EU May Put Limits on High-Dose Vitamins

EU May Put Limits on High-Dose Vitamins

LONDON--According to the Sept. 25 edition of The Times (www.thetimes.co.uk), high-dose vitamins may soon be outlawed for sale if an amendment proposed to the European Union(EU) passes. EU's main concern is that many European countries ban any product containing vitamin levels above the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) as a drug, according to The Times. In an attempt to standardize the vitamin market for all countries in theEU, the organization may need to enforce a blanket ban on all high-dose vitamins. If this happens, products may contain, at most, up to five times the RDA.

Two countries that support high-dose vitamins are the United Kingdom (UK) and The Netherlands, both of which receive hundreds of thousands of requests from people in other countries requesting high-dose vitamins that their own countries do not allow.

The UK dietary supplement industry follows a set of guidelines that allow for products to contain safe upper limits (ULs) of nutrients that have been approved by its regulatory Food Standards Agency (FSA).

One of the groups lobbying against this move is the UK's Consumers for Health Choice (CHC). "We're talking about freedom of choice," said Harry Masterton-Smith, chairman of CHC. "I'm allowed to smoke myself to death or drink myself under the table, so why can't I take perfectly safe vitamin and mineral supplements?"