The new Director General of the Natural Health Products Directorate (NHPD), Scott Sawler, wrote to the Winkler Morden Voice (Manitoba) newspaper on March 17th and informed Canadians that Health Canada is trying to protect Canadians. In his letter to the editor, he also said that access has not decreased and, instead, it has increased.

Scott said, "Since the introduction of the Natural Health Product regulations the number of NHPs available has not decreased, but, in fact, has grown steadily. Today, Canadians have access to well over 43,000 authorized NHPs and the number continues to grow each day."

In other words, "What are consumers worrying about?"

How could consumers not worry?
Members of HANS have contacted us and told us that natural products that they are relying on for their health are no longer available.

Maybe there is more to this complex picture. Maybe there looks like an impressive number of NPNs, but what are they?

The day after Scott's letter circulated, HANS received the following email, which was forwarded from Bonita Poulin of http://www.mcs-global.org:

"I was absolutely livid today when I went to Choices food market in BC and found Natural Product Numbers (NPN) on the following products:

- Crest tooth paste (with sodium fluoride) NPN # 02245375 

- Rolaids (loaded with all kinds of dyes) NPN # 02247315 

- Red Bull (with aspartame) NPN # 80000012

"The natural health industry cannot receive NPNs for cinnamon, parsley and hundreds of other safe natural health products but these products were fast tracked with NPNs. Go figure?"

The deadline for enforcement has been bumped numerous times; the latest date being June 1st. Don't be surprised if this changes, though. For more information on what is happening on the topic of natural health products in Canada, go to http://www.nhppa.org.>