European court upholds food supplement restrictions

The European Union’s high court today upheld proposed restrictions on the sale of food supplements, despite objections from trade organisations that claimed the rules would ban popular vitamin pills.

The European Court of Justice said the EU law was ”appropriate for securing the free movement of food supplements and ensuring the protection of human health.”

The law setting up a “positive list” of food supplements approved for sale across the 25-nation EU is due to come into force on August 1. Food supplements excluded from the list will be prohibited.

Trade groups, led by the Alliance for Natural Health, had lobbied hard to overturn the legislation, claiming it would ban thousands of vitamin and mineral supplements.

However, the European Consumer’s Organisation welcomed the court ruling.

“We are pleased that the court rejected the misguided and unfounded attack by vested interests on the validity of the directive,” said Jim Murray, director of the organisation which represents 40 consumer groups in 28 European nations.

However, the European Commission, which drafted the law, said products submitted for approval before today would be allowed to stay on the market until at least 2009, unless the European Food Safety Authority rules them unsafe.

“It is not our aim to take products off the shelves,” said Philip Tod, EU spokesman for health and consumer protection. “It is our aim to make sure these products are safe.”

EU governments and the European Parliament approved the directive in 2002. The EU said the rules were needed for consumer protection and to provide common rules that would allow companies to sell supplements across the EU.

“This is a directive designed to open the internal market and boost growth while ensuring a high level of protection of public health,” said EU Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou.

Under the rules, only food supplement ingredients approved by the European Food Safety Authority will be authorised for sale.

The campaign to overturn the regulation has been particularly vocal in Britain, where the Alliance for Natural Health – a Europe-wide association of manufacturers, distributors and consumers – joined other groups in mounting a legal challenge.

Britain’s High Court referred the case to the European Court of Justice. Campaigners were encouraged in April when the court’s advocate general said the rules were disproportionate and violated some basic legal principles.

However the full court said “certain restrictions can be justified by the protection of public health.” Its statement added that the judges “considered the measures in question to be necessary and appropriate for the purpose of achieving that objective.”

The court did insist that procedures for rejecting a product from the approved list must be “consistent with the principles of sound administration and legal certainty.”

It said a product should be refused only “on the basis of a full risk assessment, established on the basis of the most reliable scientific data.”