Consumers

Your personal right to obtain natural healthcare, food supplements, herbs and alternative therapies is at risk.

Index

THE SITUATION

HOW CAN YOU HELP?

WHAT YOU CAN AND SHOULD DO

The Situation: EUROPEAN UNION LEGISLATION, backed by well funded vested interests, is set to ban many of the food supplements we normally take for granted. Worse yet, the United Nations, through their CODEX ALIMENTARIUS COMMISSION, is seeking to adopt this restrictive European legislation and apply it worldwide in the name of ‘trade harmonization’ and the WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION will act as the enforcement branch for all UN member nations.

Your own freedom of choice and access to natural health remedies such as food supplements and herbs is at very real risk.

This will continue to adversely affect the Natural Health Industry as a whole including vitamin and herbal remedy manufacturers, distributors and resellers, health food stores, nutritionists and natural health practitioners and most importantly, the consumers they serve - YOU.

  • Many currently available vitamins and mineral forms will be eliminated completely including; 23 different food forms of Calcium, 21 food forms of Iron, 30 different forms of Magnesium, 21 different forms of Potassium, 15 different forms of amino acids, almost the entire spectrum of Vitamin E, and many others.

  • Maximum permitted dosage levels will be drastically reduced to RDA or "placebo" therapeutic levels.

  • Herbal ingredients will be severely restricted.

  • Traditional medicines will also be restricted or eliminated completely.
  • Information on natural products will be totally censored.

Something Can and Should be done about it.

How Can You Help?
The World Institute of Natural Health Sciences (WINHS) is working with allied groups, scientists, practitioners, and innovative manufacturers to enhance and protect your freedom of choice in nutrition and health care.

WINHS is working to ensure that alternative and natural healthcare is maintained and further developed for the health and well being of future generations.

We work with a host of dedicated professionals, campaigners, consumers, scientists, medical doctors, practitioners, innovative companies and suppliers of natural health products who fully understand that natural products, in combination with a good, balanced diet, provide us with the most important foundation for successful and sustainable health.

We believe that it is the personal right of the individual to sufficiently educate and empower themselves in order to make informed decisions and take control of their own health if it is to be both effective and economically viable in the long-term.

There are key forces working against the development of 'natural health' as a mainstay in health care, these being:

  • A complex series of EUROPEAN UNION (EU) DIRECTIVES and regulations that are set to reduce access to many supplements, herbs and traditional medicine for 450 million consumers throughout Europe.

    • These EU laws include the FOOD SUPPLEMENTS DIRECTIVE, the HUMAN MEDICINAL PRODUCTS (PHARMACEUTICALS) DIRECTIVE, the TRADITIONAL HERBAL MEDICINAL PRODUCTS DIRECTIVE, the FORTIFIED FOODS DIRECTIVE and the NUTRITION AND HEALTH CLAIMS REGULATION.

    You can find out more about these by reading materials contained throughout our web site. These Directives are all at different stages of clarification and implementation into European Member State Law.

    Vital to our work here is further clarification of key components contained in the European Food Supplements Directive.

  • The Development of international guidelines and standards for food supplements and other natural products, is being conducted through the Codex Alimentarius Commission. These guidelines and standards will impact all sovereign nations including the United States.

    • As background, the Codex Alimentarius Commission (Codex) was established in 1963 as a means of facilitating food standards and trade between countries and ensuring food safety. Codex Alimentarius, which essentially means "food code," is used as a series of international guidelines or standards for a very wide range of food groups. The Food & Agricultural Organization (FAO) and World Health Organization (WHO) of the United Nations created and oversee Codex.

    The first major guideline for natural health products, which is essentially, derived from the EU Food Supplements Directive, concerns vitamin and mineral food supplements only. However botanicals are on the Codex 'drawing board' and guidelines for other nutrient groups will inevitably follow.

    Although heavily protested by the natural health and innovative food supplements industries, the text for the Codex Guideline on Vitamin and Mineral Food Supplements was ratified after 10 years of negotiation at a full meeting of Codex in Rome on 4 July 2005.

    However, the precise mechanism by which dosages or "Maximum Permitted Levels" will be established has not been finally agreed and this will be considered at the forthcoming meetings of the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU).

    One of the current areas that WINHS supports in relation to Codex is the Alliance for Natural Health's (ANH) program to commission independent, leading scientific experts to develop scientifically sound risk assessment methods. 'Scientific Risk Assessment' has been agreed in Codex as the basis by which safety and dosages of food supplements will be established, so this effort is of particular concern as current Codex reasoning will lead to very low and ineffective dosage levels.

