Consumers

Your personal right to obtain natural healthcare, food supplements, herbs and alternative therapies is at risk.

 

Index

 

The Situation

How Can You Help?

WHAT YOU CAN AND SHOULD DO

Without funds, we will be unable to support the legal challenge successfully

What are these funds needed for?

To make a donation

 

The Situation: European Union legislation, backed by well funded vested interests, is set to ban many of the food supplements we normally take for granted. Worse yet, the United Nations, through their Codex Alimentarius Commission, is seeking to adopt this restrictive European legislation and apply it world wide in the name of ‘trade harmonization’ and the World Trade Organization will act as the enforcement branch for all UN member nations.

Your patient’s and your own freedom of choice and access to natural health remedies such as food supplements and herbs is at very real risk.

This will continue to adversely affect the Natural Health Industry as a whole including vitamin and herbal remedy manufacturers, distributors and resellers, health food stores, nutritionalists and natural health practitioners and most importantly, the consumers they serve - YOU.

  • Many vitamins and mineral forms will be eliminated completely.

  • Maximum permitted dosages will be drastically reduced to RDA or "placebo" therapeutic levels.

  • Herbal ingredients will also be severely restricted

Something should and CAN be done about it.

How Can You Help?
The World Institute of Natural Health Sciences (WINHS) is working with allied groups, scientists and professionals to enhance and protect your freedom of choice in nutrition and health care.

WINHS is working to ensure that alternative and natural healthcare is maintained and further developed for the health and well being of future generations.

We work with a host of dedicated professionals, campaigners, consumers, scientists, medical doctors, practitioners, innovative companies and suppliers of natural health products who fully understand that natural products, in combination with a good, balanced diet, provide us with the most important foundation for successful healthcare.

We believe that it is the personal right of the individual to sufficiently educate and empower themselves in order to make informed decisions and take control of their own health if it is to be both effective and economically viable in the long-term.

There are key forces working against the development of 'natural health' as a mainstay in health care, these being:

  • A complex of European Union (EU) directives and regulations that are set to reduce access by 450 million consumers (the entire EU population now comprised of 25 countries).

    • These EU laws include the Food Supplements Directive, the Human Medicinal Products (Pharmaceuticals) Directive, the Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products Directive, the Fortified Foods Directive and the Nutrition and Health Claims Regulation.

    You can find out more about these by reading materials contained throughout our web site. These Directives are all at different stages of enactment into EU and Member State Law.

    Vital to our work here is further clarification of the EU Food Supplements Directive as ruled on by European Court of Justice on 12 July 2005 in spite of the positive opinion earlier offered by the Advocate General to the Court on April 5, 2005.

  • The Development of international guidelines on food supplements and other natural products, which is being developed through the Codex Alimentarius Commission.

    • As background, the Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC) was established in 1963 as a means both of facilitating trade between countries and ensuring safety of foods. Codex Alimentarius, which essentially means "food code," is used as a series of international guidelines or standards for a very wide range of food groups. The Food & Agricultural Organization (FAO) and World Health Organization (WHO) of the United Nations oversee the CAC.

    The first major guideline for natural health products, which is essentially, derived from the EU Food Supplements Directive, concerns vitamin and mineral food supplements only. However botanicals are on the Codex 'drawing board' and guidelines for other nutrient groups will inevitably follow.

    Although heavily protested by the natural health and innovative food supplements industries, the text for the Codex Guideline on Vitamin and Mineral Food Supplements was ratified after 10 years of negotiation at a full meeting of the CAC in Rome on 4 July 2005.

    However, the precise mechanism by which maximum potencies, or "Upper Safe Levels," will be established has not been finally agreed and this will be considered at the forthcoming meeting of the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU) in Bonn, Germany, in November 2005.

    The current area that WINHS supports in relation to Codex is the Alliance for Natural Health's (ANH) program to commission independent, leading scientific leaders to develop scientifically sound risk assessment methods. 'Scientific risk assessment' has been agreed in Codex as the basis by which safety and dosages of food supplements will be established.

    NOTE: See Kevin Miller's 2005 documentary on Codex, narrated by Dame Judi Dench, to give you a 'big picture' view on Codex. You can access this via the banner on the top of the WINHS homepage. After viewing, please do whatever you can possibly do to support our efforts.

  • Media threats to natural health. There is no doubt there is a concerted anti-natural health bias to articles and news reports continually running in the mass media. These frequently cite 'scientific papers' that show harmful effects of a very limited range of supplements, often the synthetic forms (as in the case of negative press on vitamin E and antioxidants). These reports need to be balanced against the huge and ever-growing scientific literature that refutes the bias reports and documents the extremely beneficial effects of natural products used in health care.

