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Are you one of the millions of Americans who use dietary supplements? If so, the American Association for Health Freedom (AAFH) needs your help to defeat Congressional legislation. Imagine you are at your local store to purchase your supplements and you see that their cost has dramatically increased and that a vast number of supplements are no longer on the shelves. What happened? Proposed Congressional legislation, H.R. 3156, was enacted.

HR 3156 would establish legislative authority for the use of risk-benefit analysis in evaluating an ingredient's unreasonable risk; would specify that “presence of even a relatively small risk of a serious adverse health effect” would be considered unreasonable in the absence of a "sufficient benefit;” and would specifically permit FDA to ban any dietary supplement “even though there are uncertainties as to the levels of a dietary ingredient that may present a risk.”

This new bill is the same as one introduced in the last Congress with the addition of one new section that appears to be a direct response to a recent decision by the U.S. District Court to overturn portions of FDA's 2004 ban of ephedra. In that case the Court was asked to rule on FDA's use of risk-benefit analysis and on its reliance on data about one dose of ephedra to ban smaller amounts.

Essentially  HR 3156, which excludes dietary supplements that consist only of vitamin and/or mineral ingredients, is identical to the version proposed in 2003 (HR 3377, 108th Congress). The bill would impact marketers of herbal dietary supplements by amending the law in several ways. It would require companies to submit to FDA every six months a list of their products and product labels and, at the discretion of FDA, a quantitative listing of all ingredients. It would also mandate submission of serious adverse event reports to FDA.

A collective educational grassroots effort is needed to gain Congressional opposition. AAHF is doing what we can and need your personal participation in support of our lobbying efforts. E-MAIL your Congressional Representatives in opposition of this legislation. FORWARD this message to a friend.

Click below to read the bill text.