The federal government has introduced Bill C-51, An Act to Amend the Food and Drugs Act, to help modernize the regulation of health products and food. It provides new tools to more quickly and effectively protect Canadians and provides better information to allow Canadians to play a more active role in their own health and safety.

These are worthy goals. Recently however, a number of misconceptions have been raised regarding the impact of Bill C-51 upon the regulation of, and access to, Natural Health Products (NHPs).

Simply put, Bill C-51 is not focussed on NHPs and will not affect the manner in which these products are regulated in Canada. Under Bill C-51 Canadians will continue to have access to NHPs that are safe, effective and of high quality.

A regulatory framework specific to natural health products has been in place since January 1, 2004.  The Natural Health Products Regulations establish pre-market requirements for the safety, efficacy and quality of the products and require a site licence as evidence of compliance with good manufacturing practices in sites where these products are manufactured, packaged, or labelled.

There is misconception that this Bill will remove the majority of natural health products from the market.  The Bill specifically recognizes that different product classes have different standards of evidence.  The standards of evidence for NHPs, which allow for a full range of evidence from traditional use to full clinical trials, will remain unchanged. 

Bill C-51 is intended to allow for the flexibility of individual product lines (such as NHPs) to continue to be regulated proportional to their risk and accounting for their unique product profiles.

I think Bill C-51 is a step forward that allows you to know the products you buy are safe to use. What do you think?