On Feb. 4, Senators John McCain and Byron Dorgan introduced the Dietary
Supplement Safety Act of 2010 (DSSA), that if passed, will restrict
Americans’ access to nutritional supplements. Hotze Enterprises, a world
leader in the alternative health care industry, is strongly opposed to
this legislation being passed, and encourages consumers to take action.
“This kind of
discretionary authority gives the FDA tyrannical power to ban
supplements, a power they have not hesitated to use when they’ve had it.”
In particular, if the legislation is passed, it will revoke key sections
of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), which was
put into effect in 1994 to protect consumers’ rights to access low-cost
nutritional supplements. The passing of the DSHEA bill immediately
followed the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) attempt to remove
supplements, such as CoQ10, selenium and chromium from the marketplace,
claiming they were inherently dangerous. Presently, the DSHEA protects
supplements if: they are food products that have been in the food supply
and not chemically altered; or if they have been safely sold and used in
the marketplace for several years.
Furthermore, the FDA currently has broad powers to remove dangerous
products from the marketplace. This legislation would expand the FDA’s
powers further, allowing them to use “reasonable probability” to ban
products believed to have significant problems. According to William
Faloon, director of Life Extension Foundation, “This kind of
discretionary authority gives the FDA tyrannical power to ban
supplements, a power they have not hesitated to use when they’ve had it.”