Analysis: Lobby group reverses opposition as most products still legal, writes Sylvia Thompson
One week after the European Court of Justice upheld the EU Food Supplements Directive, the international group campaigning against the directive has now welcomed its validation.
In a somewhat contradictory move, the Alliance for Natural Health said: "We see [ it as] a clear win for consumers, a clear win for practitioners and a clear win for the leading edge of the innovative industry."
After initial expressions of disappointment across the health food sector - and some panic-buying of food supplements in the belief that many would be removed from the shelves by August 1st - it has become clear that most of the companies supplying food supplements to the Irish market had submitted dossiers to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) before the July 12th deadline.
This now means that these products can remain on the shelves until December 2009 unless the European Food Safety Authority deems them unsafe on public health grounds in the meantime.
"I have been told by one Irish distributor of food supplements that virtually all products they have been supplying to the market in recent times have had dossiers submitted for them," Erica Murray, spokeswoman for the Irish Association of Health Stores, told The Irish Times.
Philip Tod , European Commission spokesman on health and consumer protection, said: "There has been a lot of hyperbole and misinformation flying around about this. We've never agreed with the claims that hundreds of vitamins and minerals will disappear from the shelves.
"In Britain alone, 500 dossiers have been submitted and we have gone to great lengths to make it easier for companies to submit dossiers and give them advice on how they can club together to make applications.
"There will also be opportunities for companies making new supplements to add ingredients to the positive list," said Mr Tod.
The so-called "positive list" of ingredients permitted in food supplements was the central area of dispute in the directive as many believed it excluded certain ingredients in food supplements which were widely used by the public for health maintenance and disease prevention.
It was principally for this reason that the Alliance for Natural Health challenged the Food Supplements Directive first under British law and then later under EU law.
Another issue that has been hotly debated is how the EFSA will assess whether ingredients should be added to the positive list of ingredients already in place.
"We believe that the current risk assessment system is a drugs-based system transplanted to nutrients and it doesn't work," said Robert Verkerk, spokesman for the Alliance for Natural Health (ANH).
The ANH has commissioned a team of scientists from the Netherlands to develop a new safety-versus-benefits assessment methodology for vitamins and minerals which it hopes the EFSA will adopt.
Prof Albert Flynn from the Department of Food and Nutritional Sciences at University College Cork chairs one of the scientific panels of the EFSA.
"I believe the adopted directive is a sensible one. It tried to achieve a balance between enabling free trade and protecting public health.
"The positive list as it now stands is not extensive enough but just because nutrients are essential for health doesn't mean that they don't have toxic effects at high levels or that they don't contain toxic contaminants," he said. "The EFSA is a highly expert group who will use the most up-to-date forms of evaluation to ensure that the nutrients included in supplements are added in forms that are safe for consumers to take."