  • Additionally, there are many thousands of published research papers on natural ingredients, and the vast majority of these point to beneficial effects.

  • To positively shape the EU Directives and Codex guidelines, which are set to affect your own access to food supplements and related products, we urgently need your help to build support, to lobby, to put pressure on the politicians, and to win the court case, now referred to European Court of Justice.

    • Your support DOES and WILL make a difference!

Are you among the 40-60% of consumers who regularly take nutritional supplements?

If you take mainly the types of vitamin and mineral supplements you find in supermarkets or pharmacies, you almost certainly have little to worry about in relation either to the EU Food Supplements Directive, the rash of other directives that are set to follow out of Brussels, and Codex.

However, if you take the more innovative products you get from specialist health stores, complementary practitioners or some direct mail companies, you should be extremely concerned.

These are the sorts of products from which millions claim to have experienced profound benefits. These products are at serious risk of being banned!

Are you among the majority of people in tropical and subtropical countries who use natural, traditional systems of health care, based largely on the use of plant products (herbs)?

If so, Codex might ultimately have a large bearing on your ability to access plant products that you, and generations before you, have been using. Placing particular herbs and minerals under the scrutiny of the proposed, flawed Codex risk assessment system does not bode well; some of the metals used in Ayurveda (Indian traditional health culture) have been recently attacked by western scientists who seem to not understand the context in which these products are used.

The EU Directives - as well as Codex Guidelines or future Standards - will potentially seriously reduce or eliminate availability of these most effective innovative or traditional products in a matter of a few years unless we act now!

The EU Food Supplements Directive could effectively ban around 300 of the nearly 420 vitamin and mineral forms that are presently on the market in Europe if unchallenged or unclarified in the European courts as of 1 August 2005.

These 300 ingredients can be found in around 5000 products on the UK market alone!

The Food Supplements Directive only allows use of 15 minerals in food supplements, despite increasing evidence that our bodies need over 60 minerals for optimum health! No forms of boron, vanadium or silicon, nor any plant-derived, chelated or ionic mineral forms, are on the list of permitted vitamins and mineral forms.

Making matters worse, the allowed forms of vitamins are often the synthetic, inorganic forms, not the natural, food forms, despite good scientific evidence to show that the natural food forms such as the mixed tocopherols / tocotrienols (Vitamin E) and mixed carotenoids (Vitamin A) are more bioavailable and effective than their synthetic equivalents.

If you believe that nutrition and supplementation of the diet is of critical importance to healthcare, now and in the future, we urge you to let as many people as possible know firstly about the EU Directives and Codex and their potential impact on leading-edge supplements, and secondly, about the WINHS and what this worldwide organization is doing to help rectify the situation.

WHAT YOU CAN AND SHOULD DO:
If you live in Europe, please consider writing to your government representatives, highlighting your concerns about all the EU Directives, in particular how they impact negatively on innovation in the food supplements and herbal products industries.

Have a good look at the WINHS website and see which issues you consider most important - and let your representatives in government know your concerns - in writing!

If you are an American citizen, find your Congressman and Senator by clicking here: http://www.house.gov/writerep/ and http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

If you are a UK citizen, find your MEP by clicking here: http://www.europarl.org.uk/uk_meps/MembersMain.htm

If you are an Irish citizen, find your MEP by clicking here: http://www.europarl.ie/meps/index.html

If are a citizen from elsewhere in Europe, find your MEP by clicking here: http://wwwdb.europarl.eu.int/ep5/owa/p_meps2.repartition?ilg=EN&iorig=home

WINHS is supporting a second legal challenge; spearheaded by the ANH and this time it is directed at the EU Pharmaceuticals Directive and includes the Traditional Medicinal Products Directive. This is the Directive that currently has the power to consider any food product a drug (medicinal product), which while deeply irrational, provides the 'loaded gun' for regulators to call any natural health product a drug. And if you don't think this is possible, it has already happened with glucosamine in Sweden and Denmark.

Without funds, we will be unable to support the legal challenge successfully

Please help the WINHS and support the campaign and legal challenges by taking the following steps immediately:

  1. Make your own personal contribution to the 'financial fuel' required NOW for the INSTITUTE to move rapidly forward. Your contribution is vital, however little you are able to give. Please consider donating monthly of you are able. Contribute to the INSTITUTE by secure credit/debit card donation on our website, by direct bank transfer (details available by phone or email request info@winhs.org, become a Member of the World Institute of Natural Health Sciences by sending us your contact information and your details. This registered base of supporters is critical to the success of our lobbying work in the European Parliament and other campaign activities. You will then also receive regular mailshots about the campaign progress.

