Out of step?

It's a funny old world. There is much rejoicing among sandal-wearers today at the opinion of an advocate general at the European Court of Justice that the EU directive on vitamin and mineral supplements should be annulled (see Throw out EU food supplement laws, court aide says). The directive would create a positive list of permitted vitamins and supplements of the kind which fill the shelves in so-called "healthfood" stores beloved of a certain section of society. The court's recommendation is actually based on a technicality: there is no clear guidance on how a new supplement might be deemed to be suitable to be put on the list. Nevertheless, this is being hailed as a triumph by the Alliance for Natural Health and other campaigning groups.

If the court accepts this advice - which is likely - then this market will continue to be unregulated, and consumers will continue to be able to buy untested, unstandardised extracts with, in most cases, no proven efficacy or safety data. Since the content of any active ingredient will often be minimal, they can generally at least do no harm, apart from parting the gullible from their money. However, the same people who demand to be able to continue to buy their "natural" extracts would often avoid like the plague additives which have undergone extremely thorough safety testing and are tightly regulated. Equally, they would probably regard GM food - about which we know much more than "conventional" crops - as the work of the devil.

Which only goes to show that people are not always rational decision makers. They operate from the comfort of their belief systems, and no amount of regulation, testing or assurances from experts will ever convince them that something is safe if they have already come to the opposite conclusion. Equally, as this example shows, no amount of well-meaning regulation to protect consumers will necessarily convince them what they eat needs testing at all, if it's something they believe is "good". As I said, it's a funny old world...