However, nutrients not on the list will be banned and it's bad news for the UK, where we have long regarded vitamins and minerals as foods, not medicines.
We face losing some 270 nutrient supplements, including 40 trace elements, most forms of the more bioavailable organic minerals, and most food-state vitamins. And it doesn't end with vitamins and minerals. By 2007, if not before, the directive requires the European Commission to put forward proposals for a similar list, to apply to all nutrient supplements.

But it doesn't stop there.

The THMPD is a part of the existing Pharmaceuticals Directive, currently being amended to widen the scope of drug classification.
According to the amendment, anything that "restores, corrects or modifies physiological function" in the body will be deemed a drug. The directive will have power to take precedence over both the FSD and THMPD.

Public safety is cited as the force behind these directives. Their combined effect, however, could be to drive out, or drive underground many of the herbs and nutrients to which some people swear they owe their health to.
For the 40% per cent of people who use supplements to boost nutrition, this is no laughing matter, while to those using herbs and supplements to relieve chronic pain or life-threatening disease, it must seem like sabotage.

There is good evidence that the nutritional content of our diet has declined drastically over the past 50 years. And studies show that long-term nutrient supplementation has the potential to prevent a range of conditions, including heart disease, cataracts and certain forms of cancer.

'We, as a nation, have a huge problem in looking after our people,' says Sue Croft, a director of Consumers for Health Choice, 'and those of us who take the trouble to keep ourselves well should be encouraged. Yet the very tools we need to do so are being taken away from us by Brussels, and our government is standing by and doing nothing.'
It's disgraceful,' agrees shadow health minister Earl Howe. 'Traditionally, in this country, we've adopted a safety-based approach to licensing products for sale. There's never been any suggestion that our vetting procedures are inadequate in that respect. To have a harmonisation measure foisted upon us for no good reason is a very backward step indeed, and consumers will suffer.'

There are good clinical trials on boron effect on bone health. If you get a good multivitamin that's designed around the menopause, boron will be in there. But boron is off the list, guilty until proved innocent, under European law.
The herbal supplements black cohosh and dong quai can be effective against hot flushes, but their future looks bleak under the THMPD and Pharmaceuticals Directive.
In his 1997 King's Fund lecture on integrated healthcare, the Prince of Wales said: "No knowledge, experience or wisdom from different traditions should be overlooked in efforts to help the suffering." This directive is hardly in that spirit.

The law is spacious enough to allow doctors to prescribe an unlicensed medicine if they believe it may be effective. Patients have to be told that the medicine is unlicensed, and to sign a consent form. What doctors cannot tell patients is what they think the stuff will do, since this would be to make a medicinal claim.
Hospital dieticians still tell cancer patients to combat cachexia, or wasting, with high-calorie cakes, pork pies and burgers. However, pioneers of integrated medicine, such as Dr Julian Kenyon at the Dove Clinic, near Winchester, propose a wholefood regime free of meat, dairy products and sugar, designed to push the acid/alkaline balance of the body towards an alkaline environment, in which, they say, tumours cannot thrive.

How can such well-intentioned legislation be so onerous? To understand, look first at which products are berthed in the safe harbour of the FSD positive list, and which are left out. The positive list excludes natural, organic substances, which, say campaigners, are the most innovative and most readily absorbed.
But, then, the list has not been drawn up on the basis of research into the safety of available supplements. The list is one they made earlier, and has no consideration of food supplementation.
Critics point to the fact that it sanctions the use of sodium and potassium hydroxides, powerful caustic agents that no one would want to supplement ("If swallowed," runs the safety advice, "drink plenty of water and call for immediate medical help.")
Selenium, a mineral in which the British diet is known to be deficient is one. Inorganic selenite and selenate are on the list, but two organic forms, selenomethionine and selenium yeast, are not. This despite the fact that selenomethionine (the primary form, in foods such as Brazil nuts) and selenium yeast are safer and more bioavailable.
"The science simply does not add up," says David Hinde, legal director of the Alliance for Natural Health. The Alliance has mounted one of two separate legal challenges to the FSD (alongside the NAHS and the Health Food Manufacturers' Association), which were heard in the high court on 31 January, when Mr Justice Richards was persuaded that both had an arguable case and agreed that both should be referred to the European Court as soon as possible.

