Posted: 8-Apr-2005 << BACK
ADVOCATE GENERAL FINDS FOOD SUPPLEMENTS DIRECTIVE INVALID UNDER EU LAW
There was tremendous news today for the millions of people in Europe who choose to use food supplements. Following a landmark challenge in the European Courts of Justice (ECJ) brought by the Alliance for Natural Health and Nutri-Link Ltd to the contentious Food Supplements Directive, which effectively proposed to ban 75% of vitamin and mineral forms, Advocate General Geelhoed, the senior adviser to the ECJ, gave his Opinion in favour of the Alliances case.
What does this mean? That the chances of consumers being able to continue using the natural food supplements they believe are beneficial to their health are now greatly increased. There has been uproar about the proposed EU ban, and maybe, against the odds, the consumer is going to come out on top in what is a remarkable modern day case of David and Goliath.
In a statement released in Luxembourg today at 0830 GMT, the Advocate General concluded that:
The Food Supplements Directive infringes the principle of proportionality because basic principles of Community law, such as the requirements of legal protection, of legal certainty and of sound administration have not properly been taken into account.It is therefore invalid under EU law.
It should be stressed that the Advocate Generals pronouncement is not a ruling. That will come from the ECJ judges, later - probably around June. But typically, in the vast majority of cases, the Court Judgment follows the recommendations of the Advocate General.
If the Advocate Generals recommendations are adopted, in effect, the ban on vitamin and mineral forms not included on the EUs Positive list, due to come into effect on 1 August 2005, will be declared illegal. In essence, the positive list of allowable nutrient forms will be deemed to be too narrow, too restrictive, and based on flawed science.
This would avoid the totally irrational situations that the Food Supplements Directive would otherwise create. For example, synthetically produced selenium would have been allowed on the positive list, while the natural source found in Brazil nuts would not; synthetic forms of Vitamin E (often used in adverse vitamin studies reported in the media) would be allowed, but the natural, most beneficial food forms would not.
Supporting safe supplements
ANH supports many aspects of the Directive, and firmly endorses the banning of ingredients that are patently not safe, stating that existing UK and EU food law already provides perfectly effective protection from unsafe products getting onto the market. Furthermore, ANH says that it is not scientifically rational to classify an ingredient as being unsafe without taking dosage levels into account, something that was not a condition of being admitted onto the positive list.
ANH believes that a far more appropriate system for banning any substances that might pose a risk to health would be to produce a Negative list for ingredients where there was proper evidence of lack of safety. The system proposed by the EU was going to ban ingredients on the basis that companies did not have the financial capacity to meet the high data threshold required for the scientific dossiers demanded by EU authorities. In this way, ingredients that have been part of the human diet for thousands of years, and which are increasingly difficult to derive from conventional foods, would be lost, and would not be able to be supplemented.
Drawing its support European-wide from consumers, manufacturers, retailers, practitioners and some of the leading experts in nutritional medicine, ANH has taken on the Goliath of the European Commission and those that support the unscientific and unlawful ban in the Food Supplements Directive, to protect the interests of everyone concerned with the leading-edge of food supplements and natural healthcare.
None of the major EU countries felt the need to oppose our application for a declaration that the ban on vitamins and minerals in the Food Supplements Directive was unlawful, added Anthony Haynes, Technical Director of Nutri-Link Ltd., a UK food supplements company that brought the legal challenge jointly with ANH. Its bizarre how this regulation got this far.
Dr Damien Downing, a medical doctor and one of the UKs leading practitioners in nutritional medicine, said: Practitioners of nutritional therapy, and there are thousands of them in the UK, largely use leading-edge food supplements. If these nutrient forms remain, we can continue to treat our patients with meaningful solutions and provide the products that we know are so beneficial. A ban would in one fell swoop remove the vital tools of practitioners trade.
