News

5th March 2002

John Bowis MEP speaks in Wimbledon about threat to choice of vitamin supplements

John Bowis – Conservative Member of the European Parliament for Wimbledon & the London region – was at Marryat Road, in the Village Ward of Wimbledon on Saturday 2nd March speaking to the local Conservative branch about EU proposals that threaten to restrict the choice of vitamin supplements for consumers in Wimbledon. John Bowis branded the proposals as harmonisation, purely for the sake of harmonisation.

Speaking from the Village Ward in Wimbledon John Bowis said, “Europe is at its best, when it shares experience and ideas, as it is currently doing on public services, such as health and transport. It is at its worst, when it interferes in long established and perfectly safe areas of consumers choice. That is what they are doing on food supplements, egged on by the British Labour Government. Wimbledon residents should decide what vitamin supplements they want to buy, not some bureaucrat in Brussels. It is not necessary and brings no benefits to consumers whatsoever. It is harmonisation for the sake of harmonisation. ”

John Bowis continued, “If this measure goes through, some 300 items, currently legally and safely on sale in our local shops, will be taken off the market. No one has died from taking food supplements. There is no record of any major health risk. We have lived for over 50 years with a system that lets us buy what we want or our advisers suggest, subject only to an upper safe limit. That is the case I have been putting and shall continue to put in the European Parliament.”

“This proposal is bad for consumer choice, damaging to a lot of small firms and damaging to the reputation of both the Commission and the British Government, who are prepared to abandon British consumers and force this measure through.”

Notes: Germany & France have different systems to the UK’s, Ireland’s & Holland’s. In 1943 American GIs fighting in Europe were given a recommended minimum daily allowance of vitamins to prevent scurvy and beri beri. That minimum level has come to be the German & French maximum above which products are deemed to be pharmaceuticals.