Pro-drink, anti-vitamins. How's that for a shot in the foot?

[Guest guest]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1071-1457293,00.html

 

Mary Ann Sieghart

 

January 27, 2005

 

Pro-drink, anti-vitamins. How's that for a shot in the foot?

Mary Ann Sieghart

 

 

THIS IS what your average town centre could look like in a year's

time. All night the bars, pubs and clubs will be serving alcohol, and

drunken groups will be lurching down the high street in the early

hours of the morning, yelling and throwing up in the gutter. By day,

sober, responsible citizens will be visiting their local health food

shop only to discover that they can no longer buy their favourite

vitamin or mineral because the EU, with the connivance of the

Government, has banned it.

 

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It's a funny old world, isn't it? People embarking on an early death

from cirrhosis of the liver will be encouraged in their efforts by

ministers. Yet people who follow the Government's advice to take

greater responsibility for their health will be forbidden to do so.

 

The EU Food Supplements Directive is due to take effect on August 1.

As a result, more than 5,000 products will disappear from health

stores and more than 300 vitamin and mineral ingredients out of 420

will be banned. The only hope for consumers of these products is a

court case being fought by the Alliance for Natural Health, an

organisation of manufacturers, retailers, distributors, consumers and

practitioners of complementary medicine.

 

The case has been rushed through the British courts and was considered

so strong that the High Court expedited its progress to the European

Court of Justice (ECJ), where it was heard yesterday. Shamefully, the

British Government joined the Greeks and Portuguese in fighting the

Alliance, although UK government lawyers failed to turn up to argue in

court.

 

The directive turns the normal British concept of freedom on its head.

Instead of allowing any vitamin or mineral to be sold unless it is has

been proved harmful, the directive insists that only those proved to

be safe can appear on its " positive list " and thus on the shelves. Yet

these are all ingredients that appear in a natural diet and have been

eaten without ill effect by human beings for millennia.

 

For a product to reach the positive list, a huge dossier of evidence

will need to be provided by the manufacturer: a cripplingly expensive

process that, even according to the UK Government, will cost between

£80,000 and £250,000 for each ingredient — far beyond the means of

most small manufacturers.

 

Yesterday, the advocate general of the ECJ, apparently impressed by

the Alliance for Natural Health's case, agreed that the procedure for

adding nutrients to the positive list was " as transparent as a black

box " . This may bode well: his judgment will be published on April 5,

and the court judgment in June. In the vast majority of cases, the

court supports the judgment of the advocate general.

 

In other words, it is at least possible that this outrageous ban will

be overturned. But that still leaves open the question of why our

Government supported it in the first place.

 

During its passage through the Commons, Labour whips even used

bullying tactics to get the ban through. Kate Hoey, a Labour MP, was

asked to sit on the committee examining the directive. When she told

the whips that she opposed it, they took her off. Other Labour MPs

became similarly disenchanted, with similar results. By the end of the

deliberations, only three of the original eight Labour members

remained on the committee, and still the directive was passed by only

eight votes to six.

 

Peter Hain has argued in Cabinet for greater government support for

complementary medicine. Tony Blair supported him. Now the Prime

Minister is presiding over a ban that is sure to infuriate the 30 to

40 per cent of adults who take these supplements.

 

These are people who prefer to keep themselves healthy and use natural

means to combat illness than to bother their GP and burden the NHS.

They are generally thoughtful citizens who have done their research

and want to remedy the deficiencies in minerals and vitamins which are

often part of a modern, processed diet.

 

These people may not have had much interest in politics. They may not

have had strong views on Europe. They soon will.

 

Just as Blair is about to embark on a general election campaign and,

soon after that, a referendum on the European constitution, he is

wilfully alienating the very section of the population to whom he

ought to be appealing. Unless this ban is overturned in the courts,

these voters will start to loathe Labour for being bossy and the EU

for interfering in their lives.

 

As I said, it's a funny old world, isn't it?