EU THREAT TO FOOD SUPPLEMENTS

FOOD SUPPLEMENTS: THE EU THREAT

Health food stores up and down the UK, many of them family businesses, are likely to face closure in the next few years due to two European Union Directives which will affect the products that they currently sell, writes John McKee. This article was originally published in the February 2003 issue of Sovereignty.

The UK currently has the most liberal laws on food supplements in Europe, bar none.

We can sell a wide array of supplements, most of which have better absorption and fewer side effects than basic products available on the continent. Higher potency products enable consumers to take advantage of cutting edge research to treat or prevent some diseases. However …

The Food Supplements Directive (2002/46/EC) intends to establish the vitamins and minerals that we are allowed to supplement with, the chemical forms of those nutrients, and the maximum potencies that can be put in any one tablet.

The FSD has excluded a number of minerals like silica, sulphur, and boron from the second Schedule of the FSD, indicating that it doesn't regard them as essential for human health and can't be used in any form in any product.

The third Schedule contains a list of nutrient forms, lifted from another flawed Directive governing slimming, sports, and baby foods (2001/15/EC).

This includes many dubious chemicals like sodium hydroxide (caustic soda) and sodium chloride (common salt), yet excludes totally safe amino-acid bonded minerals, yeast bonded selenium and chromium.

In total about 360 ingredients currently available are excluded. In order for a manufacturer to get an ingredient back on the list they need to submit a dossier.

Even the Food Standards Agency estimate that this will cost tens of thousands of pounds per product with no guarantee of success. It is also likely that the EU will stipulate that animal testing is necessary, yet these products are currently being consumed by millions of people in the UK and the US without side effects.

YOU CAN'T PATENT A NUTRIENT!
Unlike drugs that can hide behind patents whilst earning their manufacturers billions, you cannot take out a patent on a nutrient so there is little commercial advantage in providing the research for the dossiers, since a competitor can market the same ingredient the next day if it is approved. To date only 30 dossiers have been submitted out of a potential 360.

Anyone who regularly reads medical journals knows that positive research on vitamins and minerals is published every month around the world. The levels that are sold in UK health food stores are based on this research and consumers who are prepared to take responsibility for their own health seek out these products.

This is not possible in continental Europe where the maximum potencies are based on outmoded Recommended Daily Amounts (RDAs), established after WW2 and based on levels of nutrition given to soldiers to prevent deficiencies.

In the sixty years since RDAs were first established, nutritional science has moved on considerably towards a concept that the body can actually use much higher levels. Certain people who may be chronically ill can use higher levels of supplements in order to return to or maintain health.

We are arguing for maximum levels based on what we know about the minimum levels at which toxicity has been noted for any particular vitamin or mineral. The principle being "if it is safe, why should I not have the right to take it."

After all we all knowingly consume, based on our own choice, substances that we know to be harmful, eg: alcohol, tobacco, excessive animal fats, and high dietary sodium.

MULTINATIONALS WILL BENEFIT AT OUR EXPENSE
The industries behind these items are vast and the wealthy multinationals can wield immense lobbying power.

The specialist food supplements industry by contrast has no such power or influence -- and is an easy victim for overzealous bureaucrats and their blinkered medical and scientific so-called experts.

The obvious result of the legislation is that one or two major manufacturers will take advantage of a single market in supplements and will roll out their entry-level supplements to a vastly increased market.

We know that these companies have been applying pressure in Brussels and Whitehall in support of the Directive.

UK ministers have portrayed the FSD as a victory for public health, with claims that the vast unregulated food supplements market will shortly be controlled. This is rubbish.

The Directive is not about public health at all, it is about creating a single market in food supplements.

In the UK we are already covered by food labelling law, food law, and medicines law.

Food supplements are primarily covered by food law ensuring that the product has to be totally safe.

Food supplements must be safe otherwise they are withdrawn.

However, pharmaceutical drugs are allowed to have side effects, they are even allowed to have lethal side effects.

Food supplements are also covered by the Medicines Act 1968, which prohibits us from making medical claims.

This Directive has got as far as it has probably because a minority of the population take food supplements, and an even smaller proportion have even a basic scientific understanding.

MPs HAVE LITTLE UNDERSTANDING OF THE SCIENCE
When it was debated in the House of Commons in January it was clear that the Ministers who are forcing this irrelevant legislation on the British people have got no understanding of the Directive, the issues, the science, or the impact.

Unfortunately, as it is a framework Directive, the results of the potency levels, and the dossiers, will only become obvious after it has become law. A veritable pig-in-a-poke.

I have read the Directive -- which is due to be transposed by the end of July 2003 -- and it fills me with fear, not only as an honest, ethical health food retailer but also as a consumer and a democrat.

I use food supplements on a daily basis and I believe they play an important role in keeping my family and me healthy. Many hundreds of my customers also rely on them.

I am appalled that this legislation -- which I stress is irrelevant to the UK because it does nothing to advance public safety -- is being so actively foisted on UK consumers by a government and ministers which seems to see its duty to apply this law, regardless of whether the vast majority of Britons object strongly to it.

Then there is the Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products Directive which will do for the herbal market what the Food Supplements Directive promises to do for the vitamin and mineral sector. But that's another story.

If you would like to help oppose the FSD you should write to, and visit, your local MP or MSP. Further details can be found at the Consumers for Health Choice website www.healthchoice.org.uk

John McKee is the Manager of Hanover Healthfoods, located at 40 Hanover Street, Edinburgh, and Vice-Chairman of the National Association of Health Stores.