Congress wants more power to ban our Supplements!!

Carol. thank you for starting this thread. We need to be proactive before the right to choose our individual  treatment plans are stripped away. 

FDA Running Extortion Racket: Natural Supplement Companies Threatened with Arrest if They Don't Pay Up
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

Drug Administration is running a criminal extortion racket designed to drain cash from health supplement companies and shift it into the pockets of top FDA contractors. This organized crime operation has been running for years, and it has operated with impunity because each company targeted by the scam feels isolated and alone, unable to face the astronomical legal bills of going to court and battling the FDA. So one by one, they agree to "settle" with the FDA for crimes they never committed. Part of the settlement, of course, involves the payment of FDA employees or contractors who pocket the money extorted from health companies.

(NaturalNews) NaturalNews has learned the U.S. Food and NaturalNews has interviewed executives from three different companies who have been targeted for extortion by U.S. Food and Drug Administration employees. At their request, the names of those companies are being kept confidential until legal action being taken against them is resolved. Interviews have been recorded, with permission, with two of those companies and will be released to the public at a later date. Documents proving this FDA extortion racket are included here.

How the FDA extorts money from nutritional supplement companies.
The FDA extortion racket works like this: FDA employees use keyword-scanning software to scan the web pages of natural health product and supplement companies, searching for terms like cancer, cures, treatment, remedies and other "forbidden" words. FDA employees then review the discovered pages to determine if they contain any words that might inform consumers of the health benefits of the nutritional products. FDA employees also look for links that might point web users to scientific articles from peer-reviewed medical journals that further explain the health benefits of specific foods, supplements or nutrients.

When offending words or links are found by the FDA, their extortion team goes into full swing. First, they contact the company and warn them to remove all information and links from their websites. This is the most important step from the FDA's standpoint, because by doing this, they can keep the health-conscious public in a state of nutritional ignorance about the scientifically-supported healing properties of natural supplements. Cherry products, for example, cannot link to scientific articles explaining the simple biological fact that cherries ease inflammation in human beings. Such links are considered "drug claims" by the FDA.

Continue reading at: http://www.naturalnews.com/024567_health_the_FDA_websites.html

Carol, Efflorescing, and Nan: Thanks for the information. It is important that we all register our disagreement.

Hate to sound negative, but you all do know that about half of all supplements sold in this country do not contain what is on the label, according to Consumer Reports?

And that the FDA can't do anything about it, because the Supplements industry has its own congresscritter - Orin Hatch from Utah the Senator from the Supplements Industry.

These people have managed to remove all consumer protections from their industry - there is no protection against fatal substances - like Ephedra. I'm an asthmatic, and that stuff is vicious, but the supplements industry sells it as a weight loss product. Congress finally managed to ban it, but not before many young women had died.

Natural doesn't mean safe - unless you like the side effects of natural substances like foxglove and botulism

John McCain Files New Bill Attacking Your Access to Supplements

http://www.resistnet.com/forum/topics/john-mccain-files-new-bill

The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA) defines dietary supplements as food and not drugs. This is critical to maintaining access to high quality, natural food-supplements. A natural product, by definition, may not be patent-protected. if supplements were categorized as drugs and required to go through the new-drug approval process, we would see most of our supplements disappear.

The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, which spells out regulations regarding the manufacture and sale of dietary supplements, defines a dietary supplement as "a product (other than tobacco) intended to supplement the diet that bears or contains one of more of the following dietary ingredients: a vitamin, a mineral, an herb or other botanical, an amino acid, a dietary substance for use by man to supplement the diet by increasing the total dietary intake; or a concentrate, metabolite, constituent, extract, or combination of any ingredient noted in clause (A), (B), (C), (D), or (E)." The act defines permissible labeling claims and places the burden of proof on the Food and Drug Administration to show that a product is unsafe. It also outlines safety requirements for new dietary ingredients.

But Dietary Supplements are regulated...you will hear the media, big pharma and politicians claim they are unsafe and unregulated and for OUR SAFETY they need new regulations and laws.
DSHEA grants the FDA the authority to regulate dietary supplements in two important respects. First, the FDA regulates product labeling. Whenever a marketer wants to make a claim about a supplement, it must submit the proposed claim to the FDA within 30 days after its first use. Claims are limited to "general structure function" and as a rule may not assert that a product prevents or treats disease. The FDA may stop the manufacturer from advertising the claim if it is deemed impermissible. Second, DSHEA holds supplement manufacturers to what are known as "good manufacturing practices." In addition, the Federal Trade Commission maintains authority over supplement advertising:

Manufacturers must report truthfully what their products contain and must have proof backing up any claims they make. Finally, the Dietary Supplement and Nonprescription Drug Consumer Protection Act of 2006 requires what's known as "adverse event reporting."

This new bill (The Dietary Supplement Safety Act (DSSA)) is being introduced by Senator McCain that will grant the FDA even greater power over supplements and alternative health treatments. It would repeal key sections of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA). It would give the FDA full discretion and power to compile a discreet list of supplements allowed to remain on the market while banning all others. Under this bill, this same Agency could quite arbitrarily ban any supplement it wished or turn it over to drug companies to be developed as a drug and sold for multiples of its price as a supplement.

Here is something to be concerned about...McCains Dietary Supplement Safety Act (DSSA) appears to be supported by the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) which is funded by major league sports teams including baseball, football and others. The recent suspensions of NFL and other professional sports figures is much in the news, and the goal of the sports industry appears to be to shift the spotlight from their players to the supplements industry. In his comments, Senator McCain cited six NFL players recently suspended for testing positive for banned substances and purportedly exposed to these substances through dietary supplements.

The problem here of course is one of illegal sale and use of steroids.
They are going to try and include the supplements you and I buy at our health food store with the banned substances misused by athletes and will dismantle the supplement industry in order to control already illegal substances. The FDA currently has complete and total authority to stop illegal steroids and to regulate dietary supplements. If the agency were doing its job, it could and would have prevented the sale of illegal steroids. The answer to this problem is not to give the FDA more power. The Agency simply needs to do its job!!

We really need to stop this before it gets anywhere and with this kind of money behind it we need to work fast!