Not a healthy alternative

By Christopher Booker

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Brussels gives a healthy boost to pharma giantsThere was extensive media coverage last week of the European Court of Justice's ruling in favour of the Brussels directive on vitamin and mineral supplements.

The choice of the 21 million people in Britain who use them will be drastically restricted when thousands of products are forced off the shelves, because it will cost between £80,000 and £250,000 for testing to allow each preparation tocontinue to be sold.

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I have often written about this since 1994, when the directive first came into view, because it provides such a revealing case-study in how we are now governed. There is no scientific reason for the new law.

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Its greatest beneficiaries will be the pharmaceutical companies who have lobbied for it in Brussels, because it will drive thousands of their smaller competitors out of business. They have freely used bogus science to whip up a scare that misuse of food supplements can cause adverse reactions (albeit in only a tiny minority of users), while hiding away the fact that tens of thousands of people each year suffer much more serious, even fatal health damage from their own proprietary drugs, all licensed, at vast expense, as being safe to use.

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The Brussels directive completely changes the basis on which food safety is regulated in Britain, by reversal of the burden of proof, as under Napoleonic law. In this country you may sell any food, but you face severe penalties if it proves to be damaging to health.

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Under the Continental system, the burden of proof lies with the seller. You may only sell what you are explicitly pemitted to sell. Only the 112 products on the directive's so-called "positive list" will therefore be legal.

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Finally, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) last week broke with its established practice and overruled the opinion of its own Advocate-General, who had supported those complaining that the directive breached European law.

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This was because the ECJ is less a judicialthan a political body. Its judges are political appointees and many would not be qualified to sit as judges in their own country. Their primary role is tosupport the Commission. And if the Commission bows to the lobbying of the pharmaceutical industry and produces a directive which will shut down smaller competitors and deprive millions of Europeans of the right to take the vitamin and mineral products they find beneficial, then the ECJ knows where its duty lies.