“The window for requesting the European Court to destroy the Health Claims Regulation closes towards the end of July 2012, two months after the expected publication in the Official Journal of the Commission Regulation,” writes European nutrition industry veteran, Bert Schwitters, of his DeFacto Publications self-published tomb.
The EC publication he refers to is the article 13, general function, 222-claim strong positive claims list that has passed European Parliament committee scrutiny and is set to be written into the law, possibly next month. Some 2000 or so claims have been rejected in that process.
Schwitters continued: “Once this window is closed, there may be no other opportunities to shed light in the black-out imposed by the Claims Regulation. Now is the time to speak up. The European Nutrition and Health Claims Regulation must be destroyed, so that the right to speak truthful words may be resurrected.”
Commercial speech control
The book,Health Claims Censored: The Case Against the European Health Claims Regulation, defends the state of nutrition science and its right to passage into commercial speech.
“Lest we forget, the Claims Regulation not only prohibits misleading commercial statements, it also prohibits correct, informative and non-misleading statements made by food business operators,” Schwitters writes.
“The European Parliament doesn't seem to mind. It follows the common political opinion that words spoken by industry and business are inherently dangerous and fraudulent and need to be checked a priori, i.e. before they're stated.”
He said the regulation passed control of free speech to the state, “and replaces industry and business as sources of health-related information with a State-register of authorised statements.”
“In the European Union, the State is now the exclusive source of information concerning the effects of products on human health. Instead of destroying the law that destroyed the right to speak, the European Parliament condoned that commercial communicators shall now be deprived of the right to speak about nutrition and health.”
“A Pyrrhus Victory for consumer protection, because what was gained in terms of protection was lost in terms of useful and truthful information. Not to speak of what was lost in terms of human rights.”
More about the book can be found here.