We are running out of time. The Natural Health Product and Supplements Bill Final Reading could be at any time. There is pressure from vested interests to have it read as soon as possible.

To ensure access to safe and therapeutic products and to allow research in this field to continue, we need to act now. The public needs to be made aware that many effective products currently used to promote health and wellness may not be available to them if this Bill is passed.

The Natural Health and Supplementary Products Bill, if passed, will establish a new regulatory regime, separate from those in place for food and medicines. It aims to control low-risk natural health products such as garlic capsules and Echinacea, and supplementary products such as vitamin tablets. The full regulatory scheme will be phased in over three years.

This Bill will affect everyone in New Zealand. Practitioners and GPs who have limited options to provide to patients. Small locally-owned businesses who cannot afford to register their products for sale

People with chronic health conditions who have limited options available for treatment.
Children with ADHD who can only access pharmaceutical drugs, Couples struggling with infertility. Anyone with circumstances or concerns that could be treated with quality therapeutic levels of natural health products.

Even if you think this Bill doesn’t affect you now, there may come a time in your future when your health is compromised and you might wish you had options.

This Bill will limit your choice of natural products.This Bill will harm your family now and in the future: You may think your family doesn’t need natural products now, yet you may want that freedom of choice in the future, if not for yourself, but for your children, your nieces and nephews, your parents, siblings, and extended family.

This Bill will stifle future breakthroughs in natural health, by stifling innovation in Natural Health research. If you limit the variety and dosage of natural health ingredients, and make huge financial barriers of entry for the approval of new ingredients that are discovered, your freedom of choice for future breakthroughs are limited.

Natural health products will become less effective from this Bill by unfairly banning ingredients or putting severe restrictions on dosages to sub-therapeutic levels. Can you help someone who is dehydrated with a thimble full of water? No. This Bill will further limit levels of natural ingredients to watered-down levels.

Natural Health Products are already safe

• A report prepared in the EU found that natural products were 45,000 times safer than properly prescribed allopathic drugs, and 75 times safer than eating a meal.
• No coroner in New Zealand has ever recorded a death from consuming natural health products.
• The 2014 US FDA report recorded that there were no deaths from consuming vitamins.
• The supposed health risks of natural health products are a medical myth created by public relations professional paid to protect allopathic monopoly of healthcare.

You may not have a chronic health concern now, but down the track if you suffer from arthritis, dementia, infertility, have a child with allergies or ADHD your options will be limited to the conventional medical model. You don’t have to believe in or agree with the efficacy of natural health products to value your freedom as an individual to choose the best course of action for you or your loved ones.

View The Natural Health Product and Supplements Bill here: http://www.legislation.govt.nz/bill/government/2011/0324/latest/DLM3984610.html?src=qs