Posted on 04/10/2005 11:55:32 AM PDT by Sarah
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
This brings up a couple questions:
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.
I agree. I use supplements and know many others who do as well. There will be an incredible uproar in this country if the Congress tries to do something like this.
My understanding is that vitamin C would not be outlawed but the amount that you could buy would be limited.
This fits with what I've heard. I think this is an excellent issue to educate the American people concerning the evils of GATT and the WTO. There will be a huge uproar if this is actually implemented. In Fort Collins, we have at least 3 natural food stores that are well stocked with supplements and the regular groceries are adding them as well. A lot of people use supplements.
When cod liver oil is outlawed, only outlaws will have cod liver oil.
:)
In that case, I guess we'll all have to go fishing. :-)
.... assuming, of course, that the pharmaceutical industry hasn't had fishing poles reclassified as prescription drugs.
BTW, please add me to your nutrition ping list.
My daughter was put on a new medicine (one I have been on for 8 years and was told that she should take prenatal vitimans. I ran to the store to get them (hard to find) and was told by the pharmacist that they were govt. subsidized so the price is very reasonable.
I do feel better and recommend them to anyone.
I don't know about prenatal vitamins but, other than a requirement for truth in labelling, I prefer that the government stay out of the supplement business.
It may not be just Big Pharma. I'm told that physicians in Europe supplement their income by selling supplements. European physicians may be trying to build walls to keep others from getting into the supplement market.
done!
Funny you mention this. Just the other day I was flipping through Fernand Braudel's History of Civilizations (a book written for the French academy as the official text on world history), and he has a line in there which amounted to "those nutty Americans and their vitamin pills and chrome covered cars". He specifically mentioned vitamins. Apparently vitamins really are seen in Europe as an American thing.
The US is close behind.
According to our government,
outlawing vitamin supplements will be "for our own good."
This had better not happen.
I don't think you're paranoid, but I don't think it's the pharma companies. The EU has a fetish for micro-control, and this is but one manifestation of it.
They also have a commission for the evaluation of industrial chemicals--yes, all thousands of them, and they have a rather wierd, compulsive woman in charge of looking at all chemicals present in all products to be produced and/or sold in the EU.
I know, it sounds insane, and it really is bureaucracy gone berserk-- but there it is. It's real.
If there is any ulterior motive, imo, it is to protect against imports from the US, generically.
Thanks for pinging my post, I was hoping to get some enlightened information by posting this.
My husband and I no longer live in the States, but recently consulted with a visiting American Naturopath.
He told us that we wouldn't be able to get the supplements he prescribed us for long here in Europe, (I was joking that we could probably get them for free with the generous Sécurité Sociale (national health plan)) Then he added that the WHO, as the US is a signatory nation, would soon have to follow suit.
Please see my above post, and also ping me to nutritional posts. (I didn't know of such a ping...)
One thing we did notice as we tried to procure the doses here in Europe is that every naturopath found our doses to be too elevated. The stores understood the new law to be two-fold:
one: to keep out US imports
two: to avoid over dosing, as in the States, due to the lowered quality of food, people must take higher doses for the same effect. (I'm not agreeing, just quoting)
They are afraid of the ruling, just not too prone to fight it as they see the major point to exclude the United States suppliers.
Please see my above posts
ping for additional info above.
I hate to be paranoid, it's just that I've really found natural solutions to be better (yes, more expensive, as everything is out of pocket.)
And then if this is true, I'm really frightened to have to turn to synthetic solutions, as the side-effects have to do with mood and emotional balance.
Even here in Europe, normal Western medicine is reimbursed close to 100%, and natural medicine much less (at least it is recognised!)
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