Britain is preparing to take vitamins off the shelves

• Vitamin supplements used by thousands of Britons, from pregnant women to people warding off winter colds, are to be swept from shop shelves from the new year under controversial European Union safety regulations.
• Carole Caplin, former style adviser to Cherie Blair, will front a last-ditch campaign next month to get the directive on food supplements overturned.
• It would affect up to 5,000 products, including best-sellers such as Solgar's Pre-Natal Nutrients tablets, taken by pregnant and breastfeeding women; and VM-2000 multi-nutrient pills, a compound of antioxidants.
• Megadose vitamins, such as the high-strength vitamin C tablets taken by many to stave off coughs and sniffles, are also under threat, with new safety standards to be issued separately early next year.
• 'We have got to do everything we can to put pressure on the British government, otherwise British consumers who have used these products for 40 or 50 years will lose out,' said Sue Croft of the pressure group, Consumers for Health Choice.
• She said campaigners were also worried about the threat to megadose vitamins.
• Caplin, who regularly recommends alternative remedies to clients, is understood to have lobbied the Prime Minister personally.
• She has also publicly accused the Health Minister, Melanie Johnson, of showing a 'distinct lack of care and interest' in the issue.
• Peter Hain, the Leader of the Commons, who has a longstanding interest in alternative therapies, is also understood to have raised objections to the directive, which he has described as 'heavy-handed'.
• Manufacturers prepared to draw up a detailed scientific dossier arguing that their ingredients are proven to be safe are allowed an extension until 2008.
• They argue Britain is suffering from a culture-clash with continental countries, which traditionally treat vitamins as akin to medicines.