Danish legislation covering food supplements is notorious for being harsh and restrictive.  Yet, as harsh and restrictive as Danish food-supplement legislation has been, at least it was limited to Denmark.  That is now changing in a dramatic way as Europe adopts a virtually continent-wide set of rules and regulations governing food supplements that is extremely harsh and anti-health freedom.

Jumping the Gun in Denmark

It was in 1999 that Danish supplement users first heard of the Food Supplement Directive (FSD), which was introduced in the European Union (EU) with the intended goal of removing barriers to European trade and creating "free movement" of dietary supplements within Europe by "harmonizing" the various national rules, or so European supplement companies and consumers were told.  Yet, soon enough, European supplement users learned that the FSD’s new positive list would exclude up to 300 safe vitamin and mineral substances that had been in many instances safely used for decades.  Also, the FSD proposed to establish new (and very low) "maximum limits" for the few, remaining vitamins and minerals.  These unnecessarily harsh rules are to come into effect in half a year’s time.

But not content to wait until August for the FSD to take effect, the anti-supplement Danish Food Administration (DFA) recently jumped the gun by issuing an even stricter regulation than the forthcoming FSD, as the DFA has anticipated the EU Pharmaceutical Directive (PD), which, with its new medicinal definition, would soon place all substances or combination of substances with any physiological effect under medicinal law.  This directive is probably the most dangerous joker in the whole deck of cards.

Everything Effective Is a Medicine

As the trump card, then, the PD has the power to remove any nutrient whatsoever from the dietary-supplement category and place it into the pharmaceutical domain, due to its cleverly formulated definition of what constitutes a medicine.  Specifically, by its definition, a drug is: “any substance or combination of substances presented as having properties for treating or preventing disease in human beings; or any substance or combination of substances which may be used in or administered to human beings with a view to making a medical diagnosis or to restoring, correcting or modifying physiological functions.”

Since supplements are not only used to correct deficiencies but also to restore, correct, or modify physiological functions, all supplements could be classified as drugs under this definition if even the least, little word were mentioned about their genuine benefits.  Unfortunately, in implementing the FSD and the PD, the DFA has already begun realizing the worst fears of European health-freedom advocates by applying this definition, thereby effectively erasing the concept of “dietary supplements.”  Without a doubt, this interpretation is a major legal justification for getting rid of most of the widely used supplements, including herbs, from health-food stores.

Documentation is Expensive And Unnecessary

Of course, on the surface it may sound reasonable that the European authorities are demanding that dietary-supplement claims be documented.  However, many Danish food-supplement producers were fooled by the DFA sending them a registration form asking them, for example, about “the purpose of the product.”  Because no company would produce a supplement without a purpose, they readily answered the DFA and provided a purpose for each product.  Now, this purpose will have to be documented if the company wants to tell its customers about the purposes and effects of their products.  However, the Catch-22 is that as soon as the documentation is provided, the supplement must then be registered as a (natural) medicine rather than as a food supplement.

Not only will a supplement producer, to keep their supplement on the market, have to publicly declare the products’ ingredients and their exact quantities, which exposes them to sharp tactics by their competitors, but also the nutrient value has to be stated, and how do you state the nutrient value of vitamins and minerals in natural herbs?

If the product is to stay classified as a “supplement,” then it cannot say anything about its effect but can only declare the product name, its ingredients and their amounts, and the company name.  How safe is that?

Should the producer finally want to register their supplement as a natural medicine, this procedure will not only be overly burdensome, complicated, and lengthy (expected to take 1-2 years), but the costly registration procedure may mean the demise of many supplement products in Danish health-food stores because the small- and medium-sized supplement companies will not be able to afford such costs.  If, on the other hand, these companies can afford to register their products, then they will of course have to sell their products at a much higher price.  Either way, the consumers lose, no matter what.

So much for the FSD’s stated goal of “free trade,” “free movement,” and “fair competition.”  The result will be that many fine and safe supplement products will disappear from the market, and the ones surviving the executioner’s axe will be quite costly.

Yet, the problem is even more involved than it already seems, as the DFA in its new supplement health-claims rules state:  "[It is] forbidden by labelling, advertising, etc. to indicate, that foods are recommended by doctors, or that intake of the product in question may prevent, soothe or have a beneficial effect on disease or symptoms of disease. The prohibition against these claims also covers statements which can be documented."

Translated into human language, this means that quite paternalistically we are not going to be allowed to receive any useful knowledge about the supplement products we buy and thus we will also not learn what food supplements can benefit us.  The interpretation is interesting because the intention of the health-claims legislation originally was (said) to counter false-and-deceptive advertising and definitely not to prohibit citizens and skilled health personnel from being informed!  Now, suddenly, the issue is about our right to receive information, about freedom of speech, and certainly about our right to take responsibility for our own lives.

