU Directives implemented since the UK joined the Common Market in 1972, ostensibly to share in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). But Conservative MP Daniel Hannan complained to the Daily Telegraph last September 3, that, "whenever you see an apparently insane Brussels Directive, someone, somewhere stands to gain." And in his view, the Directives affecting natural remedies resulted because of lobbying by the large pharmaceutical companies. (See box 2)

MEP, Nigel Farrage said that on one occasion, MEPs were required to vote on Directives 450 times in one 80-minute session. He freely admitted that it was a farce and he voted as he was told.

To simply question the validity of food supplementation is no longer enough when it is generally acknowledged that modern food production methods and deterioration of soil due to intensive farming are affecting vitamins and mineral content in food. For example, levels of the mineral selenium (Se) declined 50% between 1974-1991 and the UK population selenium levels are lower than many other European countries. Scientific studies show selenium is an essential nutrient associated with the function of major metabolic pathways, and taken up rapidly by the body when given as a dietary supplement. Also well established is the fact that dietary selenium is important for a healthy immune response, and the effects of its deficiency can include decreased T-cell counts and impaired lymphocyte proliferation. Fourteen forms of selenium, including the organic forms, selenium yeast and selenomethionine are forbidden on ‘The Positive List’

In fact vulnerable groups such as the elderly, pregnant and those coping with chronic diseases such as arthritis can all benefit from food supplements. But, in essence, the FSD is another blow to the individual’s freedom to choose how to look after their health, be it in conjunction with a good diet, or simply as a preventative against developing a chronic disease. Increasing visits to GPs to obtain the correct supplements, as the Directive would have us do will not suit the overburdened Health Service at all, but it might just serve the big corporations.

Box 1 Some of the 300 vitamins and mineral excluded from the FSD positive list Substance Benefit Boron (All forms) Required for absorption of calcium Vitamin E (naturally occurring tocopherols and toctotrienols) Antioxidants, which protect against damage by free radicals, associated with cancer and other degenerative diseases. Calcium (23 food forms) For bones, teeth and cell function Chromium (17 forms) For balancing blood sugar levels, widely used by diabetics Magnesium (30 forms) Healthy bones and teeth Potassium (21 forms) Maintains blood pressure and heart beat rhythm Silica (All forms) Works in conjunction with boron, calcium, and other minerals to support bones, arteries, connective tissue, hair, skin and nails Selenium (14 forms) Antioxidant, important for heart function. Contributes to healthy immune response.

The dietary supplement Glucosamine, a combination of minerals,vitamins and fatty acids bought by millions of arthritis suffers to ease their painful symptoms has been banned as a food supplement by the Medicines Agency in Denmark and Sweden. Instead it is has been allowed on to the shelves as an over the counter medicine produced by Recip Glucosine and Pharma Nord - two pharmaceutical companies.

Box 2 The Food Supplements Directive covers two fundamental areas: 1. The types of vitamins and minerals that may be legally sold from mid-2005. 2. The maximum doses at which they may be supplied from 2006.

The EU Commission has designated a list of permissible nutrients called 'The Positive List.' Specialist vitamin manufactures have expressed concern that their products containing organic ingredients, excluded from the 'List', are being compromised by synthetic or inorganic equivalents that are on the 'List.' All attempts to include a number of organic vitamins and minerals have been refused. Not only that, but to register their high quality products for sale could cost up to £250,00 per nutrient plus evidence of their safety. All nutrients must be paid for and registered by August 2005, putting small, large and medium suppliers of food supplements under intense pressure.

Maximum doses or Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for vitamins and minerals will be negotiated over the next 18 months. Levels are to be set by the EU Scientific Committee to Food (SCF), who are not accountable to any government or parliament and have banned 300 nutrients so far (See box 1). Two commonly occurring vitamins, which have a wealth of scientific study to support their validity, are vitamin C and vitamin B6. The ANH fear RDA doses will be rendered so low that consumers will have to buy much more of the product to receive their current nutritional dose or that they might disappear from the shelves altogether.

