To Your Health

A. The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 was designed to strike a balance between the need for information about food supplements and the government's interest in protecting consumers from unsafe products and misleading claims about dietary supplements. It passed largely due to consumer activism, and now provides manufacturers and retailers the freedom to tell consumers about their products in exchange for the responsibility to provide evidence of safety and the scientific basis for health claims.

We in America assume that what happens in other countries is no concern of ours. However, there is rising concern that proposed rules soon to be adopted by the European Union, called the European Union Food Supplements Directive, will lead to a requirement that the U.S. restrict the availability of many nutrients in order to harmonize our laws concerning dietary supplements with EU laws. If we fail to do so, we would face severe penalties from the World Trade Organization in the form of increased tariffs on our exports.

Briefly, the directive, scheduled to go into effect in August 2005, classifies most nutrients as "medical drugs" rather than dietary supplements and allows only low doses of 15 minerals and 13 vitamins to be sold as food supplements. Amino acids and most herbal products will not be permitted. This means, for example, that many popular "natural" supplements such as vitamin E in the form of mixed tocopherols or selenium in the form of selenomethionine will be outlawed. You will need a prescription from a doctor to get a high-potency vitamin C tablet. Individual amino acids like lysine will be available only by prescription. Herbs will be reclassified as drugs and tightly regulated.

The situation has been brewing for many years, beginning with the formation of the Codex Alimentarius (Latin for "food code"), which was set up in 1963 under the auspices of the United Nation's World Health Organization. The stated purpose of Codex is to create worldwide food standards to maximize the ease and safety of world food trade. In addition to the EU, other countries (Australia, New Zealand, some South American nations, and, just last year, Canada) have quietly moved to gradually get in line with EU rules. In fact, the implementation has been so gradual that cynics wonder if it is a case of the frog in the cooking pot that does not realize his danger until the water boils.

Reluctant as we are to poke our noses into others' business, it may be necessary if we are to continue to enjoy unrestrained access to food supplements. In England, an organization known as the Alliance for Natural Health, through a law firm that has already succeeded in overturning other EU directives, has filed a lawsuit in the European Court of Justice to overturn the EU Food Supplement Directive. If the directive can be overturned before the Codex regulations are finalized, it will take the pressure off Congress to repeal DSHEA. Contact them at www.alliance-natural-health.org or fax 44(0)125/237-1275.