Sunday Tribune (Dublin, Ireland)

20 July 2003

Legal bid challenges EU food directive

By Rachel Andrews

A legal challenge to the forthcoming EU Directive on food supplements – which could result in 85% of supplements being taken off the shelves of Irish health food stores – is actively being considered by a UK-based health organisation. If the challenge is successful, it would result in the directive being overturned in all EU member states, including Ireland.

The Alliance for Natural Health (ANH), a pan-European organisation which counts among its members the Irish Association for Health Food Stores, is currently preparing a case with a group of London-based barristers.

“They are the only group of barristers who have been successful in overturning an EU directive so we are positive about the case,” said Dr Robert Verkerk, executive director of the ANH.

The case will be taken on constitutional grounds on the issue of proportionality. “The European Commission is not mean to be bringing about bans based on health grounds,” said Verkerk.

For example, the directive will bring about a ban on nutrients, included in around 5,000 different products, most of which are dietary supplements closest to food forms.

In other words, they provide the same sort of nutrition that is usually obtained from food and which, according nutritionists and health practitioners, is a vital part of a healthy diet because of the well-documented decline in nutrient levels of foods due to intensive farming.

Well-known food supplements that will be affected by the directive include Vitamin C and Vitamin B6.

These could either disappear from health store shelves completely, or their nutritional dosages will be rendered so low that consumers will have to buy much more of the product to receive the same nutritional dose as they currently do.

“Approximately 85% of food supplements will be gone from this country,” said Erica Murray, of the Irish Association of Health Stores.

“And nutrient levels of others will be drastically reduced. Eventually, it will also probably mean that the smaller companies who supply health stores with supplements won't be able to afford the costs anymore.”

According to Verkerk, the type of basic food supplements currently available in supermarkets or pharmacies are unlikely to be affected.

However, it is the specialist supplements, sold through health food stores, which will no longer be available.

“The EU legislators who drew up the legislation were trying to create a safe harbour for food supplements.

“But they have only created a safe harbour for basic food products,” said Verkerk.

The EU legislators did not fully understand the impact of what they had drawn up, he said.

The EU directive has already been passed into law in the UK and is due to be signed here by health minister Michael Martin by the end of this month.