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... GLOBAL NEWS ... NEWS EU LAWS WILL RESTRICT ACCESS TO HEALTH SUPPLEMENTS IN UK Mus of Britons take herbal vitamin and mineral supplements, either as a preven- tive measure or to treat specific ailments. But they may not be able to for much longer... If you're one of those who find such remedies useful, however, you'd better start stockpiling now. A raft of EU legislation looks set to nip the natural medicine market in the bud. Soon, that popular vitamin C, echinacea and zinc combination may not be allowed on the shelves. A shadow looms large over the alternative health sector. Estimates of the impact of this new legislation vary, but hundreds of vitamin and mineral supplements could be banned outright, while an as-yet-incalculable number of common herbal remedies will disappear unless consumers challenge it. The National Association of Health Food Stores claims that as many as three-quarters of its members could go out of business. The writing is on the wall for small British supplement com- panies, which will be forced to reformulate entire ranges and invest massively in apply- ing for new product licences. The attack comes from four different pieces of legislation, one of which is already in force, another approved in principle. All are couched in the now familiar EU language of consumer safety and free trade. Currently, the UK, the Netherlands and Ireland have a far more permissive attitude towards supplements than other member states, and make available a wider range of higher-dose remedies. This approach is in line with those in the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. But those days are numbered. The idea behind the new regulations is that, irrespective of whether you are a healthy Cretan living on fish, multiple fruit and vegetables and monounsaturated olive oil, or a typically sun-starved Brit existing on nutritionally impoverished processed food, you should have the same range and strength of supplements at your disposal. Attack number one comes in the form of the Food Supplements Directive, which will set maximum levels for vitamins and minerals. Currently, consumers in the UK can buy high-strength vitamins in dosages that are way above what's known as the "recom- mended daily allowance" (RDA). In most other European countries, a much more restrictive range of vitamins and minerals, based on the RDA, is available. A likely EU consensus might set limits at only two or three times the RDA, representing a liberalisa- tion for most European countries, but decimating the choice available to the British consumer. The second attack takes the form of the Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products Directive, which says that herbal remedies can only be licensed if they can be shown to be safe and produced to high standards. This means that herbal remedies will be licensed in the same way as drugs, often costing millions. Furthermore, to get a licence, a specific product must have been on the market for 30 years, 15 of which must have been in Europe. There's a third prong to the attack, in the form of the Novel Foods Directive, which is already in force. This was originally designed to control genetically modified foods and new, so-called "functional" foods, such as fish oil-enriched bread, but is now being applied to absolutely everything that is sold under food law. Any food product (which includes supplements) that was not on the EU market before May 15, 1997, can only be granted approval after submission of a dossier containing huge amounts of technical and safety data. So far, a herbal sweetener and an immune system-boosting tonic have already been forced off the shelves as a result, and next in the line of fire is MSM, an increasingly popular organic sulphur that has been found to be effective in the treatment of joint problems. Even more worrying is that there is no appeals process under this directive. The final attack seems on the surface to be an innocuous tidying-up of the EU Medicines Directive. But, in fact, it will mean that anything with a physiological action can be reclassified as a medicine—and under EU definitions, that means that any prod- uct sold in a health store, even herbal tea, could be deemed to be a medicine, while items such as coffee and grapefruit juice (which also have proven physiological effects, but which are sold in food shops) will not be affected. The new EU laws will say that a product must be either one or the other. (Source: By Joanna Blythman, The Guardian, London, September 14, 2002, http://www. guardian.co.ukAveekend/story/0, 3605,790733,00.html) "Getting chipped" is a simple outpatient procedure that lasts just a few minutes and involves only local anaesthetic and inser- tion of the chip. (Source: ADS press release, October 24, 2002, http://www.adsx.com) RESISTANCE TO PESTICIDES GOES GLOBAL IN A FLASH single genetic mutation that protects fruit flies from the lethal effects of the insecticide DDT has spread around the world, almost instantly. It is generally known that insects can spread genetic traits very rapidly, but no one has spotted a global takeover like this before. The discovery echoes similar research on the mosquito that carries the malaria parasite. Scientists recently found that a DDT resistance gene in Anopheles gambiae had spread right up and down the west coast of tropical Africa. Widespread use of DDT to control mos- quitoes and crop pests began in 1945. The pesticide also killed off fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster), so the tiny insects had to adapt or die. And adapt they did. Richard ffrench- Constant from Bath University and his team analysed 75 lab populations of fruit flies originally collected around the world in the 1960s. Of those, 28 were DDT- resistant, including flies from every conti- nent except Antarctica. Surprisingly, every resistant fly had pre- cisely the same genetic change: the addi- tion of a "jumping gene"—a short sequence of DNA that can insert itself into new loca- tions in the genome. It's very surprising that a single version of the gene is responsible for all DDT resistance, says Charles Godfray, an ento- mologist at Imperial College in London. He is also struck by the fact that the mutation has stuck around even in labora- tory strains that have never encountered DDT. (Source: New Scientist, vol. 176, issue no. 2363, October 5, 2002) Our thanks to readers from around the globe who email and post snippets and articles of interest. Keep it up, please! Email: editor@nexusmagazine.com Address: NEXUS, PO Box 30, Mapleton Qld 4560, Australia NEXUS +9 DECEMBER 2002 — JANUARY 2003 www.nexusmagazine.com