    NOTE: See Kevin Miller's 2005 documentary on Codex,"WE BECOME SILENT," narrated by Dame Judi Dench, to give you a 'big picture' view on Codex. You can access this via the banner on the top of the WINHS homepage. After viewing, please do whatever you can possibly do to support our efforts.

  • Media threats to natural health. There is no doubt there is a concerted anti-natural health bias to articles and news reports continually running in the mainstream media. These frequently cite 'scientific papers' that show harmful effects of a very limited range of supplements, often the synthetic forms, (as in the case of negative press on vitamin E and antioxidants). These reports need to be balanced against the huge and ever-growing scientific literature that refutes the bias reports and documents the extremely beneficial effects of natural products used in health care on a routine basis.

  • Additionally, there are many thousands of published research papers on natural ingredients, and the vast majority of these confirm their beneficial effects.

  • To positively shape the EU Directives and Codex guidelines, which are set to affect your own access to food supplements and related products, we urgently need your help to build support, to lobby, to put pressure on the politicians, and to secure our right of continued access to proven natural substances.

    • Your support DOES and WILL make a difference!

Are you among the 70-80% of consumers who regularly take nutritional supplements?

If you mainly take the types of vitamin and mineral supplements you find in supermarkets or pharmacies, you almost certainly have little to worry about in relation either to the EU Food Supplements Directive, the rash of other directives that are set to follow out of Brussels, and even Codex. These low dose pharmaceutical vitamins is about all that will still be available.

However, if you take the more innovative products you get from specialty health stores, complementary practitioners or some mail order and internet outlets, you should be extremely concerned.

These are the sorts of products from which millions claim to have experienced profound benefits. These products are the exact products that are at serious risk of being banned!

Are you among the majority of people in tropical and subtropical countries who use natural, traditional systems of health care, based largely on the use of real plant products (herbs)?

If so, Codex might ultimately have a large bearing on your ability to access products and treatments that you, and generations before you, have been sucessfully using. Placing particular herbs and minerals under the scrutiny of the proposed, flawed Codex "risk assessment" system does not bode well; some of the substances used in Ayurvedic (Indian traditional health culture) have been recently attacked by western scientists who seem to not understand the context in which these products are used.

The EU Food Supplements Directive - as well as Codex Guidelines or future Standards - will seriously reduce or eliminate the availability of these most effective innovative or traditional products in a matter of a few years unless we act now!

The EU Food Supplements Directive could effectively ban 2/3rds of the vitamin and mineral forms that are presently on the market in Europe.

These ingredients can be found in around 5000 products on the UK market alone!

The Food Supplements Directive only allows use of 15 minerals in food supplements, despite increasing evidence that our bodies need over 60 minerals for optimum health! No forms of boron, vanadium or silicon, nor any plant-derived, chelated or ionic mineral forms, are on the list of permitted vitamins and mineral forms.

If you believe that nutrition and supplementation of the diet is of critical importance to healthcare, now and in the future, we urge you to let as many people as possible know about the EU Directives and Codex and their potential impact on leading-edge supplements, and about WINHS and what this organization is doing to help rectify the situation.

WHAT YOU CAN AND SHOULD DO:
1. Take the time needed to learn the facts. Don’t rely exclusively on anyone’s interpretations of the legislation or opinions. Personally read the actual documents themselves.

NOTE: If you have questions about what you have read, ask them, and get your questions satisfactorily answered. CLICK HERE

2. Have a good look at the WINHS website and return frequently to get updates on the issues presented that you consider most important. Let your representatives in government know your concerns - in writing!

  • If you live in Europe, please consider writing to your government representatives, highlighting your concerns about all the EU Directives, in particular how they impact negatively on innovation in the food supplements and herbal products industries.

  • If you are a citizen of a country in Europe, find your MEP by CLICKING HERE.

  • If you are a British Subject or UK citizen, find your MEP by CLICKING HERE.

  • If you are an Irish citizen, find your MEP by CLICKING HERE.

  • If you are an American citizen, click the following links to find your CONGRESSMAN and SENATOR.

You can help us as well.

Please help the WINHS and support the campaign and legal challenges by taking the following steps immediately:

  1. Become a MEMBER OF THE WORLD INSTITUTE OF NATURAL HEALTH SCIENCES. This registered base of supporters is critical to the success of our lobbying work in the European Parliament, the U.S. Congress and other campaign activities throughout the world. You will then also receive regular mailshots about the campaign progress.

