Politics and bodybuilding

[Pseudonym]

And you thought you could escape the NZ election here... :grin:

Being a bit of a political animal, I thought I'd see what the various parties had to offer to bodybuilders. In the process, I found this on the Green party website:

Control of NZ pharmaceutical industry surrendered to Aussies

10 May 05: Control of New Zealand's pharmaceutical and dietary supplement industries is about to be handed to an Australian-based regulator without public approval, said Sue Kedgley. The Trans-Tasman Therapeutic Goods Agency (TTTGA) will regulate all New Zealand pharmaceuticals, dietary supplements, and medical devices. It has a reputation for being draconian, excessively bureaucratic and imposing huge unnecessary compliance costs. While most people support increasing pharmaceutical trade between Australia and New Zealand the same end can be achieved by mutual recognition treaties, as happens in other areas, said Sue.

So what are the parties' positions on this? Well, obviously the Greens oppose it strongly. They will:

Support complementary health care

• Establish a special unit within the Health Ministry to integrate complementary medicine into the public health system
  
• Ensure New Zealand retains control of dietary supplements and does not allow trans Tasman control of dietary supplements.

Jim Anderton's Progressive Party had similar views:

Support the individual's right to use dietary supplements and complementary or traditional health products and treatments, and ensure the continuing availability of these products; recognise that the quality and provision of these treatments through the public health system is a decision for the Ministry of Health to make.

United Future talked about it, but were typically ambiguous...

Establish a CAM (Complementary & Alternative Medicines) Unit within the Ministry of Health to monitor the regulation and development of CAM products and practitioners, and facilitate integration of CAM and conventional medicines and practice where appropriate, as recommended by the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Complementary & Alternative Medicines.

...and so were Act, who barely mentioned it at all.

Move to acceptance of qualified overseas drug evaluations, rather than repeat testing in New Zealand.

Labour, National, NZ First, and the Maori Party made no mention of supplement regulation at all that I could find.

[hrdcor]

this regulation will cause major problems for us here in NZ, we in the industrie have been arguing this point with the Govt for many years now , but they do not listen.Australia ruleings and regulations will (1) increase the price of supplements 2 fold as we will have to change every thing from labels to ingrediants to comply , then they will be asking for each individual product to be registered, at around 10 k a product !!!!!!!,and (2) some products will disappear from our shelves and if they had it there way we would practicly need a doctors script to grt some multi vitiams!!

Be rest asured NZBBers this is going to happen with out opposistion , for no one realy knows about it , except those directly effected at present,

SO I SUGGEST YOU WRITE TO YOUR LOCAL MP AND TELL THEM ,NO , IT IS NOT WHAT YOU WANT AND YOU WILL NOT VOTE FOR THEM IF THEY SUPPORT THIS MOVE, TAKE 5 MINS TO VOICE YOUR THOUGHTS FOR YOUR OWN RIGHT OF CHOICE !!!

Thats my take on the whole thing in summary "it is a bullshit regulation setting which is been pushed by the drug companies as they are loseing far to much revenue to natural supplements '

Well done pseudonym for bringing this to the attention of your NZBB readers

[sponge]

Could this mean that HGH is harder to get by prescription? :shock:

[deegee]

This first came up years ago I remeber sogning a petition against the regulation of supplements last year. australia is far stricter than NZ at the moment if you can believe that and we dont want to go down the same path as them.

I think the proposal I read gave some australian pharmasuteical regulatons power over the NZ supplement industry a riddiculous state of affairs.