Hundreds of herbal products to be outlawed across EU in early 2011

Thursday, December 30, 2010 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: EU directive, medicinal herbs, health news

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(NaturalNews) The global effort to outlaw herbs, vitamins and supplements is well under way, and in just four months, hundreds of herbal products will be criminalized in the UK and across the EU. It's all part of an EU directive passed in 2004 which erects "disproportionate" barriers against herbal remedies by requiring them to be "licensed" before they can be sold.

It's called the Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products Directive (THMPD), Directive 2004/24/EC.

The licensing requirements, however, were intentionally designed to make sure that virtually no herbs could ever meet them. It costs from $125,000 to $180,000 to license a single herb with the EU, and since herbs cannot be patented and don't have the monopolistic pricing found in pharmaceuticals, there's simply not enough profit margin in most herbs to justify such huge expenditures from any one company.

But that's sort of the point. Governments of the world have been conspiring with the pharmaceutical industry for decades to destroy the competition by outlawing nutritional supplements, herbal remedies and many other forms of natural medicine.

They really are coming for your natural medicine

Some people in the USA are still skeptical that this could ever happen in the "land of the free," yet it's happening in Europe right now, and the U.S. is probably not far behind. In just four months, health food stores in the UK will be stripped bare of these suddenly "illegal" herbs, and the many millions of people who have come to depend on them as a safe, natural and non-invasive form of medicine will be forced to pursue pharmaceuticals instead of herbs.

And that's also the point. By driving these products off the shelves, governments know they will simultaneously herd people into doctors' offices where they will be prescribed medications that benefit the wealthy corporations that keep politicians in office (in every western nation).

It may also drive people to acquire herbs from sources that have poor quality controls. As Dr Rob Verkerk of the Alliance For Natural Health said in an Independent article, "Thousands of people across Europe rely on herbal medicines to improve their quality of life. They don't take them because they are sick - they take them to keep healthy. If these medicines are taken off the market, people will try and find them elsewhere, such as from the internet, where there is a genuine risk they will get low quality products, that either don't work or are adulterated." (http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/heal...)

You must beg the King for permission

The MHRA (UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency) has received 166 applications for herbal product licensing and has granted 78 so far. Do you see how this works? Now you must be "granted" a license in order to exercise your Natural Law right to engage in the free commerce of Mother Nature's plants. Big Government has stolen from European citizens their natural rights and is now condemning many of them to suffering or even death as a result.

That's how governments always work in the end: They expand their power at the expense of your freedom. The centralize control over your life while maximizing the profits of the powerful corporations that keep them in business. You're watching it happen right now across Europe, and if we don't put a stop to this, it will soon happen in the United States as well. It's already under way, in fact, with the FDA's outlawing of scientifically-validated free speech about nutritional supplements. There's also a war under way on raw milk, and need I even mention the decades-long war being waged against medical marijuana?

Which herbs are under threat of being banned

Here are some of the hundreds of herbs that are about to be banned across Europe:

• Ashwagandha
• Cascara Sagrada
• Pau D'Arco
• Skullcap
• Horny Goat Weed

... and hundreds more, especially Traditional Chinese Medicine formulas.

Sign the petition

Efforts are under way in Europe to try to reverse this highly destructive directive. You can sign this petition at: http://www.gopetition.com/petition/39757/sig...

Also, the European office of the Alliance for Natural Health is working diligently to attempt to protect health freedom for EU citizens: http://www.anh-europe.org

They could really use your support right now if you're considering an end-of-year donation of some kind. Health freedom is worth defending, and as we're seeing right now, if we don't take a stand against this, we will all lose our access to natural remedies, vitamins, supplements and perhaps even naturopathic medicine.

There really is a global conspiracy to force you to take pharmaceuticals and surrender your body to conventional medicine. Governments around the world absolutely do not want you to have free choice about how to treat your own health, because "choice" implies that you, like literally billions of other people across the planet, might not choose to poison yourself with conventional medicine's deadly drugs.

More sources of articles to read

http://www.gaia-health.com/articles301/00030...

http://www.anh-europe.org/node/3113

http://www.consumersforhealthchoice.com