- A newly established German institution, the Federal Institute
for Risk Assessment (BfR), released yesterday a 341-page report [1] on
risk assessment of nutrients used in food supplements. The report makes
recommendations for maximum levels that are well below those that are commonly
present in vitamin and mineral supplements sold in health stores in the
UK, Ireland, Sweden, other EU countries, the USA and elsewhere. Many people
might, understandably, assume, as a result of this report, that commonly
availablefood supplements are unsafe.
-
- The Alliance for Natural Health (ANH), a pan-European
body of interests in the natural healthcare field, strongly contests the
science used by the German institute. Good science and good law underpin
all of the ANH's work, and the scientific reports produced by the ANH are
endorsed by many of the world's leading doctors and scientists working
in the field of nutritional medicine.
-
- The report, for example, recommends a maximum level of
vitamin C of 225 mg in food supplements, when many health stores sell
1000 mg tablets, and significant numbers of people consume 2000 mg or more
per day. Maximum recommended dosages for vitamin B6 have been set at 5.4
mg, against 25 mg or more commonly found in UK and USsupplements, while
vitamin B12 has been set at an astonishing 9 mcg, compared with over 300
mcg in many supplements.
-
- Many European countries have for years considered multiples
of Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs) for nutrients as a means of assessing
safety, but this approach has been found to be scientifically unjustifiable
as RDAs are minimum levels that guard against the development of deficiency
diseases that are uncommon in modern, western societies, such as scurvy,
beri-beri, pellagra and rickets. Scientific risk assessment is the recently
acclaimed approach that will replace RDAs for evaluation of safety, having
been endorsed both by the European Union in its Food Supplements Directive,
set to come into force in August this year, and the United Nation's Codex
Alimentarius, which develops global guidelines for food safety.
-
- Dr Robert Verkerk, executive director of the ANH says:
-
- "The maximum levels for vitamins and minerals proposed
by BfR are in many cases far lower than those required for optimum health.
They have used what is purportedly a scientific method, to produce data
that is meaningless for the majority of the population.
-
- "The problem is that the poor science used in this
report will be viewed seriously by EFSA - the European Food Safety Authority
- that is developing maximum levels for use in food supplements across
in Europe, and Codex Alimentarius, which is setting global guidelines on
vitamins and minerals. In the worse case scenario, the science could be
adopted by EFSA lock stock and barrel and that would be catastrophic for
the leading edge of the natural products industry in Europe, as well as
US innovative suppliers, practitioners and consumers of these products."
-
- In December 2004, the ANH submitted a ground-breaking
critique [2] of risk assessment methods to the FAO/WHO of the United Nations
in response to a consultation on the subject. The ANH report demonstrated
the flawed nature of existing scientific risk assessment methods used by
the EU's Scientific Committee on Food, in turn used as the baseline for
upper levels by BfR. BfR have gone on, as proposed in the EU's Food Supplements
Directive, to reduce further the already unnecessarily low 'upper safe
levels' by taking into account dietary intakes and susceptible population
groups, and ended up with meaningless, unreasonably low maximum recommended
levels for food supplements.
-
- The ANH's landmark case against the EU's proposed ban
on 75% of vitamin and mineral forms currently on the UK market is due to
be heard in the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg on 25 January.
-
- [1] Download BfR report from:
- http://www.bfr.bund.de/cm/238/verwendung_von_vitaminen_in_lebensmitteln_bfr_wi
- ssenschaft_3_2004.pdf.
-
- [2] Download ANH consultation response to FAO/WHO
from:
- http://www.alliance-natural-health.org/_docs/ANHwebsiteDoc_121.pdf.
-
- For further information:
- Alliance for Natural Health
- www.alliance-natural-health.org
-
- Dr Robert Verkerk - Executive Director
-
- Tel: 01252 371 275
- robv@alliance-natural-health.org
|