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On April 8th, Canada’s Minister of Health, Tony Clement, introduced Bill C-51 into the House of Commons. If passed, that bill will drastically alter the current Food and Drugs Act, and that will be bad news for many Canadians. According to an article on the Common Ground website, "expectations are that if Federal Bill C-51 is passed, around 75 percent of new applications will most likely fail to meet new requirements."
Canada has traditionally been liberal, favoring availability of nutrient-containing products to people wishing to use vitamins and minerals for their preventive or even curative health needs. But some time in the 90s, a world wide campaign was started to curtail the use of nutritional supplements in health care in favor of pharmaceutical medicines.
The US FDA's intention to limit vitamin dosages to RDA levels was blocked by an overwhelming consumer driven campaign which eventually resulted in liberal legislation, the so-called Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) in 1993/94. In Europe, the early 90s saw the first attempt to pass a food supplements law, which after some delay was issued in 2004 as the Food Supplements Directive. Codex Alimentarius started talking about limiting supplements in 1994. More recently, Australia and New Zealand were supposed to harmonize in the direction of Australia's restrictive model which considers supplements "therapeutic goods" or medicines. New Zealand has successfully resisted so far. In Canada, there was resistance to change and finally a parliamentary committee was charged with finding a way to control supplements.
Shawn Buckley's Common Ground article gives some specifics on what happened before the introduction of the recent bill:
On November 4, 1998, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health tabled its report, titled “Natural Health Products: A New Vision”. The report contained 53 recommendations, all of which were accepted by the Government on March 2, 1999. The first recommendation read that "Health Canada, in conjunction with a new separate Natural Health Products Expert Advisory Committee (EAC) should set out an appropriate definition of natural health products (NHPs) and amend the Food and Drugs Act accordingly." However, for expediency, a regulatory definition was created and implemeted instead of amending the law; Natural Health Products (NHPs) would be considered as drugs under the Food and Drugs Act. In Health Canada's page of Frequently Asked Questions, the following response was given for the question of why the Act was not amended:
"While creating another category distinct from both food and drugs was considered, an amendment at the level of the Act would have been necessary. Due to the timelines and legislative process required for a change of this magnitude, it was decided that natural health products would be considered drugs under the Act, but with a set of regulations specific to NHPs."
In effect, Health Canada is stating that they chose not to implement the direction of the government, but there was a good reason - amending the Act would take a long time and be a lot of work. However, on April 8, 2008, the Minister of Health introduced Bill C-51, An act to amend the Food and Drugs Act. This legislation introduces new definitions, including a new product category called "therapeutic products", a term that encompasses drugs, medical devices and cells used for therapeutic purposes. Despite there being an opportunity to amend the Act, an opportunity to amend definitions in the Act and include a decade-old Government directive to include Natural Health Products as a separate legal category, drafters of the bill chose not to. The question remains: why?
In effect, parliamentary deliberations were held in Canada and the results published, but the recommendations were disregarded. Did they simply not fit the broader agenda which commenced in the early 90s, of doing away with supplements as a competing approach to pharmaceuticals world wide in public health systems?
Continue reading "Canada: Bill C-51 threatens natural health products"
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Wednesday May 7 2008
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Health Supreme's NewsGrabs - a selection of contrary and underprivileged news in health and a wide range of (mostly) related sectors. Find what trends you may have missed - watch out for the weekly News Grabs.
Here is this week's selection for you.
Video: Open source medicine: Artesunate-mefloquine brings new hope in fight against malaria
In what appears to be one of the first cases of where a cutting edge important pharmaceutical product is being "open-sourced", the Brazilian government and the non-profit Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative, or DNDI announced that their new combination malaria drug will not be patented, so as to make it more widely accessible than previous anti-malarial treatments.
In contrast... "the US government has not shown itself to be particularly open to alternatives, and certainly its primary role in forums like the World Trade Organization has been to just go to bat for the brand name, multinational pharmaceutical industry and to insist on the sacrosanct status of the current intellectual property regime."
