Everyone who cares about their good health should read this newsletter, as well as Part II which we will be sending out in about a week.

Perhaps you think that the EU doesn’t affect your life, and rights. And perhaps you don’t think it matters if 75% of our laws are drafted by and then implemented by entirely unelected officials, who are not accountable to single person on the planet

That’s fine. But if you feel that having the right to take the health supplements of your choice, the right to be provided information on them, the freedom to take responsibility for, and make decisions for yourself about your health are important liberties, or that companies should have the freedom to publish legitimate opinion, provide traditional usage descriptions, and well documented information, then you would be highly mistaken not to be informed about some of the terrible EU laws that oppose these fundamental rights. The following directives affect us all, whether we like it or not.

• The Food Supplements Directive (2002/46/EC). This directive requires all legally available nutrients to be on a rather arbitrary positive list in order to be allowed to be sold and consumed. As far as we could see, it seemed to depend primarily on whether that form of nutrient happened to be available in Germany at the time. In 2009 it was estimated that around 300 nutrients were banned by this irksome directive, though the real figure would be much higher given the fact that it completely blocked new forms of vitamins and minerals from coming onto the market. Examples include many perfectly safe and effective forms of magnesium, selenium and chromium. Although the situation is bad, this is set to become far worse if the Maximum Permitted Dosage levels for vitamins and minerals get set at useless Mickey mouse levels, which is a serious possibility at the next stage of implementation. Several organisations, including an entity called “Health Europe”, which is in reality an organisation lobbying on behalf of the bunch of self-interested pharmaceutical companies who have no interest whatsoever in public health, who actually fund this “organisation”,  are lobbying for maximum levels to be set at EU RDA levels, which will be useless for any kind of therapeutic usage – as well as a direct assault on your freedom of choice. It has been claimed that this market was completely unregulated before this directive (and the next one I am going to talk about) came in. But this is nonsense. Vitamins, minerals and herbs were regulated by the Drugs Act 1968, and personally I don’t remember noticing too many dead bodies lying about in the streets because someone or other took a high dosage Vitamin C tablet prior to 2009. Yes, it was light touch regulation, reflecting how safe most vitamins, minerals, herbs and other natural products usually were – but it was never unregulated. This is a total myth.

• The Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products Directive (2004/24/EC) – in essence this is a spiteful and vindictive directive designed to protect the vested interests that successfully campaigned for it, which has created a huge black market where none previously existed. This directive has led to a tripling of the cost of many herbs, and their pharmaceuticalisation. Many have been banned outright. Many more have been chemicalised and pharmaceuticalised until they bare almost no resemblance to the 2000 year old traditions of herbal medicines, and contain all sorts of artificial chemicals which are at best questionable, and in some cases dangerous. We tried very hard to object to this horrible directive, but without success. You can read more about it here including the latest news. Before this directive came in, some clearly dangerous herbs were banned under the Drugs Act 1968 (and some others banned we think unfairly) along with psychoactive drugs like marijuana (which itself is a very controversial ban). But on the whole consumers were relatively free to buy what they wanted, and sellers relatively free to provide products. But with the new directive, the EU seems determined to stop you from actually making decisions for your yourself, about your body. Perhaps they fear that you might make the decisions that don’t serve their vested interests – just as some people genuinely believe we should never have a democratic vote on our membership of the EU (formed as a result of the 1991 Maastrict Treaty, when the EEC became the EU, which nobody was consulted on either), lest you vote the wrong way.

• The EU Labeling Directives (2003 and updated in 2014) which if strictly enforced could make more or less all non EU imports illegal to sell, for reasons as petty as the font size on the label not complying the required size, the ingredients not being listed in the required order, or wording such as “expiry date” instead of “best before” on the label. Can the rules really get any more petty and frivolous than this? Presumably this rule is there because they think you are too thick to know what the words “expiry date” rather than “best before” mean. Mercifully, the UK authorities don’t seen to be enforcing this with an iron fist, and have avoided harassing companies over trivial nonsense so far, but who knows what’s around the corner? Certainly these regulations enable the powers that be to put companies out of business overnight – through the harsh enforcement of EU directives. And regardless of who it is claimed to help, who benefits from this in reality? The consumer? Or big pharma?

