Ottawa wants more regulation for health products
The Globe and Mail newspaper reported on Thursday Oct. 30th that there are plans by Canada’s Conservative government to reintroduce legislation giving the federal government more regulative authority concerning the "quality and safety of supplements, vitamins and other natural health products". This was expected, as when Bill C-51 died when Parliament was disolved this fall before the recent election, there was a strong indication that this bill would be revived. And so it has.
Basically, the argument for increased regulation is that the rules in place have no teeth and products that are known to be harmful can only be met with consumer advisories rather than being removed from the shelves. One example cited was a Health Canada advisory released this week regarding the products New Roots Herbal Vitamin C8 and Vitazan Professional Vitamin C Advanced Ascorbate. Health Canada stated that the companies "inadvertently sold a product labelled as containing vitamin C that was improperly manufactured using vitamin A instead". This is just one of a long list of advisories that have shown several products to contain substances that were not identified on the label and/or have proven to be dangerous to the user.
I do not think that anyone could make a convincing argument that products that may or may not contain what they say they do is a case of buyer beware. In some instances, one needs to be knowledgable about what he/she is taking when it comes to health supplements. Why am I taking this? What does it do? What is a safe and effective dosage? Too often I see people walk into a nutrition store and are talked into buying a product which the retailer (usually someone in extremely good shape) explains that they "take every day before and after training" and that’s the key to how they were able to develop that physique. Next thing you know you paid a lot of money for garlic pills.
This situation is very different from someone who knows they want to take glutamine, why they should be taking it and expects that the bottle labelled glutamine is indeed just that. Currently (in Canada at least) it’s a bit of a crap shoot and one has only reputable and trusted companies to rely on providing a consistent product that is what it says it is.
I have no objection to developing industry wide testing standards of nutritional supplements. I don’t believe that anyone who has an interest in their physical health and safety would object either. My biggest concern is that this has not become a greater issue amongst those who advocate and practice physical fitness and that this action had not taken place sooner.
November 10, 2008 at 3:51 pm
oh my gosh, i found out several years ago that the fda says supplements are not food and they are not drugs so they don’t monitor what’s in them. how scary. i believe in being a smart consumer, but the government should be doing their part to keep things properly labled and ensuring it is what it says it is in any case for us to even make smart choicese!!
nice blog!