Forthcoming Events

Westminster Food & Nutrition Forum Keynote Seminar

Next steps for obesity policy: calorie reduction, the Responsibility Deal and Health and Wellbeing Boards

with
Richard Cienciala, Deputy Director, Obesity and Food Policy, Department of Health; Liz Woodeson, Director of Health and Wellbeing, Department of Health
 and
Bill Bartlett, McCain Foods; Caroline Cromar, Pret A Manger; Sue Davies, Which?; Sandy Evans, KasTech; Caroline Fry, Charlton House Catering Services; Professor David Haslam, National Obesity Forum and Luton & Dunstable Hospital NHS Foundation Trust; Dr Corinna Hawkes, City University London; Professor Philip James, International Association for the Study of Obesity (IASO); Dr Susan Jebb, MRC Human Nutrition Research and Public Health Responsibility Deal Food Network; Professor Terence Stephenson, Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (AoMRC) and Fred Turok, Fitness Industry Association and Responsibility Deal Physical Activity Network

Chaired by:
Roger Williams MP, Vice Chair, Associate Parliamentary Food and Health Group

This event is CPD certified

Morning, Thursday, 7th February 2013
Central London

Our Website | Book Online | Live Agenda

I am writing to ensure you don’t miss the above seminar if you are able to attend. Please note there is a charge for most delegates, although no-one is excluded on the basis of ability to pay (see below).

This seminar will offer a timely opportunity to discuss the next steps for tackling obesity. It comes one year on from the Healthy lives, healthy people call to action on obesity, and as Health and Wellbeing Boards prepare to take on statutory functions.

Discussion is being structured to bring out the latest thinking on the impact of the Public Health Responsibility Deal and what more can be done to encourage healthy attitudes towards food and exercise. Further sessions will also focus on what is being done by industry and more widely towards meeting ‘national ambitions’ of reducing the national calorie intake by 5 billion calories a day and working towards a downward trend in excess weight in children and adults by 2020.

Including a presentation from Professor Terence Stephenson, Chair, Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (AoMRC)  this seminar will also discuss the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges’ Obesity Steering Group Project, how it ties in with existing government strategies – and whether a new approach is needed.

Discussion – including presentations from Richard Cienciala, Deputy Director, Obesity and Food Policy, Department of Health and Liz Woodeson, Director of Health and Wellbeing, Department of Health – will focus on:

• The latest figures on the current levels of obesity in the UK, what are the trends and how can we learn from a decrease in obesity amongst some groups;
• The impact of and priorities for the Public Health Responsibility Deal going forward – including discussion about the role of industry, government and state interventions;
• The role of Health and Wellbeing Boards and others in the reformed commissioning system in meeting the challenges of tackling obesity;
• Learning from best practice and tackling the root causes of obesity;

• Next steps for government policy following Healthy lives, healthy people.

The draft agenda is copied below my signature, and a regularly updated version is available to view online here. The seminar is organised on the basis of strict impartiality by the Westminster Food & Nutrition Forum.

ANH-Intl e-Alert: Who on earth is being protected?

Who do the bureaucrats really serve?

Red tape and bureaucracy exists, we’re often told, to protect us. Sometimes this is the case. But isn’t it odd that when we feel we need protection, for example from unlabelled genetically modified foods (subject of a major campaign with which we’re involved in California) you’ve got to move mountains to try to get the law passed.

Conversely, we see a rash of regulation affecting natural health in the EU that’s meant to protect us from dangerous products or misleading claims. But most of the potentially risky or deliberately and dangerously adulterated products, or spurious claims, are linked to products on grey or black markets, or fringe internet retailers. These kinds of operators don’t tend to take a lot of notice of laws; they are experts at dodging the law or re-inventing themselves if they get caught.

Foods can heal, believe it or not

The chances are that all the regulations coming into effect in the EU will do nothing to improve our safety. They will, however, impact those companies selling perfectly good, and often highly efficacious products that so many of us use to help us stay in fine fettle. Some are also used by those whose health has deteriorated, and who can no longer be described as being in a normal state of health. Frankly, it’s about time that governments realised it is no longer tenable to keep saying that foods, herbs and other natural products can’t help treat or prevent disease. This assertion stands scrutiny even less well today than in the era of Hippocrates, when it is claimed the notional ‘father of medicine’ said, around two and a half thousand years ago: “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”. 

The incredibly broad scope of medicine laws, supposedly offered to us to keep us safe, allows the legitimate poisoning of millions, for the sake of profit. It also hands the pharmaceutical industry and medical establishment sole rights to the arena of medicines, making anyone issuing a medicinal claim who hasn’t got a drugs license, a criminal. Check out one of our stories on heavy handed government tactics below.

