In an open board meeting yesterday the Food Standards Agency advised health ministers to negotiate with European officials for a two-tier system that would allow the UK to keep its high-dose vitamin supplements on the market.
Brussels will set the maximum levels of vitamins and minerals allowed in supplements for all 25 member states under the new EU food supplements directive, in effect since August.
While it has not yet established these levels, industry is expecting them to be lower than many of those found on the more liberal supplements markets like the UK and Netherlands.
Fearing the significant impact on the supplements market, trade and consumer groups in the UK have been lobbying the government in recent months to bargain for higher levels than those set by the European Union if they add advisory statements about high doses on product labels.
Industry has already adopted such statements on some products after an expert group raised concerns about the safety of some vitamins in a report published in 2003. The move was also designed to demonstrate the feasibility of such a practice in anticipation of restrictive dosages under the EU law.
Yesterday the FSA board, debating the different routes that ministers could take, agreed that "the setting of maximum safe levels of vitamins and minerals in food supplements should be based on scientific risk assessment".
It said its preferred option is "a two tier risk assessment approach enabling maximum safe levels to be established on an EC basis and permitting additional guidance levels to be agreed on a national basis".
Chris Whitehouse, director of the Whitehouse Consultancy which advises the Health Food Manufacturers Association, said the result was good news for industry, and proved the value of intense discussions with ministers.
But he warned: "this is just the start of the real battle, as the UK negotiators have now to convince the European Commission and a majority of other member states to back the UK position. This is no small challenge."
A spokesman at the FSA noted that yesterday's decision will inform the UK's negotiating position but that "we still have to wait for the Commission to come forward with its own proposal".
The Commission has said it will come up with a proposal for maximum permitted levels for vitamins and minerals in 2006 with a view to adopting these as part of the directive by 2007.