At the time, Paul Taylor, a consumer advocate who lives in the UK, commented:

The Health and Consumer Protection Directorate-General states that it is keen to obtain the view of stakeholders on how these issues might be addressed and says that it is issuing the paper as a part of the consultation process. The paper asks a number of specific questions on which the Commission is seeking comments, and a dedicated e-mail box has been created for responses SANCO-VITAMINS-AND-MINERALS@EC.EUROPA.EU which should reach the Commission by 30 September 2006.

Significantly perhaps, the paper concludes with an Annex giving examples of existing models for the setting of maximum amounts of vitamins and minerals in foods. These include a model developed by the French Agency of Food Safety (AFSSA); a model developed by the Danish Institute of Food and Veterinary Research; the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment’s “Derivation of Maximum Levels of Vitamins and Minerals Added to Foods Based on Risk Assessment”; ILSI Europe’s ‘Vitamins and minerals: a model for safe addition to foods’; and ERNA/EHPM’s “Vitamin and Mineral Supplements: A Risk Management Model”. Of these, the ERNA/EHPM is the only model that appears to bear any real resemblance to what we would advocate, but this is still less than satisfactory and sets maximum supplement levels of 2mg for manganese and 15mg for zinc. Moreover, given that the other models all appear to be restrictive and highly conservative it would appear that the ERNA/EHPM model has only been included as a token gesture. As such it is now abundantly clear which road the European Commission is trying to push things down.

Paul's alert prompted me to work out and submit to the Commission some comments that stress the necessity of taking into account the positive side of nutrition, instead of focusing exclusively on the - highly unlikely - side effects of 'overdosing' on nutrients. These comments were submitted by the Italian consumer group La Leva di Archimede.

Two Dutch scientists who specialize in questions of environmental risks argue much along the same lines in a paper soon to be published in the journal Environmental Liability, but already submitted to the European Commission as part of this consultation process. Their work benefited from a grant by the International Nutrition Company (INC).

The paper, titled Food Supplements and Fortified Foods: a Scientific and Managerial Rejoinder to EC Policies shows how the proposed legislative restrictions of nutrient dosages in foods and supplements will actually worsen, instead of protecting, consumer health - quite apart from discouraging innovation in nutritional science and healthy food products. The Dutch scientists Hanekamp and Bast argue that regulation of supplements and nutrition in general should not be "before the fact" with hugely complicated and restrictive sets of rules that stifle both choice and innovation, but that an "after the fact" approach would be much more appropriate. They introduce the concept of Normal Intended Use, the recommended use as described on a product label, as a central feature for the regulation of supplement dosages. Supplements must be safe in conditions of normal use they argue.