Are Harsh Regulations Causing Health Food Stores to Go Out of Business?
Behind the scenes, NHP businesses are under regulatory stress that the consumer is unaware of. And more regulatory burden is coming.
After 46 years in business, Kardish Health Food Centre is closing its remaining stores in Ottawa. This is a family run business that has served the Ottawa area since 1979. More closures are coming.
The natural health community is being smothered by a regulatory burden first imposed by Health Canada in 2004.
We are told we need this ever-stricter regulatory burden to keep us safe. In reality the regulations are the danger. There was no risk to justify this regulatory burden. A risk analysis by Professor Ron Law when the regulations were being imposed revealed that we were 17 times more likely to be killed by lightning than by a natural health product (NHP). Our risk of being struck by lightning is so small that it is not a concern. So why are we losing NHPs over an even smaller risk?
Never before has so much money been spent over nothing. We have likely given Health Canada a billion dollars to regulate NHPs. And natural health product companies have spent billions more trying to comply with the regulations. In the U.S. the same products are unregulated. We have spent billions of dollars to no effect. Canadian products are not any demonstrably safer than unregulated U.S. products.
The money we have wasted in the name of “safety” has actually made us unsafe. Canadian companies have had to pass on the costs of complying with the regulatory burden. This means that the cost of Canadian NHPs is higher than the cost for the same products in the U.S. We cannot compete. Many low income Canadians can no longer afford NHPs. Many Canadians purchase the less expensive U.S. products online. These online purchases are made without the benefit of advice from trained staff in a store.
Online purchases of less expensive U.S. products are causing local Canadian stores like Kardish to go out of business. My experience is that stores ensure they have well-trained staff to help us know which NHPs to take, and how we should use them. If we lose the resource of our local health food stores, we lose this valuable guidance. This is going to lead to poor health outcomes.
And it is getting worse. Behind the scenes NHP businesses are under regulatory stress that the consumer is unaware of. And more regulatory burden is coming. Health Canada is planning on imposing new fees this year that will result in higher prices and fewer products.
We need to stop this. We need to turn back the clock to when we were unregulated. We need to enact the Charter of Health Freedom to ensure our health freedom (www.charterofhealthfreedom.org). We need to protect businesses like Kardish that have protected us.
