A Global Concern: NHP Community Confronting Similar Regulations Worldwide Sept 4/12


NOT JUST A CANADIAN PROBLEM

In September 2008, an international task force was set up to preserve the public’s right and access to Natural Health Products (NHPs). Among the invited, three of the renowned leaders in the global natural health community attended to shed light on their legal and scientific perspectives. These three veterans met again this past spring at a subsequent international meeting held in May to discuss the synchronized breakdown of the NHP industry and what can be done about it.

Of the many respected NHP community participants, the meeting included acclaimed constitutional lawyers, NHPPA’s Shawn Buckley and Jonathan Emord from Washington DC, along with internationally acclaimed health scientist, Dr. Robert Verkerk, Executive Director of the Alliance for Natural Health, based in the UK. For many years, they have been working tirelessly both independently and along side one another, to defend our fundamental rights and freedoms.

The stories they told in the months after the meeting, from their respective parts of the world are too similar to overlook.

Robert Verkerk’s article Wake Up Canada! The European Canary Has Landed In North America (Vitality Magazine, June 1 2012) leaves no room for doubt that we are facing a serious problem and that it is happening all over the world. Verkerk finds disturbing similarities in the regulatory decisions being made in the EU, Canada and the US: “…laws set to destroy small business, stifle innovation, and jeopardize public health”. Nevertheless, Verkerk believes that we can make an impact with the products we choose to buy and that working together is paramount. He writes:

“The NHPPA is working closely with ourselves in Europe, our colleagues at ANH-USA in the US (http://www.anh-usa.org), Jonathan Emord and others, in an attempt to deliver strategies that have the greatest likelihood of maintaining citizens’ access to natural health products of their choice.”

CLICK HERE to read the full article.

Jonathan Emord tales the systematic breakdown of the natural health industry in the US in the somber 2012 documentary directed by Gary Null: WAR ON HEALTH: The FDA’s Cult of Tyranny. In the following video clip transcription, Jonathan talks about the FDA’s growing power to prohibit the sale of natural health products:

“Recently the FDA promulgated a new thing called the New Dietary Ingredient Guidance. In the first decade of application of the New Dietary Ingredient Guidance, FDA took a rather conservative view of what a new dietary ingredient was. They would say, oh well, if it was in the food supply and you can show that it’s in the food supply, we will allow you to sell it and not prohibit you from selling it, not require you to make a scientific submission. Well increasingly in the 90’s, the FDA took a more restrictive approach, increasingly requiring the submission of new dietary ingredient petitions before it would allow substances in the market and expanding its definition of a new dietary ingredient, keeping more things out of the market as a consequence.”

CLICK HERE to watch this clip. Go to the 39.06 minute mark in the video.

NHPPA’s Shawn Buckley, in his article Time to Become a Health Criminal? (HANS – Health Action Network Society, Summer 2012) warns us that we may have to engage in criminal activity in order to have access to the health products we need or choose. He writes:

“Sadly, more and more of us are going to find ourselves in the position where we will be compelled to break the law and become health criminals. This will happen for two reasons. First, because we are losing access to products we rely on for our health or, in some cases, for our very lives. Second, the Federal Court has recently made it more difficult to legally access vital medications.”

CLICK HERE to read the full article.

OVER-REGULATION PANDEMIC

Canada’s economy is slated to be drastically even further over-regulated, mirroring Europe and the US, particularly in those sectors that involve food, natural health products and our health choices.

As identified by the international task force and many long-standing industry stakeholders, the restriction of NHPs has been a global phenomenon. It is happening in almost every corner of the world.

Some of the striking similarities in restrictive regulatory strategies in different regions of the world are that regulators: exceed their legal authority; ignore court rulings; overstate and skew human health risks associated with the use of NHPs; discriminate against traditional medicinal cultures and censor truthful health information.

Over-regulation has eliminated small and medium-sized businesses by declaring their products illegal, or by simply making it too expensive for them to continue. In turn, this will make it easy for transnational corporations to dominate the health market by giving them control over supply and pricing.

Although this may sound like a conspiracy theory, it is an economic reality that is being fought by natural health stakeholders around the world.

Here in Canada, regulators are employed by Health Canada but in the EU, the US, Australia, New Zealand regulators have their own agencies as well. The only way to fight an international problem is with coordinated international solutions.

It was imperative that Shawn Buckley attend these international meetings on behalf of NHPPA’s membership. We thank our supporters for their continued donations that make it possible.

The coordinated attack on individual liberty continues worldwide. Our fight in Canada is one part of the whole. Keep Canadians at the table, advocating for the freedoms enshrined in our constitution.

We ask for your financial support so that we can continue to sit at the international table and work on a global solution.

“In health there is freedom. Health is the first of all liberties.”

Henri-Frederic Amiel (1821-1881), Swiss writer known for his masterpiece Journal intime