Sources: Legal Bid Challenges EU Food Directive. Health Matters vol 5 No.6 July/August 2003. Wright O. Johnston C. Bennett R. Clampdown on Alternative Medicines. The Times. 20th September 2003. Watts. M. Right to Buy Essential Supplements. The Argus. July 19th 2003 Brown KM. Pickard K. Nicol F. Beckett G.J. Duthie G.G. Arthur J.R. Effects of organic and inorganic selenium supplementation on selenoenzyme activity in blood lymphocytes, granulocytes, platelets and erythrocytes. The Rowett Research Institute Clinical Science 98, 593-599. 2000 Burcher S. Hands off Vitamins and Herbs. Science in Society Issue 17. p19-20 Winter 2003. © Institute of Science in Society What’s the Future? Linking Bioscience with Nature. © BioCare 2003 Food Supplements Directive 2003. Alliance for Natural Health www.alliance-natural-health.org

The US is close behind.

There's no doubt that the faceless bureaucrats in the FDA would like to do this, but I really can't see it happening here.

Many millions of Americans take supplements. In Europe there is no equivalent to the GNCs, etc., in every mall in America. Supplements are part of American life in a way that they aren't in Europe. And I can't see Congress--especially a Republican Congress--permitting it.

It's all part and parcel of the war on drugs. Once you accept that the government has the right to tell you what drugs you will be allowed to use you'll find that you don't always agree with their judgement.

Freedom is a dangerous thing. Hitler could have told you that.

This is done for two reasons in the EU. The first to exclude imports from the US. The second reason is that good health as a result of vitamins & minerals would prolong people's lives, the same lives that now get free health care and this would prove too much a burden for the fewer numbers working to support them:)

Actually, none have naught to fear except that beer, wine and cheese, in any form, be banned.

EU is pretty darned close.

So the population of the European Union becomes as shrunken, and sallow as their ancestors of a couple hundred years ago, and become once again a continent of Hobbits, but riddled with sicknesses and infirmities, poor in spirit and health.

Apparently this is the natural state of mankind. Remove nutrition, and the worker ants in the ant colony become smaller and more subservient, sacrificing their individuality for the greater good of the colony.

Hey, we cannot deny the basic demands of our nature, can we?

Does this have anything to do with the Codex Alimentarius and if so, how?

My mother called me up yesterday telling me about this international effort to ban natural health foods and supplements and the Canadian government is on the brink of signing it. She just told me to study up on the Codex Alimentarius.

I couldn't figure out what was going on but perhaps anyone here can enlighten me?

In a soft meliflous voice, the recorded words of an EU bureaurocrat says to the EU citizen trying to open his front door for a walk outside: "I'm sorry, Dave. I can't allow you to do that."

In a soft meliflous voice, the recorded words of an EU bureaurocrat...: "I'm sorry, Dave. I can't allow you to do that."

My mom's in a panic about this, too. The Codex Alimentarius is an initiative, apparently sponsored by Big Pharma, to turn vitamins and other supplements into prescription drugs, if they exceed the recommended daily allowance. It's under the control the the World Trade Organization, and apparently both the EU and Canada have already signed it. If it's adopted, then the U.S. will be bound by it because of our membership in the WTO.

Yes, info at our health food store paints an ugly picture. Oddly enough, they still market prescription drugs that are KNOWN to cause serious problems and sometimes even death--but they want to stop this flow of vitamins and supplements.

I had heard that large parts of it have been overturned by some European judges.

But maybe we need something like this. That way, if a few pharmacies get burned down and people show they are really, really po'd about it, the government will get a clue it can no longer undo our rights with some stupid treaty.

This is the Third Way, folks. TPTB have long realized they cannot simply subdue every nation by force. They have adopted a plan where all the countries simply adopt the same rules and administration. Thats why a few years back there was a big push to align US patent law with the European model. It failed.
Kyoto protocol was part of the same plan.

17 posted on 04/10/2005 1:46:35 PM PDT by WestVirginiaRebel (Carnac: A siren, a baby and a liberal. Answer: Name three things that whine.)

Pure paranoia. But just to be sure, stock up now. I'm sure that GNC, etc. would love to move more bottles of their little placebos.

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