Two important features that tell it how it is

This week, we offer you two special features. One exposes the misguided nature of the EU Nutrition and Health Claims Regulation, that—for the time being—continues unimpeded into the EU statute books following last week’s nod from the European Parliament. This Regulation was, as you’ll discover, meant to contribute to the EU’s fight against obesity, as well as protecting us from misleading claims. Fat chance, we say, if you’ll excuse the pun. Our second feature identifies some of the medical mavericks who have contested mainstream views on heart disease. We are forced to think of them as mavericks, only because their views differ from the establishment. They should more properly be regarded as pioneers—and in time, with the right wind behind us, this might be how they will be seen by future generations. But for now, we’ve still a long way to go.

Here are this week’s features and stories — and remember, please assimilate, then share this information as widely as you can. 

In health, naturally (despite the best efforts of the EU!) 

Rob Verkerk
Founder, and executive and scientific director, ANH-Intl

ANH-Intl eAlert: Strengthening our resolve

The last few days provide a powerful reminder of the weight of law working against our right to use and learn about natural medicines.

Health claims: lessons learned
and we’re not giving up!

To say we’re not disappointed that the European Parliamentary committee didn’t get a majority behind the resolution objecting to the passage of the health claims list is an understatement.  I can assure you that your letters and emails were heard.  But many Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) struggle to go against the flow, especially if it means voting differently to the thrust within their political grouping.  Others simply want to see the back of a troublesome and controversial law and make fixing it someone else’s problem.

While we expected the huge European food and drink lobby, FoodDrinkEurope, to be pushing hard to get smooth passage of the list, it was, in my view, the changed tact of the main European natural products trade association that seriously muddied the waters.  The European Federation of Associations of Health Product Manufacturers (EHPM) had long pointed out many of the problems with the regulation; but when the association had a chance to recommend blocking it—and push it back to the drawing board for a major rethink—it got behind it instead, and lobbied MEPs to usher it through.  One might ask: whose side is EHPM on, whose interests is it really protecting, who is giving it strategic advice, and—most importantly—why is the association so cosy with the European Commission?  Many roads lead back to a Brussels-based regulatory consultancy called European Advisory Services (EAS), but more on this another time.

Given our mission to ensure plausible health claims are not stripped from the marketplace, there are a range of strategies that we are already hard at work on.  But we have now lost our most powerful tool: a veto.  Our story on the outcome of the parliamentary vote gives you some pointers about where we will be going.  Next Tuesday, I will float some of the problems—as well as possible solutions—at a high profile Brussels conference, the 6th Annual European Nutrition and Lifestyle Conference.  Possibly, a first for this issue, I will sit and present on a panel including representatives from the European Commission, the European Parliament and Big Food.  We’ll report on what happens next week.

UK cancer conference cancelled

It’s an odd world, is it not, when a raw milk producer gets tortured by a government regulator.  That was the outcome for Californian ‘milk man’ James Stewart, at the hands of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

In the UK this week, we have the enforced cancellation of an alternative cancer conference in the town of Totnes in Devon, regarded by many as the most alternative town in Britain.  You can read the story below.  I was scheduled to be one of the speakers, and while the local authorities have said the conference is cancelled, we’re almost certain they have way over-stepped their legal authority.  Tonight I drive down to Totnes to meet with the organisers and other speakers who have already made plans to be there.  We are forced now to meet at a private location, and speak behind closed doors about the use of natural products to help support those with cancer.

Hardening our resolve

Put the EU’s planned restrictions on health claims alongside this kind of heavy-handed tactic, and you wonder just how much freedom of speech is left in countries like the UK and USA.  These two countries have long prided themselves over their respect for fundamental rights and freedoms.  Perhaps the authorities feel we’ll believe them if they keep calling our countries free?

To some it might seem that we will need to lick our wounds and lie low for a while so we can deal with these two setbacks.  But as a long-standing campaigner on justice issues, I want to make clear that this isn’t the plan.  These events simply harden our resolve and make us more determined than ever.

Those who feel they are able to help us financially or in other ways, please stand up and be counted as we need all the help we can get.  This fight for our right to natural medicine is very real, and it requires intelligence, resourcefulness and the power of numbers. Please email us at info@anhinternational.org if you think you can help—or phone

+44 (0)1306 646 600.

Yours, in health, naturally…

Rob Verkerk
Founder, executive and scientific director, ANH International?

PS: Martin Walker's essay, "Lots of Law - Little Justice", is essential reading for those interested in the Wakefield/vaccine fiasco.  Make yourself a herbal tea before you sit down, though, as Martin's essay is 40 pages long - but 40 pages of sheer gold!  Like us, he also relies on donations, so please consider donating to him via the link provided.

Following is the detail for the week: