A new EU regulation that has threatened to outlaw thousands of mineral supplements and bankrupt health food stores across Britain has been upheld, according to a story in the London Times.
The ruling is a defeat for a campaign by more than a million British health food customers and shops, which have argued that the law will threaten the existence of small suppliers.
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The judges of the European Court of Justice said that the new law was necessary to simplify the trade in natural remedies, and to give clear health advice to consumers by instituting an approved list of supplements.
The court observed that "before the directive was adopted, food supplements were regulated by differing national rules liable to impede the free movement of those goods and the functioning of the internal market."
"We had expected a better verdict," said a spokesman for the Alliance For Natural Health this morning. "On the surface it looks like bad news, because they are upholding the Food Supplements Directive and that is disappointing... However, there may be a positive side to this."
Sue Croft, the director of Consumers for Health Choice, said that their campaign for special allowances for the British health food industry would go on.
"I think that we still have to stick out for a national delegation," she told Times Online. "We have to re-open negotiations with the EU trade commission to keep hold of our supplements and keep the British market intact. I think we have the political will to do that and that would be brilliant."
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