The precautionary principle mandates intervention to save the environment and - most importantly - our health from degradation in the case of a pressing danger, even if all the scientific data are not yet on hand. It is invoked when we face threats from chemicals, radiation or other causes. The principle seems important, yet it is difficult to find an authoritative definition. The European Union has issued a communication in February 2000, which is all about how to apply the principle, but the writers manage not to define the term in the EU context.
The city of San Francisco, in its own implementation of the precautionary principle which I reported previously, gives a definition:
Where threats of serious or irreversible damage to people or nature exist, lack of full scientific certainty about cause and effect shall not be viewed as sufficient reason for the City to postpone measures to prevent the degradation of the environment or protect the health of its citizens.
But now it appears that this very principle that is supposed to protect us from harm is being employed to eliminate our first-line defenses against those very threats.
Byron Richards' book - Fight for your Health - digs into and exposes the FDA's efforts to eliminate supplements in the US.
Nutritional sufficiency is a first line defense against the degradation of health. This is of course enshrined in the concept of the RDA, the recommended dietary allowances, which guard against the known deficiency diseases in about 98 % of the population and we might call that passive prevention. Go one step further, and you have the concept of optimal nutrition. Comparatively larger amounts of nutrients than those which prevent deficiencies will fight infection, prevent heart disease and keep cancer at bay, and we might say that this is active prevention. Toxic chemicals, including pharmaceutical medicines, tremendously increase our need for nutritive input.
Both in Europe and the US, the trend of legislation and regulation is going in the opposite direction: If bureaucrats have their way, we will have a greatly reduced choice of supplements and lower doses of nutrients available to counter the constant onslaught on our health.
The European Commission has passed legislation to regulate the market of food supplements. The approach of the European food supplements directive is highly prescriptive, that is, both dosages of nutrients and allowed ingredients are to be tightly regulated, provoking fears that many of the supplements people use will simply no longer 'qualify' and will vanish from the shelves of local health food stores. This is done in the name of the market, to facilitate trade, and any expected hardship for consumers is justified by the need for achieving "a high level of protection for human life and health."