In court, the government was put in the lowly position of defending the directive proposed by the European Commission in Brussels. When asked why there was this prohibition, They were reduced to saying, "Well, because of safety." That's like saying we are incapable of regulating our supplements as food in this country, even though we've done so for many years.'
The judge, most helpfully, wants to push things along. The ANH is hopeful we'll get a court case before the ban is set to come in.
That was the way Dr Max Gerson's thoughts were running in the 1920s, in a far less toxic world. And it is how Dr Robert Verkerk's thoughts are running now. Previously a research fellow at Imperial College, Dr Robert Verkerk left to set up the ANH. Researching sustainable agriculture, he had seen how low in nutrients our soil is, and if nutrients are not in the soil they are not in the food grown there. If they are not in the food they most certainly are not in us.

"Let food be thy medicine," said Hippocrates, yet precious few of the doctors who have sworn the Hippocratic oath, or one of its versions, have taken this in. In the Editor's Choice column in the BMJ, Richard Smith wrote: "Although many patients are convinced of the importance of food in both causing and relieving their problems, many doctors' knowledge of nutrition is rudimentary. Most feel much more comfortable with drugs than foods, and the "food as medicine" philosophy of Hippocrates has been largely neglected

The idea of setting safe maximum limits on supplements is also highly questionable. In many EU countries, they are limited to three times the recommended daily amount, and this could be imposed across the board. But, with RDAs, you need to think low standard, not gold standard.
The RDA is not a scientific score for a nutrient. It's the level that prevents deficiency, and if you take the case of vitamin C, it started at 30mg, then went to 45mg, then 60mg, while in America it's 85mg. Now, 30mg does prevent scurvy, (but isn't enough to keep you healthy) and scientists on the panels who decide RDAs are gradually thinking that more might be better.

The official EU classification of a drug, meanwhile, throws up some priceless thoughts. There are two parts to the definition of a drug. One is that anything that claims to treat, prevent or cure a disease is a medicine. So, I suppose, if you're selling apples and say "An apple a day keeps the doctor away," it's against the Medicines Act. So, if something restores, corrects or modifies physical function in the body, it can be classed as a drug (does that mean food).
This is not to say that there are no concerns about the use of herbs and supplements, and in particular about how they interact with prescription drugs. Dong quai, feverfew, St John's wort and ginkgo, for instance, are contraindicated with warfarin. But, then, so is cranberry juice.
Warfarin is the sodium salt form of rat poison. Cranberry juice is rich in antioxidants and potent against cystitis. Anyone on warfarin should be advised to avoid it, but it would be strange to say that cranberry juice is also dangerous.

In February 1992, the consumer research body Social Audit reported, on the basis of four studies between 1981 and 1988, that more than 10,000 hospital beds are taken up at any one time by people suffering adverse reactions (ADR) to prescription drugs.
I think we are less conscious that drugs are a major cause of mortality in the Western world. In May 1998, The Journal of the American Medical Association reported that each year, prescription drugs injure approximately 1.5m people so severely that they require hospitalisation, and 100,000 die. That puts the health concerns over herbs into perspective.

The Alliance for Natural Health at least has the green light to make its case to the European Court. "The doors are closing," says Robert Verkerk, "but our recent court success tells us that the EU may have overstretched its powers. We believe that bringing this case to the European Court of Justice might elicit the paradigm shift needed by our healthcare system, currently splitting at the sides."

The fight doesn't end there. Today Europe, tomorrow the world. Similarities have been noted between the EU's Food Supplements Directive and the Codex Alimentarius Draft Guidelines for Vitamin and Mineral Supplements. Codex is about harmonisation on a global scale. US health freedom campaigners are watching nervously, mindful that the US will have only one vote, compared with the expanded EU's 25-strong block vote. If the legal challenges succeed, it will pose a potent obstacle to the plan to impose Codex worldwide.
If they fail... Well, ultimately you have to ask yourself.?

This is what the Americans term a wake-up call.
I prefer the English word 'alarm'.
Be alarmed. Be very alarmed.

Alliance for Natural Health 01252 371 275
Consumers for Health Choice 020 7222 4182
Health Creation helpline 0845 009 3366