  2. If you wish to make a donation by cheque please make your cheque (Pound Sterling, Euro and US dollar checks accepted) payable to the World Institute of Natural Health Sciences and send it to our registered office at WINHS, Leicester House, 11417 Mt. Gleason Avenue, Los Angeles, CA USA 91042.

  3. Please visit our website regularly and find out more about the issue and the problems that will result if the Food Supplements Directive, other EU Directives and Codex Guidelines are fully implemented.

  4. As a manufacturer, supplier, retailer, complementary health practitioner or clinic, please request our companies' or practitioners' e-packs by emailing info@winhs.org and find out what you can do to join the rapidly growing support base.

  5. Ask as many others as you know (throughout Europe and elsewhere) who may be similarly concerned about the legislation to visit our website and repeat steps 1 - 5. Help us now.

$941,399 US (£500,000 / 731,070 EUR) is currently needed to cover the costs of campaign actions to successfully counter key anti-alternative and natural health care initiatives in 2007/08.

  1. Make certain your government representatives know and understand your position on the EU Directives and additional attacks on your right to access and choice worldwide through Codex Alimentarius.

  2. Please donate whatever you can. NOW. (EUR, £s or $).

Whatever you can send; 10.00, 20.00, 50.0.00, 100.00 or more.

With your financial support, the World Institute of Natural Health Sciences has a real chance to protect your right to use leading-edge food supplements and other natural health products.

Now is the chance to protect your right to provide natural health choices. This is a critical time for the future of natural health care.

What are these funds needed for?

  1. Professional fees to assist the European Court challenges and the support necessary to develop further legal challenges to medicinal law in the EU.

  2. Support of groundbreaking technical, scientific and legal work on EU threats and consultations with regulators Professional public affairs lobbying in Brussels.

  3. An expanded public and media awareness campaign to garner additional support.

  4. Successful implementation of a worldwide celebrity endorsement campaign in the media, promotions and documentaries for television.

  5. The translation of scientific breakthroughs in innovative and alternative health into digestible layman's terms to increase accessibility and understanding of scientific findings, technical reports and legislation information concerning natural health, medical practices, drugs and drug manufacturing, food supplements, herbs, and innovative and alternative health care developments.

  6. The acquisition and utilization of professional and volunteer researchers to document local, regional, national and international legislation concerning natural health, medical practices, drugs and drug manufacturing, food supplements, herbs, and innovative and alternative health care developments.

  7. The research, documentation and promotion of vested interests, their activities and funding used to influence legislators and legislation for corporate and personal gain.

To make a donation:

You can support the World Institute of Natural Health Sciences' campaigns and programs in a number of safe and secure ways.

  1. We suggest that you use our secure web payment system, and note that you are not required nor obligated to join or become a member – this is totally optional.

    2. If you prefer, rather than making a donation through our secure web payment system you can make a donation direct to the World Institute of Natural Sciences.

  2. By standing order: Please download the standing order mandate, complete the form and send it directly to your bank. Once this is done, please send an email to info@winhs.org with the amount and frequency or telephone 1.818.951.7933.

  3. By check: Checks can be sent direct to our registered office and should be made payable to the 'World Institute of Natural Health Sciences' and sent to:

    4. For North & South America - send to:
    The World Institute of Natural Health Sciences
    Leicester House
    11417 Mt. Gleason Avenue
    Los Angeles, CA USA 91042

    For Europe - send to:
    The World Institute of Natural Health Sciences
    Suite 7, Bulrushes Farm
    Coombe Hill Road
    East Grinstead
    West Sussex, UK

  4. By Inter-Bank Transaction / Bank wire: You may wish to make a donation by bank transaction using. Please email info@winhs.org for more details or telephone 1.818.951.7933.

Thank you for supporting the World Institute of Natural Health Sciences and your right to natural healthcare!

One Final Note.
Please join the rapidly growing support base of practitioners who are working across the US, Europe and all over the world with the WINHS to protect innovation and the availability of leading-edge supplements. Join us now!

Please e-mail us at info@winhs.org, should you require any further information. Or telephone 1.818.951.7933 (US) and +44 (0) 7913 188 756.

Your future is at risk if you do not act now!