click here to send a message  to a friend


Receive our NZHT NewsLetter
  Subscribe to our mailing lists using the form below  
 

required fields
Email
Preferred format for emails:
Text HTML
First Name
Last Name
City
Country


 
 
Click here for Newsletter Archives page
 
 

The latest newsletter is below
Print friendly Page
NZHT News

NZ Health Trust Newsletter No: 13 - 1st March 2005

We need your help right now! It's time for an update about everything that has been happening in the fight to defeat the proposed Trans Tasman joint agency to regulate all therapeutic products and an urgent call for your support.

Hello to all our supporters, colleagues & friends once again and welcome to new subscribers

This newsletter is to update you on;
Urgent Support campaign
Political update
TGA gets even tougher
Similar battles being fought around the world

URGENT SUPPORT
Have you filled in an “Urgent Support” form yet? As you may know the postcard campaign has finished for now but if you still have stocks of them please continue to distribute them. Over 130,000 cards were printed and sent out by the NZHT and they have done a great job. NZHT's focus has shifted now to our urgent support campaign which asks people to indicate in writing that they agree with the position the NZHT has taken on this issue. This lets us show the politicians just how much opposition there really is to the government’s joint agency proposal. It will also show the amount of support there is for a new NZ regulator based on the recommendations of the first Health Select committee report.

So far we have over 1000 supporters who have filled in and returned the urgent support form. Thanks to you all. Our goal is to get 10,000 initially and given recent statistics showing over 2 million NZ'ers used natural health products in the last 12 months and not forgetting some 10,000 practitioners, plus all the manufacturers, importers, suppliers & retailers etc, that shouldn't be hard! So please if you haven't already – go to the website and fill-in the form now and encourage as many others as you can to do the same.
http://nzhealthtrust.co.nz/urgent_support.php

On the website you can also print copies of the form (for posting or faxing back) or order stocks of pre printed urgent support forms to distribute to friends, clients, colleagues and contacts. http://nzhealthtrust.co.nz/support_forms.html

Remember democracy is a numbers game so the more support we can demonstrate, the more influence we can have.

POLITICAL UPDATE
In our last newsletter we noted that the National party had not decided what its position would be on this issue and had made statements that effectively meant they might vote either way. While a number of encouraging statements have now been made, there is still no certainty over National's position. Statements are made along the lines that they "will not support the proposal UNLESS they are satisfied it will be good for NZ businesses". This may of course come down to which arguments they chose to believe and which businesses they decide to listen to! So it remains important that we all work to let National and the other parties know that this is a key issue leading up to the election and encourage them to commit to voting against the TGA proposal.

TGA GETS TOUGHER
In the wake of the Pan debacle the TGA has continued to get tougher still on the blameless natural products industry (despite it being a pharmaceutical that was behind the Pan problems). Recent reports out of Australia from businesses there include comments such as compliance costs having increased by 800% for one firm, another has had to spend an extra $2 million in compliance costs, another still faces a $1.86 million bill to upgrade their computer systems as now required.

Not only that, the Australian Government has now accepted almost all of the approx 50 expert committee recommendations aimed at increasing the powers of the TGA even more - so the situation is set to get much worse. For details of this report go to http://www.tga.gov.au/cm/cmreponse.pdf
And further to this, the TGA have announced 107 pages of amendments to the TGA Act including draconian criminal penalties. More about this in a future newsletter.

This highlights part of the reason we are determined that the NZ industry will not be sacrificed to the monster that is the Australian TGA.

INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE
Another of the reasons we are fighting the TGA proposal is because it would see natural health products changed from a classification as "foods" and moved to being classed alongside pharmaceuticals. Natural health products provide clear health & therapeutic benefits and they should be able to make proper claims. They are their own separate industry with their own risk profiles & issues. We argue they should be regulated accordingly and not classed as drugs.

This battle is being waged in several other countries around the world as the pharmaceutical industry recognises the influence of natural health on their prime markets and seeks to control this burgeoning industry. Right now our counterparts in Canada have been successful in having the Canadian Parliament consider Bill C-420 which would prevent natural health products being treated as drugs for many of the same reasons the NZHT is fighting this proposal.

The time to stop this is now - do your bit by registering your support of the NZHT and asking friends, colleagues and clients to do the same.

 

 
 

 

 
| Home | About Us | News | Must Read | Documents | Forum | Urgent Support | Newsletter | Contact | Links | Contact your MP |