AVAILABILITY OF VITAMINS AND MINERAL SUPPLEMENTS
- Session: 2009-10
- Date tabled: 01.12.2009
- Primary sponsor:
- Sponsors:
That this House notes that the United Kingdom has a rigorous and effective regime for permitting onto the market under the provisions of the Food Safety Act 1990 only such higher potency vitamin and mineral supplements as are accepted as safe and appropriately labelled by the Food Standards Agency; is deeply concerned that the future availability of such safe and popular supplements is now threatened by the current process through which the European Union is proposing pan-European limits on the potencies of such supplements under the provisions of Article 5 of the Food Supplements Directive; further notes that successive Ministers have pledged to defend the future availability of such supplements but have not yet secured sufficient support from other member states and the European Commission to ensure that the policy objectives of the Government can be achieved; and calls on the Prime Minister personally to intervene with the President of the European Commission to ensure that the right of UK manufacturers to produce, specialist retailers to sell, and informed consumers to choose to buy such safe and popular supplements is not unacceptably curtailed through an unnecessarily restrictive interpretation of the legislation.