A Reprieve for EU Vitamins and Minerals

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23 May 2005 18:08:04 -0000

 

A Reprieve for EU Vitamins and Minerals

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ISIS Press Release 23/05/05

 

A Reprieve for EU Vitamins and Minerals

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A legal challenge to rescind the controversial European Food

Supplements Directive claims its first success, but this is

only a temporary respite from a systematic corporate

takeover of herbal medicine and natural remedies

Sam Burcher sam

 

 

 

Sources for this report are available in the ISIS members

site. http://www.i-sis.org.uk/full/RFVAMFull.php

Full details here

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/membership.php

 

 

First-round win against Codex

 

 

A lawsuit brought by the Alliance of Natural Health (ANH)

contesting the ban of over three hundred vitamin and mineral

ingredients used in food supplements began in the High

Courts of Justice in London, 2004. The case was referred to

the European Courts of Justice in Luxembourg, where, more

than a year later, the Advocate General and senior advisor

to all the European Court judges, ruled in favour of the

ANH.

 

 

 

Judge Geelhoeds' opinion is that the FSD is illegal under EU

law. The FSD infringes the principle of proportionality

because basic principles of community law such as the

requirements of legal protection and sound administration

were not taken into account. In other words, the FSD's "

Positive List " of permissible vitamins and minerals that

excludes natural substances contained in five thousand

products is perceived as too narrow, restrictive, and based

on flawed science.

 

 

 

Dr Robert Verkerk, executive director of the ANH is

delighted. " All that the ANH is campaigning and working co-

operatively for is the right of consumers to have access to

safe, natural healthcare and for legislation to be based on

good science and good law. " He said, " This is a great day

for the tens of millions of people who believe passionately

in the benefits of natural preventative healthcare. " Verkerk

believes overturning the FSD will set a precedent across

Europe that assures the availability of food supplements and

prevents their reclassification as drugs.

 

 

 

The European Court delivers its final judgement on the FSD

in August 2005. The Advocate Generals' recommendations are

generally adopted by the residual European Court Judges. If

the ANH wins, this will scupper the long-term agenda of the

Codex Alimentarius Commission to set legal standards for

vitamins and minerals at very low doses across its 163

member countries. The Codex Alimentarius Commission is the

body that draws up international food standards in

conjunction with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)

and the World Health Organisation (WHO). Although these

standards are supposed to be voluntary, they are

nevertheless adopted by the World Trade Organisation (WTO),

which levies draconian fines and sanctions on countries

failing to comply with the rules.

 

 

Traditional medicines and remedies under threat

 

 

" Harmonising " standards of vitamins and minerals hands

control of many traditional remedies over to the

pharmaceutical companies and, in turn, to the supermarkets

and big pharmacies. This would prevent independent companies

and practitioners from supplying appropriate supplements for

nutritional purposes to patients and consumers. Under the

Human Medicinal Product Directive (HMPD), and the

Traditional Medicinal Products Directive (TMPD) (a subset of

the Pharmaceutical Directive), health claims made on dietary

products will be outlawed.

 

 

 

Restrictions on natural products are widely seen as an

encroachment on civil liberties and threaten some of the

oldest traditional healthcare practices in the world, such

as African, Ayurvedic, Chinese, Tibetan, and South American

medicine, on which some eighty percent of the world's

population are dependent. Codex guidelines for vitamin and

mineral food supplements destroy effective remedies and give

regulators the power to choose whichever product they want

and call it a drug. Further proposals restricting amino

acids, essential fatty acids, enzymes, plant extracts, and

probiotics are planned for an expanded FSD scheduled for

2007.

 

 

 

The ANH points out that most of the natural forms of

vitamins and minerals such as mixed carotenoids, vitamin E,

folic acid and selenium along with the most digestible and

safest forms of vitamin C and magnesium are excluded from

the " Positive List " . Conversely some of the few vitamin and

mineral forms associated with adverse effects are allowed;

for example iron in the form of ferrous sulphate that can

cause stomach cramps and bowel problems. There is also

concern that a ban on natural nutrients will encourage the

use of synthetic alternatives and genetically modified (GM)

substances in food supplements. Pharmaceutical giants have

been buying up small vitamin and mineral companies recently.

For example, Merck has acquired Lamberts and Wyeth, a global

pharmaceutical and biotechnology company, has bought Solgar.