  2. Please visit our website regularly and find out more about the issue and the problems that will result if the Food Supplements Directive, other EU Directives and Codex Guidelines are fully implemented.

  3. Make your own personal contribution to the 'financial fuel' required NOW for the INSTITUTE to move rapidly forward. Your contribution is vital, however little you are able to give. Please consider donating monthly of you are able. Contribute to the INSTITUTE by secure credit/debit card donation on our website, by direct bank transfer (details available by phone or email request info@winhs.org.

  4. Ask as many others as you know (throughout Europe and elsewhere) who may be similarly concerned about the legislation to visit our website.

  5. Help us now. If you wish to make a contribution, you can easily do so on our confidential and secure contribution page. CLICK HERE.

  6. If you prefer to make a contribution by cheque please make your cheque (Pound Sterling, Euro and US dollar checks accepted) payable to the World Institute of Natural Health Sciences and send it to our registered office at WINHS, Leicester House, 11417 Mt. Gleason Avenue, Los Angeles, CA USA 91042.

  7. Make certain your government representatives know and understand your position on the EU Directives and additional attacks on your right to access and choice worldwide through Codex Alimentarius.

With your help and financial support, the World Institute of Natural Health Sciences has a real chance to protect your right to use leading-edge food supplements and other natural health products.

Now is the time to protect your right to provide natural health choices. This is a critical time for the future of natural health care.

What are these funds needed for?

  1. WINHS is assisting and supporting the European scientific and legal challenges to the EU Food Supplements Directive and working to develop further legal challenges to medicinal law revisions in the EU.

  2. We support and promote technical, scientific and legal actions directed against the European threats to natural health, and conduct briefings and consultations with regulators, legislators, health freedom and consumer groups.

  3. We've launched an expanded public and media awareness campaign to garner additional support.

  4. The successful implementation of a worldwide celebrity endorsement campaign in the media, promotions and documentaries for television and online broadcasts.

  5. We provide the translation of scientific breakthroughs in innovative and alternative health into digestible layman's terms to increase accessibility and understanding of scientific findings, technical reports and legislation information concerning natural health, medical practices, drugs and drug manufacturing, food supplements, herbs, and traditional medicines.

  6. We acqure and utilize professional and volunteer researchers to document local, regional, national and international legislation concerning natural health, medical practices, drugs and drug manufacturing, food supplements, herbs, and innovative and alternative health care developments.

  7. We're investigating, documenting and promoting the vested interests, their motivations, activities and the significant funding used to influence legislators and legislation for corporate and personal gain.

  8. We've launched a massive international "Public Awareness" Campaign to alert the media, legislators and consumers of the potential disaster to natural health products and services.

To make a donation:

You can support the World Institute of Natural Health Sciences' campaigns and programs in a number of safe and secure ways.

  1. We suggest that you use our secure web payment system, and note that you are not required nor obligated to join or become a member – this is totally optional.

    2. If you prefer, rather than making a donation through our secure web payment system you can make a donation direct to the World Institute of Natural Sciences.

  2. By standing order: Please download the STANDING ORDER MANDATE, complete the form and send it directly to your bank. Once this is done, please send an email to info@winhs.org with the amount and frequency or telephone 1.818.951.7933.

  3. By check: Checks can be sent direct to our registered office and should be made payable to the 'World Institute of Natural Health Sciences' and sent to:

    4. For North & South America - send to:
    The World Institute of Natural Health Sciences
    Leicester House
    P.O. Box 173
    Los Angeles, CA USA 91042

    For Europe - send to:
    The World Institute of Natural Health Sciences
    Suite 7, Bulrushes Farm
    Coombe Hill Road
    East Grinstead
    West Sussex, UK

  4. By Inter-Bank Transaction / Bank wire: You may wish to make a donation by bank transaction using. Please email info@winhs.org for more details or telephone 1.818.951.7933.

Thank you for supporting the World Institute of Natural Health Sciences and your right to natural healthcare!

One Final Note:
Please join the rapidly growing support base of consumers who are working across the US, Europe and all over the world with the WINHS to protect innovation and the availability of leading-edge supplements. JOIN US NOW!

Please e-mail us at info@winhs.org, should you require any further information. Or telephone 1.818.951.7933 (US) and +44 (0) 7913 188 756.