Guy Hatchard: Natural Products Regulation — An Overreach of Government Control

Civilisations come and go through the ages. When governments empower people they harness the intelligence and creativity of their citizens for the good of all, when they seek to control their populations they fall into decline.

Following three years of pandemic control, governments are not stopping there. Here in New Zealand, the government has introduced the “Therapeutic Products Bill” which will control how products which appear to benefit health are manufactured, prescribed, imported, advertised, supplied and exported.

According to Health Minister Andrew Little:

It will enable New Zealand to take advantage of advances in medicine, such as cell and tissue therapies, emerging gene therapies, and the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning software. Having risk-proportionate approval systems will improve access to necessary and life-saving medicines, such as vaccines in a pandemic.

An important part of the bill aims to regulate the natural health products used by more than 50% of our population. This is the third attempt of the Labour Party to introduce extreme regulation of the public’s options to choose their medical care, supplements and diet. Their earlier two attempts failed because of vocal public opposition. In 2017 Labour opted for a prohibited list of 300 common herbal ingredients ( for some of these see photo):

It won’t have escaped your notice that many of these like Cinnamon and Mustard are currently sold in shops. So how on earth did they get onto a prohibited list? The answer lies in attempts to gain control of our food supply. Natural products that are beneficial to health cannot be patented, but synthetic copies can be. To make this work, the products that grow in gardens need to be banned.

Labour and the Ministry of Health did not make this list up, the list was supplied by the International Coalition of Medicines Regulatory Authorities (ICMRA) of which Medsafe is a member. ICMRA is largely funded by the pharmaceutical industry whose interests they serve.

Labour says it has learned from prior public opposition. This time the Bill will not name any prohited ingredients. Instead is an enabling bill, the type of legislation made famous by Adolf Hitler. The Bill establishes a new regulator headed by an independent statutory officer, with a wide remit:

The new regulator will be responsible for ensuring the safety, quality and efficacy of natural products. It will design and implement proportionate, risk-based market authorisation pathways. Its functions will include, in addition to market authorisation, licensing controlled activities, post-market surveillance, and compliance.

These services will be funded through levies on the industry which are liable to be costly. Government regulatory schemes mooted in the last two attempts were likely to push small players out of the market due to the cost of compliance, as happened as a result of the Food Bill.

Crucially the Bill also includes a range of modern enforcement tools allowing for a graduated and proportionate response to breaches, including tiered criminal offences, strict liability offences, improved infringement notices and a civil pecuniary penalty regime.

In other words, the Bill appoints a new as yet unnamed regulator who is being empowered to do whatever he thinks fit to control the manufacture and availability of supplements. He could, and is in fact very likely to publish a list a banned herbal ingredients soon after his appointment. The list is ready to go from the ICMRA database connected to Medsafe courtesy of the pharmaceutical industry.

If we wish to be able to continue to freely chose herbal medicines and supplements without government interference, we will need to speak up. Go to this link to make a submission before February 15th. Write to your MP and complain that the appointment of a regulator amounts to an open ended blank cheque to control the use products used by more than 50% of our population without fully specifying the principles he should use.

Dr Guy Hatchard is a former senior manager at Genetic ID, food testing and certification company.