Save Our Supplements

North Dorset MP, Robert Walter joined celebrity Jenny Seagrove on Wednesday (24 February) to urge the Government to block Europe’s imminent bid to ban thousands of vitamin and mineral food supplements, used safely in this country for decades.

As they launched the Time Is Running Out campaign, campaign group Consumers for Health Choice unveiled thousands of posters in every British High Street, and one million postcards to lobby MPs.

Under the EU Food Supplements’ Directive, retailers will be unable to sell vitamins and supplements at anything more than meaningless doses. Dorset’s chemists, supermarkets, and healthfood shops will be cleared of all other products by 31 December. 

At the moment, higher-dose supplements, all within proven safe limits, are taken by consumers helping stave off everything from general tiredness, SAD syndrome and coughs and colds to PMT and restless legs.

At the campaign launch, Bob insisted: “Consumers must be allowed to have free access to safe supplements of their choice.

“I am a firm opponent of the proposed Directive. It imposes a completely unnecessary restriction on freedom of choice for all those who use vitamin and mineral supplements to benefit their health and well-being.

“There is much anger among consumers.  The commitment to keep supplements available was made in 2005 under the Blair Government, yet almost five years later the Government has failed to implement its own policy.  

“I will do my best to protect the expected store closures and the thousands of jobs that could be lost by denying the public their right to choose.”

Sue Croft, Director of CHC, the active group behind the highly successful Save-Our-Supplements campaign said: “We do feel very let down. The Food Standards Agency was instructed to fight our corner in Brussels; they accept that our supplements are safe - yet they have failed to speak up for British people.  As things stand, doses of all vitamins and all minerals could be reduced to meaningless amounts - such an outcome would be catastrophic.

“This Government should wake up, keep its promises and block this burdensome and meddlesome legislation.”