Entrenched Principles;
- The primary goal of health regulation should be to advance and protect the best interests and health freedoms of consumers.
- Regulation should seek not to unnecessarily limit consumer choice but rather to ensure safety through appropriate good manufacturing practices and clear labelling laws. Product efficacy should only be a secondary goal no more restrictive than for other industries.
- Regulation should only be used where it can be tangibly shown to further the good of consumers
- New Zealand should set its own standards and control its own industries. It must not cede control
- Regulation should be appropriate to each industry based on the actual risk profiles of that industry. Natural health should be regulated through a stand alone regulator, not as a division of a larger pharmaceutical or food regulator.
- For regulatory purposes evidence should be defined to include empirical evidence, effects and results, traditional use and good science.
- Traditional and cultural products, remedies and treatments should be preserved and access to them protected
- It should be illegal to suppress any product, treatment or device which can be shown to be safe and have positive results.
- Natural Health Products should be maintained as a health option for consumers and protected from commercial attacks from competing industries.
- The right to make claims for products, treatments and devices should be protected on the basis that evidence is held.
- The right to advertise and educate the public about health products and services and medical devices in an appropriate way should be protected.
- Innovation must be encouraged and the regulatory system should be sure to accommodate innovation in a financially feasible way.
- Health professionals should be obliged to advise patients of all health choices including natural alternatives
- Regulation should be designed so as to enable low volume products and devices to still be marketed in a financially viable way.
- Naturally occurring ingredients should only be controlled by way of prohibited or controlled lists (black list approach – innocent until proven guilty) and not by a pre approved ingredient list (white list approach – guilty until proven innocent)
- There should not be maximum levels of naturally occurring ingredients unless there is clear evidence of significant risk to a wide section of society without such limits.
- Penalties should be appropriate to the offence and relative to all other non health industries.
- Every penalty imposed should be subject to review by a genuinely independent authority and in a manner affordable to small and medium sized enterprises.
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