Today's EU-wide food supplement ban avoided









ANH PRESS RELEASE: European food supplement ban avoided
1 August 2005 - for immediate release

Legal challenge and cooperation between industry and government avert
wide-scale food supplement ban previously anticipated today.

FOOD SUPPLEMENT BAN AVOIDED
BY MUTUAL COOPERATION

Today could have seen up to 5,000 vitamin and mineral products being
banned from health store shelves in the UK alone, with further products being
banned in other EU countries such as Ireland and Sweden.

But, following the legal challenge to this ban implicit in the EU Food
Supplements Directive, mounted in 2003 by the Alliance for Natural Health and
two UK trade associations, the National Association of Health Stores and the
Health Food Manufacturers Association, mutual cooperation between the health
industry and government authorities has seen the wide-scale ban circumvented.

The ban would have affected products containing over 200 vitamin and
mineral ingredients which had not been subject to extensive safety evaluation by
the European Food Safety Authority, but nevertheless had been consumed safely as
part of the normal diet for thousands of years.

Dr Robert Verkerk, executive director of the pan-European Alliance for
Natural Health said: “Without positive pressure from our legal challenge, and
increasing amounts of cooperation between industry and government authorities,
thousands of products containing nutrients which are increasingly difficult to
find in our normal diet, but known to be of great importance to our health and
wellbeing, could have today been removed from our food supply. We are working
hard to bed in our barristers’ positive interpretation of the European Court
ruling. However, we cannot afford to sit back as future provisions in the
Directive set to limit maximum potencies of food supplements could have
devastating consequences at least equal to those caused by the originally
proposed food supplement ingredients ban.”

The European Court of Justice handed down its ruling on the legal
challenge to the Food Supplements Directive on 12 July. Although the Directive
was upheld, the ruling reduced its scope and greatly improved its clarity, so
reducing obstacles to the health food industry. In particular the ruling will
make it much easier to access the ‘‘positive list’’ of allowed ingredients, a
process previously described by a senior advisor to the Court, Advocate General
Leendert Geelhoed in his 5 April Opinion, as “clear as a black box”.

The Directive provided a derogation system which would allow ingredients
present on the market prior to 2003 to be used at least to the end of 2009, on
the condition that technical dossiers were submitted to governmental
authorities, for subsequent consideration by the European Food Safety Authority.
The dossier requirements were seen as excessive and pressure from the industry,
facilitated by the legal challenge, led the government to agree simplified
dossier criteria.

Accordingly, some 505 dossiers for vitamin and mineral ingredients were
submitted by 12 July, the official deadline for derogation dossier submissions.
To facilitate the process further, the UK’s Food Standard Agency has also
extended the dossier deadline until today. All products containing ingredients
subject to dossiers will remain on the market to at least the end of 2009 unless
they are given an unfavourable review, on the grounds of risks to public health,
by the European Food Safety Authority.

In the meantime, onus is on the health food industry to make submissions
to the previously limited ‘‘positive list’’, which currently contains just 112
vitamin and mineral forms, as compared with over 300 used by the industry. As a
result of the European Court ruling, exemption for certain natural forms of
vitamins and minerals, clarified and simplified requirements for access to the
‘positive list’, and placement of the primary burden of proof of safety on
government authorities rather than industry, the Alliance for Natural Health is
confident that the ‘positive list’ will no longer act as a major barrier to
getting products on to the EU’s ‘positive list’ of ingredients allowed in food
supplements.

Provisions in the EU Food Supplements Directive which aim to set maximum
dosages for vitamin and mineral products are in the process of being finalised
by the European Commission and the Codex Alimentarius Commission, which is
developing international guidelines for food supplement potencies modelled very
closely on the EU Directive. The Alliance for Natural Health has argued, with
the support of scientists around the world, that the scientific method being
considered to set maximum potencies is flawed.

“We must now move from a legal battle to a scientific battle”, adds
Verkerk, “the risk assessment framework that is being considered by the
authorities has been borrowed from those systems assessing intrinsically toxic
substances such as drugs and pesticides, and have no place for use with
nutrients that are essential to life. A new paradigm for safety/benefit analysis
is needed specifically for nutrients, and we have commissioned the
Netherlands-based HAN Foundation to come up with a new framework that could be
used EU-wide and internationally through Codex.”

ENDS

For further information, including interviews, background documents and
images, contact:

Alliance for Natural Health
www.alliance-natural-health.org

Dr Robert Verkerk, Executive Director
Tel. +44 (0)1252 371 275
Mobile: +44 (0)771 484 7225
E-mail: robv@...

IKON Associates
(PR advisers to the Alliance for Natural Health)

Adrian Shaw
Tel: +44 (0)1483 535102
Mobile: +44 (0)797 990 0733
E-mail: adrian@...

Paul Donkersley
Tel: +44 (0)1483 535101
Mobile: +44 (0)796 764 6046
E-mail: paul@...



Notes for editors:

1. The Alliance for Natural Health is a Europe-wide association of
consumers, complementary practitioners, distributors, retailers, and
leading-edge manufacturers who have an interest in food supplements and natural
health. More information, including details of members, can be found at
www.alliance-natural-health.org

Good science and good law underpin all of the ANH’s work, and the
scientific reports produced by the ANH are endorsed by many of the world’s
leading doctors and scientists working in the field of nutrition.

2. Had the ban on vitamins and minerals been implemented without the
restrictions imposed now by the European Court of Justice:

· Over 5000 products would have disappeared from the shelves of UK
health stores as a result of the ban removing access to over 300 vitamin and
mineral ingredients (out of a total of about 420). These include, among others,
the main natural forms of Vitamin E, several forms of vitamin C, the key natural
form of folic acid, MSM and a range of minerals such as vanadium, silicon and
boron, all being products which millions of consumers choose to take as part of
their regular health regime and have done so without any ill effects for many
years.

· An individual’s freedom of choice to take safe natural health
products would have been removed – 40% of the UK’s population take vitamins and
minerals.

· Products would have been banned with absolutely no scientific
justification. Many of the world’s leading scientific and medical experts in
nutrition support the absence of any proper basis for the proposed bans.

· Further legislative proposals by the EU are due to be considered
by the European Parliament later this year and next. These include restrictions
on herbal products, on maximum dosages of vitamins and minerals and restrictions
on health claims of foods. Again, the ANH is working to help positively shape
such legislation using its mantra of ‘good science and good law’.

To unsubscribe, please go to
www.alliance-natural-health.org/index.cfm?action=unsub



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]