The post-BREXIT deregulation of quackery in the UK

In the UK, a new post-Brexit regulatory framework is being proposed for food supplements by the government. The nutraceutical sector is estimated to be worth £275bn globally and £4bn in the UK.  A new report claims that “science is starting to point the way to a new sector of nutritional products with increasingly explicable and/or verifiable medicinal benefits, which needs to be reflected in our regulatory framework.” Tory MP George Freeman, one of the authors of the report, was quoted saying:

“We are living through an extraordinary period of technological change – not just in life science but in host of sectors: from AI to robotics to agri-tech, nutraceuticals, nanotechnology, synthetic biology, biofuels, satellites and fusion energy. The UK is indeed a ‘science superpower’. But we have traditionally been woeful at commercialising here in the UK. There are many reasons. But, in recent years, the EU’s increasingly slow, bureaucratic and ‘precautionary’ approach – copied in Whitehall – has made the EU and the UK an increasingly poor place to commercialise new technology.”

If a product like a food or a herbal remedy makes ‘medicinal’ claims, it is currently regulated by the MHRA. If a product only makes general ‘health’ claims, it is regulated by the Department of Health and Social Care in England, by the FSA in Wales and Northern Ireland, and by Food Standards Scotland in Scotland. This ‘patchwork of regulators’ is bound to change as it is deemed to create additional costs and uncertainty for businesses who would like to see the relevant functions brought together in a central regulatory body and a clearer UK landscape.

In response to the task force’s report, PM Boris Johnson stated that bold and ambitious ideas such as these are needed to encourage growth and innovation:

“The Government, through our Better Regulation Committee, is already hard at work on reform of the UK’s regulatory framework. Your bold proposals provide a valuable template for this, illustrating the sheer level of ambitious thinking needed to usher in a new golden age of growth and innovation right across the UK. So we will give your report the detailed consideration it deserves, consult widely across industry and civil society, and publish a response as soon as is practicable.”

Am I the only one who feels more than a little uneasy about all this? I honestly do not see much new science that, according to the report, points to ‘verifiable medicinal benefits’ of food supplements or nutraceuticals. What the report does however point to, I fear, is that the UK government is about to deregulate quackery with a view to making some entrepreneurs wealthy snake oil salesmen at the cost of public health and wealth.

I hope I am mistaken.