Summary

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 organization 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 organization. The ANH is NOT a rich, well-funded organization. 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 organization ·

•   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' target='_blank'>""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""http://www.alliance-natural-health.org/... 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@welltv.com.

•   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.

Tel. +44 (0)1252 371 275

Original source:

Details

• Natural Health Letter (press release)

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