For the best part of the last decade there have been various false starts to regulation of health products that are not subject to the strict regulation that applies to prescription medicines. This is an area that needs specific attention. Regular reports of contaminated products, or some that have had chemicals illegally added to them, are a matter of great concern for consumer safety.

As a result of a political agreement between the National party and the Green party, the Ministry is now considering draft legislation on the regulation of natural health products. Here is the link to the Ministry’s consultation document.

NZORD has offered its support to the general approach taken so far by the Ministry in its consultation, but our support is qualified by concern about whether the proposed regime will provide adequate restraint on an apparently small but unprincipled element among marketers of such products. Frequently they prey upon vulnerable people with claims of significant health improvements from unproven and often very expensive products.

We think that any regulations must be firm enough to cope with the worst excesses of this minority element in what seems to be a generally responsible and maturing natural health products industry, while providing for a level of certainty that responsible members of the industry will still be bound by rules that ensure the safety of their products and validity of claims made.

Therefore issues of safety, claims, evidence, manufacturing quality, oversight, advertising, and industry ethics, need to be more robustly addressed. Read the full submission from NZORD in Word format or as a PDF file.

NZORD also notes that one area still to be addressed is the regulation of people who are not registered health professionals, but who offer complementary or alternative healing or therapy services. We hope the government will take steps to ensure this policy gap is filled soon, and avoid the significant harms that occasionally result from the actions of an irresponsible few.