Save Our Supplements - Time is Running Out!
Natural Health Products Collective Launches New Awareness Campaign
The Edmonton Health Food Store Collective is a group of natural health product retailers and manufacturers devoted to preserving the freedom of Canadians to make their own personal health care decisions and choices.
Canadians must play an active role in protecting their access to an appropriate variety of natural health care products. Time is running out.
The public was encouraged to attend a free "Health Freedom Awareness" event to send a strong message to our elected officials that Canadian consumers deserve the right to choose.
Event details were released at an Oct. 15, 2009 media conference.
Since new government regulations were introduced in 2004, the number and variety of natural health products available to consumers have been steadily reduced.
Over 20,000 natural health product license applications submitted by the industry years ago are still awaiting approval from Health Canada. Many, it seems, are simply being ignored.
The worst is yet to come!
The full force of Health Canada’s new regulations will take affect in April 2010.
When that happens the number of natural health products currently available could potentially be reduced by a staggering 70 percent.
Thousands of everyday products that are either imported or contain more than one natural ingredient will be subject to removal from store shelves right across the country dramatically affecting the viability of the entire industry.
Why are they doing this?
More and more Canadians are turning to natural health products as a safe
and effective alternative to expensive and sometimes toxic pharmaceutical
drugs. As
a result, the pharmaceutical industry is pressuring the federal
government to cripple the competition by limiting the availability of natural
health products.
Health Canada has responded with stringent new regulations that do not fairly represent the extremely low risk nature of time-tested natural health products.
The agency has created a framework that requires multi-ingredient natural health products undergo expensive clinical testing and trials that are simply too costly, and therefore not commercially viable, for natural health product manufacturers.
Once the full force of Health Canada’s new regulations takes affect ( April 2010 ) five things will happen:
1. Store owners across the country will be forced to remove an estimated 20,000 - 25,000 specialty products that contain more than one ingredient and represent the largest product sector in the industry.
2. Canadian manufacturers and hundreds of small business owners and retailers will be forced out of business.
3. Thousands of Canadian jobs will be eliminated.
4. Canadian consumers will have their freedom to make personal health care choices drastically reduced – at a time when new disease pandemics are capturing headlines around the world.
5. Ultimately, thousands of natural health compounds and plant molecules will be controlled and / or patented by the pharmaceutical industry.
Canadians must join the Natural Health Products industry in sending a strong message to Health Canada and the federal government.
Time is running out!
Facts
• Health Canada's new regulations have cost taxpayers more than $90 million but have yet to improve safety for Canadians: Fraser Institute
• Since 1960 there have been no recorded deaths from natural health products in Canada
• Pharmaceutical drugs kill over 3,000 Canadians every year: CBC Investigation
• The North American pharmaceutical industry spends over $100 million per year on political lobbying and campaign contributions:
U.S. Center for Public Integrity
• Health Canada inspectors have admitted - off the record - that up to 70% of the existing natural health products industry in Canada could be eliminated as a result of the new regulations.
Contact
John Biggs
Optimum Health Vitamins
(780) 432-5464
Edmonton, AB
www.optimumhealthvitamins.com