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Vitamin and mineral users: protect your rights
If you live in the UK and if you are concerned enough about your health to use nutritional supplements - particularly vitamins and minerals, but also herbals and other nutrients - then you’ve probably heard about the EU Food Supplements Directive (2002/46/EC) that came into UK law back in 2005.
This Directive, which currently covers only vitamins and minerals but which is believed to be a framework for much wider legislation to come, has two main parts:
Part one defines (by the use of Positive Lists) the vitamins and minerals that may be used in nutritional supplement products. It also defines the forms of those vitamins and minerals that are permissible.
This arrangement has left many widely used and popular vitamin and mineral forms out in the cold. Perhaps the best example of this is with Selenium. This is an antioxidant mineral that is needed for many different body functions; the most popular form in supplements is the more natural selenomethionine but this is not on the Positive List. Instead you have to settle for the more artificial sodium selenite which can actually be used as a poison.
There is a process that allows submission of dossiers of information, to apply to have an ingredient added to the Positive Lists. Currently, there are about 500 dossiers submitted from the UK being evaluated by the European Food Safety Agency.
Part one came into UK law on 1 August 2005. So far, because of the derogation granted to any ingredient which has had a dossier submitted but not had a decision yet, nothing has really changed in the UK market. But derogation ends in December 2009.
The second part of the Directive is the part that could really restrict consumer choice. This part of the Directive seeks to set maximum permitted levels for all ingredients on the Positive Lists.
Let’s take vitamin C as an example. The vitamin that everyone knows about - you take it when you’ve got a cold (that’s because it’s an immune system booster), sailors used to eat oranges to avoid scurvy (scurvy is caused by a vitamin C deficiency). Many supplement products contain 500mg or 1,000mg of vitamin C per tablet; many supplement users take several tablets a day. Linus Pauling, who for many years was a great advocate of vitamin C supplementation, used to take upwards of 20,000mg a day and lived healthily to a ripe old age.
But the EU-sanctioned RDA (Recommended Daily Allowance) for vitamin C is just 60mg - hardly enough to even notice. The RDA is supposed to be the minimum amount required to prevent a deficiency in the particular nutrient - but what about trying to promote optimal health? What about the fact that if you smoke you use up more than 60mg with each cigarette?
And it’s the EU RDA’s that are likely to be used as the basis for the maximum permitted levels, which are going to be set over the coming months, unless something is done.
There is a framework in place - agreed between the supplements industry and the Food Standards Agency (one of the government bodies, along with the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency - MHRA, and Trading Standards, that police the supplements industry) - that allows for high-potency supplements to remain on sale, even in the light of this Directive. It involves the use of label statements that highlight possible adverse effects of consuming too much of the nutrient.
This framework allows for a much more flexible relationship between what is already a highly regulated industry and the Government, whilst also protecting consumer choice and safety. The EU system of maximum permitted levels will not do so.
So, help protect your rights as a supplement consumer. Sign the e-petition at http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/uksaysnotofsd/, get all your friends and family to sign it, also sign the Consumers for Health Choice petition at http://www.consumersforhealthchoice.com/phpPETITION/, or in your local health food store, and write to your local MP* and tell him or her your views on the directive and what you want them to do to protect your freedom of choice.
Together, we can win this!
*If you don’t know who your local MP is, you can find out by using this locator.
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