• The Nutrition and Health Claims Regulation (No 1924/2006) – This is the nastiest and cruellest of the lot. This is the directive which has made it illegal to say anything meaningful about virtually everything – leading to the total ban on the claims that water hydrates the body, or that prunes help with constipation – and tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers money spent on arriving at these preposterous conclusions. With some of the products we provide, this has led to an up to 90% drop in sales.This is the directive which caused products such as Optibac Probiotics For Bowel Calm (a nice and clear product name) to have to be renamed “Saccromyces Boulardii” (which is completely meaningless or ordinaryt people). Similarly Optibac Probiotics For A Flat Stomach to had to be renamed “One week flat”. That’s because even the name of the product was deemed an illegal health claim. If you are finding it hard to find useful information on the supplements you are interested in, or which supplements might help you, or why you end up with no choice but to view third party, non EU based web sites to obtain information, blame this directive. Blame the EU. The idea, perhaps noble of protecting the consumer, has ended with a Draconian directive which makes publishing legitimate opinion into a crime, and bans companies even telling you what scientific research has found – unless the European Food Standards agency gives you permission to do so, and of course only after they have spent up to a million Euros submitting a single health claim. This is impossible for small to medium sized companies like the Finchley Clinic – the businesses all the mainstream political parties agree are the life-blood of the economy, yet where it comes to protecting them from petty EU regulations when they are in power, at best do nothing, and at worse encourage it! Result: the industry is becoming more and more disincentivised to even try to provide worthwhile, helpful information. So when you find that the information available on a nutrient is that it “contributes to normal energy-yielding metabolism”, instead of something that is actually useful for you to know i.e.. what it may help with…it’s not the industry who are to blame – it’s the unelected EU commissioners, on their rather comfortable over £300,000 per year (plus expenses) salaries.

• The Human Medicinal Products Directive (Directive 2001/83/EC). This directive can make any food, food supplement or cosmetic a drug at a regulator’s discretion – anything which has “a physiological effect”, or is claimed to have. This of course makes anything, theoretically even water into a medicine! After all, if you tried to avoid water for more than two or three days, you’d soon learn whether or not it has a physiological effect, even if as according to the EU geniuses, it does not hydrate the body!

Words would be inadequate to describe how heartbreaking it is for us to be banned from providing many safe, effective natural health products and to tell you what they actually do even when we can sell them. And even more heart breaking for your health to be compromised as a result. Even more so in view of the estimated 40,000 deaths per year conservatively estimated by University College, London to occur in the UK as a result of CORRECTLY prescribed medical drugs (the numbers are even higher when the death rate for badly prescribed drugs is added to this).

(Source: Daily Telegraph December 19 1999. Similar article Daily Telegraph 30 Nov 2008).

However there is an alternative to having to comply with EU regulations which pose a threat to your health, your freedom of choice, and access to information. The alternative is to leave the EU, and be done with it. In the good old days, was there anything that bad about having our laws made by people who we actually elected, and can throw out if they do a lousy job? Call me old fashioned, but I rather like our laws to be made by democratically elected British politicians rather than unelected bureaucrats, who for all we know, have never even stepped on British soil, and have no reason to be especially concerned with what is best for the UK.

In the forthcoming general election, as the company director, me and most of our staff’s voting choices will be determined by what has been been done over the last 10 years to the industry we love and cherish as our direct result of our EU membership, and the resultant directives. These have all been rubber stamped without so much as whimper of protest by any government, whether from the left or right. (In fairness, they didn’t have much choice, as it is against EU law, not to pass and implement EU law – and it OVERIDES our own laws, whether we like it or not). If your health, not to mention your freedom of choice is important to you, please consider the points raised in this newsletter in who you choose to vote for, and pass this newsletter on to anyone else you think would want to know about what is going in the natural health sector.

In my next newsletter, I will tell you about the breathtaking damage being done to the NHS as a result of yet more inept and counter-productive EU regulations. If you thought that the EU was only harassing the natural health industry, you’d be wrong. In my naivity, this is what I used to think too, until I did some research. The damage being done to public health and the conventional treatment you get on the NHS as a result of yet more EU nonsense which simply doesn’t work – The EU Clinical Trials Directive, The Working Time Directive, Freedom of Movement Directive and other EU drivel is equally remarkable as the damage being done to the natural health industry. Look out for The EU and The Damage to Your Health and Freedom Part II – coming to a computer near you soon!

Mark G. Lester – Company Director – The Finchley Clinic Ltd – www.thefinchleyclinic.com