The health-claims legislation, supposedly originally intended to stop deceitful advertising, is now preventing skilled personnel and consumers from receiving important and truthful information about the beneficial effects of supplements, even when scientifically documented!  The DFA is already aggressively harassing supplement sales by fining and closing down those health websites that inform readers about the beneficial effects of supplements.

The ban on numerous natural nutrient sources and the imposition of new, ridiculously-low maximum limits in accordance with the FSD and the extra prohibition on information will affect all practitioners using supplements and herbs in therapeutic potencies, and could eradicate nutritional and phyto-therapy.  We are thus poised to pay extra money for nutritionally fortified food products and will only be able to buy synthetic, low-dose supplements and herbal preparations of questionable benefit manufactured by “the sickness industry,” all in the name of “safety.”

MayDay Places The Politicians On The Hotseat

The Danish civil health rights organization MayDay, the National Natural Health Council (LNS), and many other health pioneers of Denmark find it completely unacceptable that any supposedly modern, information-rich society would not allow its own citizens to manage and be responsible for their own health, both by obtaining the necessary health information and by then passing that knowledge on to others – in this particular case, knowledge about how to prevent disease and how to get better.

We are now protesting against this paternal “Nanny State” tyranny, as we refuse to let the government suppress our rights to be informed and to use that information to maintain our health.  Last October, we gathered 30,000 written protests against such suppression and submitted them to the appropriate government officials.  For Denmark, that is a large number of protests when you consider that they were all collected by hand and in only three weeks.  Now, another written protest against “State censorship” of health information is being circulated for signatures and then for submission to the government.  At the same time, several court cases against the State’s suppression of free speech have been filed and are making their way through the court system to a hearing on the merits.

Then, one week before the Danish Government Election on February 8, 2005, MayDay and LNS set up an interactive website (www.valget-er-dit.dk, which translated means “the choice/election is yours”) in order to force the politicians running for office to clearly and unequivocally state their positions on these critical issues, which stated positions would then be posted on our well-advertised website for the voters to see.  This idea was adapted from the “Candidates’ List” idea used by Dr. Sean Gabb of the UK-based Libertarian Alliance when it conducted a similar campaign several years ago to force British politicians to stand still long enough to fix their normally wishy-washy positions on British involvement within the European Union.

In our case, though, we asked Danish food and health politicians the following questions: (1) If they even knew about the problem of suppression of health-freedom; (2) If they were against citizens receiving information about the effects of food supplements; and (3) If they could accept a situation where supplement users (comprising half of the population) could not receive information about nor buy the safe dietary-supplement products they want.  We also asked the politicians whether, if they are (re)elected, they would: (4) Support the right of the citizens to control their own health by making it possible for them to buy the food supplements they want: and (5) Support freedom of speech and oppose censorship by backing the voters’ right to be informed about the health effects of those dietary supplements that we wish to buy.

To get responses from the politicians we had to wage an intensive telephone, e-mail, and fax campaign, peppering them with contact until they responded.  But it paid off since we received responses from all of the political parties (even the Conservative Party, which is one of the main parties most responsible for the suppression of health freedom in Denmark).  We have found this kind of interactive website to be a very important tool in forcing the politicians to both think about health-freedom issues and then to adopt or align their views with a pro-health-freedom position.  Also, it is good to be able to see from the politicians’ answers what it is exactly that they never understood about the problem, so that we could now meet with them and explain to them the seriousness of the matter.

The Future

Unfortunately, freedom of choice for the many people seeking to maintain and restore their health and life quality is greatly threatened both in Denmark specifically and in Europe generally right now.  Our health is at stake unless we ensure our personal choice and freedom of speech in health matters by taking action to thwart the anti-health-freedom rules, regulations, and laws that are now being imposed, or attempting to be imposed, upon us.

In Europe, the future would look very bleak indeed if the UK-based Alliance for Natural Health (ANH) had not launched its legal challenge against the FSD on behalf of millions of European supplement users.   Now before the European Court of Justice (ECJ), the ANH has challenged the FSD positive list and restricted potencies and seeks to overturn the FSD’s ban on innovative vitamin-and-mineral substances.  Because this legal challenge is so incredibly expensive, support from other organizations, individuals, and the industry has been critical to sustaining the challenge.  MayDay, the National Health Federation, and many other health-freedom organizations have therefore united to support this important legal case.  It is with great anticipation that supplement users across Europe and the World now await the ECJ’s decision in June 2005.  We hope for justice to prevail.