News

21st February 2002

Vitamins: EU votes to restrict consumer choice

John Bowis MEP, Conservative Health & Consumer Affairs spokesman in the European Parliament, has slated a vote in the European Parliament that will restrict consumer choice in the quantity of vitamin supplements that they choose to buy.

Speaking from Brussels John Bowis said: "The vote in the European Parliament is bad for consumer choice, damaging to the free market and further alienates the people of Europe, from the institutions that are meant to work in their interests.

"British consumers should have the right to choose what quantity of vitamin supplements they want to buy. There is not a single recorded case of a death caused by an overdose of vitamin supplements. This directive is not about consumer safety, but about the EU interfering in peoples’ lives.

"Conservatives want food supplements to be regulated by setting an upper safety limit, but leaving consumers and their advisers to decide what level below that to take.

"If this proposal goes ahead some 300 supplements currently legally on sale in the United Kingdom will be banned, unless they can obtain authorisation for inclusion in the positive list.

"Not one of these has been shown to be dangerous; many of them are produced by small and medium sized firms which would find it difficult to afford the new authorisation process; and if they are banned then many hundreds of thousands of people will cease to have access to the supplement of their choice.

"The Council of Ministers had suggested that this authorisation could be achieved in 18 months. This is absurd and I am glad that at least the Parliament has agreed to try to change this to 36 months."