ANH Vitamin Legislation update & call for donations

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ANH Vitamin Legislation update & call for donations

Wed, 25 May 2005 03:59:09 -0700

 

 

ANH Info

 

Monday, May 23, 2005 4:28 AM

 

 

 

http://www.alliance-natural-health.org

 

 

BECOME A MEMBER JOIN ANH FREE TODAY

 

 

 

Do you want the Alliance for Natural Health to continue fighting for

your right to choose natural healthcare? If you do, then we need

urgent funding to continue successfully challenging and shaping

regulation in Europe and beyond. The Alliance is YOUR envoy. It can

only be as effective as YOU want it to be.

 

ANH has achieved remarkable things. But the European Food Supplements

Directive is only the beginning. There is a raft of other legislation

and guidelines in the pipeline that seriously threaten natural healthcare.

 

" This is a serious organisation with serious challenges to address

that is in need of serious funds. It's supported by many doctors. But

it also needs the support of consumers – they are the ones who drive

this. To negotiate and modify all this legislation requires experts in

science, nutrition and law. Inevitably this costs money. "

Dr Damien Downing, a medical doctor and one of the UK's leading

practitioners in nutritional medicine.

 

" ANH has existed to date on a shoestring and with the plethora of

global regulation in the wings it will not be able to continue to be

effective on this basis. The ANH is neither selling or buying

anything. But we – the manufacturers and the consumers – are. It's

our fight. It is our house that is on fire and it is down to all of us

to ensure that we help ANH to help us. "

Greg Watts, Managing Director, Ultralife

 

" Just because ANH has achieved initial success with its challenge to

the Food Supplements Directive many people simply assume that it is a

well-funded and well-resourced organisation. The ANH is NOT a rich,

well-funded organisation. It is amazing what it has achieved with such

a small team of dedicated people, many working in a voluntary

capacity, who have given up their own time and in many cases, given up

secure, well-paid jobs to fight for this cause. "

Adrian Shaw, IKON Associates, PR advisers to ANH

 

Where do funds need to be spent?

 

* Cost of administration and core staff needed to run a global

campaign organisation

* Legal fees, to challenge and positively shape bad and

unjustified legislation and ensure that it is based on good science

and good law, using the world's leading European lawyers

* Groundbreaking technical, scientific and legal work on global

legislative threats

* Professional public affairs lobbying and public relations

campaigns

 

PLEASE REMEMBER THAT ANH IS AN ORGANISATION ENTIRELY FUNDED BY DONATIONS

HELP THE ALLIANCE FOR NATURAL HEALTH TO HELP YOU

 

PLEASE MAKE A DONATION NOW by doing one of the following:

 

* Click here which will take you to the on-line donation section

of the ANH website

* Call the ANH donation hotline 0870 701 5555 from the UK or +44

870 701 555 from outside the UK (open 9.00am to 8.00pm GMT, Monday to

Friday)

* Send a cheque made payable to " Alliance for Natural Health " to

this address:

ANH Campaign Fund, 16 The Mount, Guildford, Surrey GU2 4HS.

Sterling, US dollar and Euro cheques accepted.

* UK Partners are encourage to set up a regular monthly donation

by standing order. Click here to download standing order mandate,

complete and forward to your bank.

 

The ANH team thanks each and everyone of you for your support.

 

Below, we explain in more detail the current status of the key

regulatory threats that need to be addressed as well as the key

initiatives that the ANH is currently undertaking.

 

As you know, we are in the middle of probably the most crucial period

in medical freedom of choice that the world has yet seen.

 

Ever tighter regulation in a variety of areas affecting natural health

products, manufacturers, bioenergy devices, practitioners and almost

all points in the supply chain relating to provision of natural health

products and services, threaten our future ability to rely on natural

methods of healthcare. It is the totality of regulation that is the

main problem – and remember, what we see now by way of the EU Food

Supplements Directive and global Codex Guidelines on Vitamin and

Mineral Food Supplements, modelled largely on the Food Supplements

Directive – is just the beginning of a much bigger plan to regulate

natural health.

 

The regulations affecting food or dietary supplements hit us from

three main angles: they threaten ingredients that will be allowed to

be used in products, they threaten the dosages of those ingredients

and they threaten what can be said about the products (health claims).

ANH is working very hard to make positive gains on all these fronts.

 

The ANH doesn't in principle have a problem with regulation. However,

what we do have a problem with is bad legislation. And amazingly, bad

legislation seems to be rather central to the plan. It is the result

of compromise after compromise and it is filled with flawed science.

Even more remarkably, as we had thought, it now appears that even the

EU Food Supplements Directive may be invalid under EU law. We will of

course need to await the European Court of Justice ruling which is now

only a few weeks away.

 

Many people are suffering regulation overload. There is a battery of

EU Directives and Regulations affecting natural health coming through

the pipeline, there is also Codex, as a series of guidelines

affecting, initially, vitamin and mineral products and health claims,

and, there are possible changes to the US's liberal DSHEA regime in

the wings.

 

If there's one thing we would ask you not to do, it is to become

apathetic and defeatist in your attitude. It might be a David and

Goliath battle that we find ourselves amidst, but, as Margaret Mead,

the great anthropologist said, " Never believe that a few caring people

can't change the world. For, indeed, that's all who ever have. "

 

This is a critical time for action – and the more involved you become,

the more chance we all stand.

 

ANH is a funded entirely by voluntary donations. Most of the funds

that have allowed us to do what we have done for the last three years

have come from you, the consumer. It is the consumer that forces

change more than any other party. If we stop demanding cheap,

synthetic vitamins, or dangerous drugs, there will be no demand for

them. We, the consumer, are responsible for creating the demand.