 

 

Corporate feudalism fuelled by patents and fees

 

 

In fact the drug companies have gained control of natural

products altogether, through PharmaPrinting, the result of

collaborations between PharmaPrint Inc and the University of

Miami. PharmaPrinting is a technology that isolates and

measures the bioactivity of the active compounds of any

plant or natural remedy and replicates it in the laboratory.

These compounds are standardised as a pharmaceutical for

government approval. Patents are currently pending on

pharmaceutical versions of some of the most useful and

widely available herbal remedies such as St Johns wort -

(depression), Echinacea - (immune function), ginkgo biloba -

(brain booster), saw palmetto - (prostate function), and

mistletoe - (alternative cancer treatment). Even the dietary

herb ginger is under patent for use as a treatment for

motion sickness.

 

 

 

Under Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP), PharmaPrinting

involves clinical trials costing up to $6.5million per

product and patent protection costing $0.5million, which

takes five years to complete. Investors are reluctant to

commit to such costs unless market exclusivity is assured.

One way of creating an exclusive market is to ban or

invalidate natural remedies. The existing US healthcare

market including health foods and drinks is estimated to be

worth $1.5 trillion. This staggering amount makes it a

market worth manipulating. Synthetic supplements also

provide a royalty to drug companies each time a patented

product is purchased.

 

 

 

The Health Protection Branch (Canada's equivalent of the US

FDA) has called for any product registered as a " natural

therapeutic " to be registered as a drug. Fish oils

(lubricating joints), cranberry capsules (treating urinary

problems), and hawthorn berries (for the heart) have all

been issued with a DIN, a " Drug Identification Number " ,

which cost $720. Without a DIN, natural products cannot be

sold; and doing so is an offence under Canadian law. DIN

entails still further costs: annual licensing fee, GMP

annual inspection, yearly assessment fees, foreign

assessment fees, an analysis fee, and Health Protection

Branch inspection fees.

 

 

 

Strict controls and fees are unwarranted for natural

products with no record of adverse health effects in Canada.

In contrast conventional drugs kill six hundred hospital

patients in Ontario alone while prescription drugs are

responsible for ten thousand deaths every year.

 

 

Foods are not drugs

 

 

" Food as drugs " guidelines laid out by Codex were adopted by

Australia, Denmark, Germany and Norway and many products

have been co-opted by the pharmaceutical companies and

repackaged as drugs. (See " European Directive against

vitamins and minerals "

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/vitamins2.php).

India has resisted Codex, so has

Japan, and in the US, Congressperson Ron Paul has put

forward the Health Freedom Bill (HR 4004) which prevents the

Federal Government from restricting the distribution of a

dietary supplement or other nutritional food because the

manufacturer makes health claims unapproved by the Food and

Drug Administration (FDA)

 

 

 

The South African government also oppose Codex and highlight

the role of vitamins and minerals in accordance with the

World Health Organisation report, " Diet, Nutrition, and

Prevention of Chronic Diseases " (2003). Codex rejects the

report, despite its close links to the WHO. Dr

MantoTshabalala-Msimang, South African health minister, told

her department, " I would like to avoid the pitfall of

putting such products in the same regulatory environment as

pharmaceutical drugs, whose testing and control is very

different. " She allocated six million rand into testing the

safety and quality of traditional medicines used as immune

boosters by people living with " Nutritionally Acquired

Immune Deficiency Syndrome (NAIDS), usually referred to as

HIV/AIDS.

 

 

 

Recent action by the WHO, UNICEF and an AIDS activist group

promoting drug therapy in South Africa attack vitamin

therapy that exceed Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA).

 

 

 

In Unravelling AIDS, a new book from ISIS published later

this year, we examine how numerous essential nutrients are

effective in preventing and treating NAIDS, HIV/AIDS, and

other chronic diseases. The WHO and the United Nations

(UNICEF) appear to be backing the sole use of drug therapy

at a time when drug resistant strains of HIV are on the

increase.

 

 

 

ISIS opposes the Codex agenda of restricting access to

natural products by treating them as pharmaceutical drugs.

It takes away our rights to food and health-promoting

nutrition, and allows the pharmaceutical corporations to

profit from pirating and expropriating herbal remedies that

have been the mainstay of traditional healthcare systems for

millennia.

 

 

 

 

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