The Alliance for Natural Health (ANH) is working on numerous fronts to ensure that natural healthcare can be maintained and developed for future generations.  We are an alliance of dedicated consumers, scientists, medical doctors, practitioners, and innovative companies and suppliers of natural health products who wholeheartedly believe that natural products, in combination with a good, balanced diet, provide us with the most important basis for healthcare.  We are of the view that healthcare systems in which the individual is empowered to take control of his or her own health is essential if it is to be both effective and economically viable in the long-term.

There are three key pressures that are working against our continued ability to use ‘natural health’ as our mainstay in healthcare, these being:

ONE - A complex of European Union (EU) directives and regulations that are set to reduce access by 450 million consumers (the entire EU population, now comprised of 25 countries). 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. Central to our work here is the legal challenge of the EU Food Supplements Directive, which was ruled on by the European Court of Justice on 12 July 2005. We will be going back to Court in 2007 to ensure that the gains from this ruling our enacted by the Member States.

TWO - Development of international guidelines on food supplements and other natural products, being developed through the Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC), which was established in 1963 as a means both of facilitating trade between countries and ensuring safety of foods. Codex Alimentarius, which essentially means “food code”, and is used a series of international guidelines or standards for a very wide range of food groups, is overseen by the Food ... Agricultural Organization (FAO) and World Health Organization (WHO) of the United Nations. 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.

THREE - Media threats to natural health. There is no doubt there is a concerted anti-natural health bias to articles and news reports. These frequently cite scientific papers that show harmful effects of a very limited range of supplements, these often being 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 points to the extremely beneficial effects of natural products used in health care. There are many thousands of published research papers on natural ingredients, and the vast majority of these point to beneficial effects.

To positively shape the EU Directives and Codex guidelines which are set to affect you 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 win the court case, now referred to European Court of Justice.  Your support DOES and WILL make a difference! We have been completely dependent on your support to get this far!

Petitions to the Prime Minister

Nutritional Products

A wide variety of nutritional supplements and related products.