 

Below we list some of the key activities with which we are involved

now, and we would welcome any support you feel you are able to give us

on any or all of these.

 

Key project activity

 

Some of the key projects we are presently working on are:

 

* Response to FAO/WHO Expert Panel meeting (meeting in Geneva,

Switzerland, 2-6 May 2005). These scientists have been considering

various risk assessment systems as well as discussion documents

submitted by 16 organizations including the ANH (we advised that a

thorough reworking of risk assessment science was badly needed because

the existing models were based on poor science. Download our

submission by clicking here. We are expecting the report from the

FAO/WHO Panel imminently, which we will be responding to as a group of

leading scientists and doctors worldwide.

* Preparation of a proposal to the European Commission and Council

of Ministers which we will submit on receipt of the ruling from the

European Court of Justice, in relation to our challenge of the EU Food

Supplements Directive. We are presently working on this submission and

seeking a wide swathe of support from the European food supplement

industry.

* ANH is presently preparing its comments for European Parliament

discussion to be held on 25 May 2005 on the Nutrition & Health Claims

Regulation report.

* Dr Rob Verkerk will be presenting at the 12th International

Symposium on Functional Medicine (24-28 May 2005) in Palm Springs,

California. The ANH will also be exhibiting at the Symposium (stand

sponsored by Metagenics, US brochures sponsored by Allergy Research

Group) and will be seeking to develop a petition of scientists and

doctors present at the Symposium who will oppose the pharmaceutical

and environmental toxin-based risk assessments being proposed by

health authorities in the US and Europe, as well as by Codex. Refer to

the ANH article for background.

* ANH is working with the US-based National Health Federation

(http://www.thenhf.com) and others to inform a number of governments

as to the deficiencies in the Codex Guidelines on Vitamins and

Minerals. Unless the existing guidelines and proposed risk assessment

systems are altered, the ANH is advising governments to not support

ratification of the Codex Guidelines on Vitamins and Minerals during

the forthcoming meetings in Rome (4-9 July 2005). Since Codex

guidelines are voted for on a one-vote-per-country basis, and because

consensus is required (defined in this case as the " absence of

sustained opposition " ), we believe that working with developing

countries with long-standing traditional medicinal cultures to help

them appreciate the sense in voting " no " in Rome in July, will be a

more effective way of stalling the existing guidelines and likely risk

assessment systems. This is likely to be more valuable than trying to

shift country delegations from the richer, western countries that

appear to be fully committed to Codex in its current form. Just as the

Advocate General in the European Court of Justice has found flaws in

the EU Food Supplements Directive, the National Health Federation has

now pointed out apparent procedural problems with the Codex guidelines.

* ANH has been involved in the development of a US-based

coalition, the Coalition for Health Freedom, that is working to

provide a unified, coherent and pro-health freedom position which

opposes the current Codex Alimentarius guidelines. The Coalition was

spawned following a meeting in Washington DC, coordinated by the

American Association for Health Freedom. Watch this space!

* ANH and executive director Dr Rob Verkerk have been coordinating

with Kevin Miller (www.welltv.com), who is making a film on Codex.

Kevin is well known as the film director who made the documentary Let

the Truth Be the Bias in the early 1990s, which helped awaken the US

public with regard to the DSHEA (Dietary Supplement Health & Education

Act) campaign on the lead up to its passage in 1994. Without the huge

response by the public, including the largest influx of letters

received in the history of the US Congress, DSHEA would not have been

the liberal system that it now is. But Codex, probably more than any

other factor, seriously threatens DSHEA – and Kevin's new film is set

to really wake people from their 11-year slumber. A short version of

the film is expected to be ready in less than one month and will be

distributed widely. Anyone who can help with distribution, as well as

with funding, should contact Kevin Miller directly at

kevinmiller.

* We are working on the development of further strategic legal

challenges. More information on this will be released in due course.

This work is focused on benefiting the future of natural healthcare,

not only in western countries, but also in countries in Asia, Africa

and South America that have very long-standing traditions of herbal

and natural medicine. Under the `Codex risk assessment microscope',

many of these traditions would be unlikely to fair well. In their

place, the regulators seem content to offer a diet of western

pharmaceutical drugs known to be by far the most hazardous group of

substances commonly ingested by humans. We are firmly of the view that

a series of strategic legal challenges are required to ensure that the

future of natural healthcare is secured worldwide.

* On-going PR and media campaign, being coordinated by IKON

Associates in the UK. As of January 2005 we have commissioned a

UK-based PR consultancy to help ANH and its supporters get its message

out. This includes dealing with negative spin in the media that is so

often based on misrepresented or flawed scientific research.

Communication about the threats to natural medicine, as well as the

importance of the campaign against these threats, is now a very high

priority.

 

Interview with Dr Rob Verkerk

 

For those of you requiring background on the EU situation, you might

find it useful to download an interview of Rob Verkerk carried out by

Louise McLean of Zeus Information Services, which was conducted during

the recent Natural Trade Show in Brighton, UK. The interview is now on

the ANH website. Click here to read it.

 

We encourage you to circulate this mailshot to your contact base.

 

Please encourage as many people as you know who value their freedom of

choice in health as well as their ability to continue to use natural

products to support good health.

 

Sign up as Partner or Member via our website – and receive regular

mailshots updating you on the campaign.

 

Many thanks for your support.

 

In health, naturally.

 

The ANH team.

 

www.alliance-natural-health.org

 

CONTACT

Email: info

Tel. +44 (0)1252 371 275

Campaign Administrator: Isobel Bradley

 

To , please go to

http://www.alliance-natural-health.org

 

 

 

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