Mercury Fillings Banned In Norway
Announcing the ban, Norway’s Minister of Environment and Development Erik Solheim said: “Mercury is among the most dangerous environmental toxins. Satisfactory alternatives to mercury in products are available, and it is therefore fitting to introduce a ban.”
Norway is concerned that mercury in our teeth and in the environment is extremely dangerous, and can harm the development of children.
United Methodist Church Passes Resolution Against Mercury In Medicine
The Rev. Lisa K. Sykes, President of CoMeD, Inc, mother of a mercury-toxic child and a United Methodist clergywoman who has helped to shepherd this activist movement within The United Methodist Church, declared:
"This is the start of a Second Great Temperance Movement. More than a hundred years ago, our church fought widespread alcohol intoxication. With this resolution, we begin to fight widespread and, until now, unrecognized mercury intoxication from unsafe mercury-containing medicines."
Video: About the Fluoridation of Your Drinking Water
In this video, award-winning journalist Christopher Bryson examines one of the great secret narratives of the industrial era; how a grim workplace poison and the most damaging environmental pollutant of the cold war was added to our drinking water and toothpaste.
Europe may ban 120 food nutrients
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has rejected dossiers backing 120 nutrient sources for ongoing use within the European Union because they were deemed "not to be adequate".
While this may lead to the removal of nutrients including forms of boron, selenium, magnesium and calcium from supplements and foods, industry sources said they were unconcerned by EFSA's rulings.
The more important question in this regard is the eventual fate of 180 or so dossiers that are still to be decided, the ones for nutrients used more frequently in supplements. What will happen when - before the end of next year - EFSA has to make a decision on those?
Also - what will happen with "upper safe levels" of nutrients in supplements, which must be decided within the same time frame, if not earlier.
Actually, the food supplements directive was an act of cowardice. The legislators avoided to touch the hot issues (formulation and dosage) and diluted them in time. But now the chickens will come home to roost.
Those decisions must be made and it will be interesting to see what consumers say when they can't find their supplements in their local health shop any more. I predict angry reaction ... but then, I have tried to tell that to the regulators before. No one apparently listened.
Former Soviet Dissident Warns For EU Dictatorship
Vladimir Bukovksy, the 63-year old former Soviet dissident, fears that the European Union is on its way to becoming another Soviet Union. In a speech he delivered in Brussels last week Mr Bukovsky called the EU a “monster” that must be destroyed, the sooner the better, before it develops into a fullfledged totalitarian state.
Raw Milk Criminalized: Mennonite Farmer Arrested
Cumberland County, Pennsylvania - Mark Nolt, a Wenger Mennonite (Horse and Buggy Mennonite) dairyman, threatened for months with arrest for selling raw milk without a permit was removed from his property by state troopers.
Medical marijuana user who was denied liver transplant dies
A man who was denied a liver transplant largely because he used marijuana with medical approval to ease the symptoms of hepatitis C has died.
His death came a week after a doctor told him a University of Washington Medical Center committee had again denied him a spot on the liver transplant list. The team had previously told him it would not consider placing him on the list until he completed a 60-day drug-treatment class.
Aspartame and Other Health Frauds
It was many years ago that others - wiser than I - urged me to avoid aspartame-sweetened drinks. My brother's wife Norlene was especially adamant that it was a poison that would not do my body one bit of good. I must confess that at the time I thought that any sweetener, artificial or not, would be better than sugar. And aspartame, composed of two amino acids, seemed innocent enough. How wrong I was...
NHF opposes Aspartame, Aluminum at Beijing Codex meeting
Representing consumers at the recent meeting of a Codex Alimentarius Food Additives Committee meeting in Beijing, the National Health Federation opposed the inclusion of Aspartame and similar artificial sweeteners in an upcoming Codex standard, as well as aluminum based 'food additives'. Predictable, the assembled health bureaucrats and food/chemical industry representatives did what they could to go on ... business as usual.
Nutrasweet - the History of this Toxic Chemical and Its Promotion
G.D. Searle has spent the last 40 years aggressively and recklessly promoting their accidental discovery with total disregard to the evidence they have gathered that show how dangerous and toxic this chemical is to human beings.
