We couldn’t have done it without you, and the help of other health advocacy organizations. Much more remains to be accomplished in 2015.

Nutrition Facts Panel

FDA proposed a new 109-page set of rules for revising nutrition and supplement labels. It included a provision that would have banned the word “folate” from supplement labels, even though the human body needs natural folate to synthesize and repair DNA. Banning the word on the label was a roundabout way of banning this vital natural vitamin and turning it over to drug companies for their exclusive use. The rule would also decrease the recommended daily amounts of many important vitamins and minerals, even though many RDAs are already too low to have any real therapeutic effects.

In response, ANH-USA, together with the Organic Consumers Association and the Weston A. Price Foundation, submitted formal comments to the FDA. Our comments contain forty pages of legal and scientific analysis conducted by ANH-USA. We will consider legal action if FDA does not address our concerns.

Protecting Supplement Access

We fought the FDA’s recent attempt to stop supplement research. The agency wants to require Investigational New Drug applications costing millions for clinical studies of the healing effects of foods and supplements, followed by human trials costing billions. We regard this as another roundabout way of eliminating food and supplements from any potential competition with FDA approved patented drugs.

The idea of doing this by effectively stopping research on food and supplements is appalling, particularly coming from a federal agency supposedly charged with protecting our health. We interviewed many prominent researchers who expressed their opposition to this guidance, then submitted formal comment, and you sent thousands of messages to the FDA. We will continue and win this fight in 2015.

GMOs

    We defeated the King Amendment. This was a dangerous piece of legislation that was tacked onto the must-pass Farm Bill at the last minute (a frequent tactic for politicians who don’t want their rider to be scrutinized or even noticed in all the rush). This rider would have undone state-level control of GMO labeling and farm animal protections.
    We lobbied against—and successfully stopped—the so-called Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2014, a deceptive bill designed to undercut state level GMO labeling laws (since federal law trumps state law). However, we expect the bill to be re-introduced in the next session of Congress.
    We helped win passage of Vermont’s admirable no-strings-attached GMO labeling law.

Compounding

Last year we secured important amendments to the compounding legislation, and we are now closely monitoring the rule-making process. You may recall that last May, the Senate Appropriations Committee criticized the FDA for ignoring doctors, patients, and compounding pharmacists by issuing proposed new rules on compounding without sufficiently consulting stakeholders.