Suspend and Review ...the Natural Health Regulations

Protect your access to Natural Health Products in Canada.

Learn how Health Canada is using the Natural Health Product Regulations to eliminate dietary supplements from the market and what you can do about it!

Click HERE to download your letter.
 
 

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A Question of Sovereignty 

Health Canada is in the process of eliminating the largest sector of Natural Health Products (NHPs) - those with multiple ingredients. This will dramatically reduce Canadians' ability to care for themselves and increase dependence on pharmaceuticals. This will also mean the end of specialty health food stores as we know it.

 Since 2004, the NHP Regulations have reduced the number of NHPs that Canadians can purchase domestically from over 70,000 to less than 40,000. Of these, approximately 15,000 have been licensed, most being single ingredient products.

Tens of thousands of applications for multiple ingredient NHP combinations have sat unprocessed for years, because, according to regulation guidelines, they cannot be approved.

Health Canada fully admits that the safety of these products is not in question. (Of about 10,000 NHP license applications that they have denied, only three have been denied because of safety concerns.) They are not even saying that such products are ineffective, given their long-standing use and popularity. They are simply demanding proof in the form of completely unaffordable human clinical trials, knowing that such proof will not be forthcoming.

Health Canada’s requirement for these trials will eliminate an additional 20 to 25,000 products, one license refusal at a time, when in excess of 30,000 have already been eliminated. This would represent approximately 75% of the market since the Regulations started in 2004!

The record shows that this was not what was intended by Parliament or the Standing Committee on Health as the Regulations were being formed.The repeatedly stated intention of Parliament, representing the Canadian Public, was to clearly distinguish NHPs from pharmaceutical drugs and to recognize their high levels of safety.

But, Health Canada followed their own agenda, assigning NHPs a definition virtually identical to that of pharmaceutical drugs, and has used this definition to eliminate the NHPs we've lost.

Given the fact that Health Canada went directly against Parliament's "on the record" intentions as the Regulations were being formed, their actions are in contempt of Parliament.

Health Canada has become a rogue bureaucracy... a force unto themselves that functions outside of the law. If we, as Canadians, continue to allow them to pursue their own agendas, driven by corporate and pharmaceutical interests, we are headed for crisis.

The people of Canada have to take a stand and use their democratic mechanism while they still have it. There is nothing less than the ability to care for ourselves at stake.

These Regulations need to be sent back to the Standing Committee on Health to ensure that what was intended by Parliament is what is happening.  

What do we do? Suspend and Review. 

GET ACTIVE... click here.

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Sample of Products at Risk

All NPN statistics are taken from Health Canada’s Licensed Natural Health Product Database as of December 17, 2009.

All “Total Available Products” statistics are taken from the manufacturers’ product lists and are values with a 0.5% margin of error. All percentages have been rounded to the nearest whole number.

 Manufacturers that did not even appear on the database (meaning they have yet to receive a single NPN) include: Purica, North American Herb and Spice, Premier Labs, Pure Body Institute, Raintree Nutrition, Sequel and many, many more.

What do we do? Suspend and Review. 

GET ACTIVE... click here.

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Sample of Products No Longer Available

from the United States

Solaray, Kal and all other products produced by Nutraceutical Inc. (Over 5000 products)

HerbPharm - producer of hundreds of herbal tinctures.

Gaia Herbals - producer of hundreds of herbal tinctures.

Allergy Research Products - over 650 assorted high quality NHPs.

Country Life - producer of hundreds of high quality natural products in capsules and tablet form.

Source Naturals - over 2300 products in two lines, representing a full range of nutraceuticals.

Vitamin Research Products - over 400 well researched NHPs.

Jarrow - over 600 well researched products.

Herbasway - producers of green tea products

Sweet Wheat - high quality wheat grass products

Zand Herbals - hundreds of herbal products no longer available.

Life Extension - hundreds of extremely well researched NHPs no longer available.

Dr.Christopher's Original Formulas - over 200 herbal formulas no longer available

Vaxa - hundreds of herbal products no longer available.

Natrol - producers of over 1000 products no longer available in Canada.

 and the list is virtually endless as the United States market represented hundreds of thousands of products no longer available to the Canadian public... all due to the inappropriate nature of the Natural Health Product Regulations.

What do we do? Suspend and Review. 

GET ACTIVE... click here.

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