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Newsletter Archives
No 1 - March 2004
Greetings to all myHealth newsletter subscribers.
Welcome
to the first MyHealth
newsletter. Thank you for subscribing.
This newsletter is intended to provide all those involved
with or interested in Natural Health Products with important
industry information and updates.
If you know of others who might like to receive our newsletter
please encourage them to subscribe. Remember your contact
details are private and you can unsubscribe at any time.
You may like to also sign up to the MyHealth Business Directory
to have the details of your business able to be searched
by all users of the web site.
Many of you will be aware of the Government plans to set
up a Trans Tasman regulator which will control this industry
and which will be an effective extension of the Australian
Therapeutic Goods Administration system. This proposal has
been strongly criticised by those in the industry and was
unanimously rejected by the Health Select Committee in its
report in December last year.
The Government though is still trying to force the changes
through that experts predict will result in the loss of many
products currently available in New Zealand.
A report commissioned by the NZ Health Trust to analyse the
Treaty signed with the Australians shows, among many other
things:
- The
definition of therapeutic products is so wide that it
would include anything taken for health reasons and for
that reason arguably would cover fish, vegetables, water
and potentially even oxygen.
- Five
stages of regulation are proposed; on importers of ingredients,
manufacturers, suppliers, retailers and on exporters.
- Whilst
the Treaty claims to allow some differences in regulation
between NZ and Australia, the criteria needed to permit
those differences are so limiting that in reality differences
would be highly unlikely to ever occur (except for traditional
Maori remedies).
- The
Managing Director would have the full power to make rules
controlling the industry and yet is not a public servant
and does not have report to the Board.
- Furthermore
the powers of the Managing Director could be delegated
and sub-delegated and could be carried out by someone
of whom NZ has not approved.
- The
treaty enables the new body to further join up with some
other international body leading to NZ having even less
control than it would initially.
- All
advertisements of any sort, including printed matter
supplied with products are to be subject to pre-vetting
- Most
of the detail as to the extent of the regulation has
still not been made available meaning that the details
of the costs to businesses are still unknown. Asking
Parliament to authorise this new body without knowing
these details is like asking someone to sign a contract
they have not read.
If you want to read the Treaty and accompanying Fact Sheets
for yourself these are available at www.jtaproject.com.
The Government's response to the Select Committee report
is also now available from the Ministry of Health.
We plan to keep you updated through this newsletter on
progress in the on-going fight to stop the Trans Tasman
regulator for Natural Health Products. One way you could
help is if you see any media articles on this issue (particularly
from outside Christchurch) you could send them to My Health
Ltd at P O Box 34 057, Christchurch.
Mostly thought it would be really helpful if you would
forward this newsletter and request to sign up to everyone
in your own address book who may be interested in natural
health products or services.
Kind
regards
Dave
Sloan
NZHT |
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