National Post 
Published: Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Re: Unlicensed Natural Health Products May Stay On Market, May 11.

This article states that Health Canada wants to take the unusual step of essentially legalizing thousands of natural health products that have yet to be approved as safe and effective, citing long-standing backlogs for reviewing the remedies. This is a misleading representation of what the government has done. These are products that have been sold safely in Canada for many years. Health Canada's regulations are an official acknowledgment of what government policy has been for some time: if a product licence application has been submitted, Health Canada will perform a preliminary health review and the product can be sold legally.

Natural health products (NHPs) are just that: natural. The law requires that all health claims must be backed by appropriate evidence, and the industry has been regulated by Health Canada in this way for a number of years. With more than 25,000 NHPs now licensed by Health Canada, millions of Canadian consumers now have access to NHPs that are safe, effective and of high quality.

Read online.