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Michael Badnarik interview at cc2009

click here for brief description of cc2009

24 • Fall 2009
increase their cost. They are also
expanding FDA censorship, ignoring
First Amendment mandates in five
federal court decisions my clients
won against the agency.
In other words, FDA storm troopers
are not fictive figures in some B-rated
movie or comic; they’re here. The day
when supplements are removed from
the market is not what may happen, it
is happening. The assault on freedom
of informed choice, on your right to
their availability and the health
information concerning them), you
are in for a rude awakening.
FDA Chairman Margaret Hamburg
and her aides, including the highly
controversial, anti-supplement
lawyer Michael R . Taylor, are
implementing a strategy that will
shut down approximately 1/3 of all
supplement companies in the United
States, reduce the availability and
variety of dietary supplements, and
When government denies
you the freedom to choose
foods that are safe and when it
denies you the freedom to exchange
information on the health benefits of
those foods in the market, you may
rightly view yourself the subject of
tyranny. If you thought the “change”
the Obama administration would
bring to FDA would set you free,
would include greater tolerance for
dietary supplements (by protecting
Here Come the
FDA Storm Troopers! By Jonathan W. Emord
receive truthful nutrient information,
is not threatened, it is taking place.
Those who love their freedom of
choice cannot ignore the problem
but must rise against it. Delay or
denial means precious liberties will
be lost along with essential products
that half of all Americans use daily to
protect their health.
A short time ago, FDA reversed the
selenium/cancer risk reduction and
antioxidant/cancer risk reduction
claims that it was required to allow
by federal court order. It did so
unilaterally, along with a series of
additional selenium and antioxidant/
site specific cancer claims. It is now
preparing to declare a new policy on
nutrient claims that will make them all
but extinguished from the American
market. A new age of censorship is
upon us.
Within the last few months, FDA has
engaged in more prosecutorial activity
and has exacted heavier penalties
against sellers of supplements and
homeopathic drugs than ever before
in that short span of time. On the
very thin evidentiary basis of less than
two dozen adverse event reports
(none of which was corroborated)
out of hundreds of millions of units
sold, FDA coerced and cajoled Iovate,
makers of the dietary supplement
hydoxycut, out of the market. FDA
did the same to Matrixx Initiatives,
Inc., makers of Zicam Cold Remedy, a
homeopathic over-the-counter drug.
The days of warning letters followed
by corrective action plans has been
replaced increasingly with direct
threats of prosecution followed by
forced product withdrawals and
consent decrees that put costly
restrictions on supplement companies
that last for years. The new approach
is to attack without proof of harm and
threaten greater adverse action unless
the companies cave and withdraw
products from the market. This is the
method of jack booted thugs, not of
a people who follow the Constitution
or believe in due process of law.
The new GMP regulations pose a
mortal threat to the supplement
industry. If you were sincere about
wanting to protect the public from
the very rare incidence of unsafe
dietary supplements, you would
require testing of finished products.
But if you really wanted to achieve
another objective, a reduction in
the number of companies in the
business and a humbling of those that
remain (intimidating them into doing
precisely what you wish), you would
impose process controls, governing
every aspect of the manufacture,
holding, distribution, and sale of
those products. The latter is what
FDA achieved in the GMPs.
The GMPs make supplement
companies maintain extensive records
of every aspect of production,
holding, and distribution. They are
very onerous and costly. The GMPs
were not invented by FDA; they
were proposed by the industry itself.
Industry leaders, who undoubtedly
understood the anticompetitive
potential of costly new process
controls, recommended them to FDA
through their trade association, the
National Nutritional Foods Association
The new approach
is to attack without
proof of harm and
threaten greater
adverse action unless
the companies
cave and withdraw
products from the
market.
HealthKeepers Magazine • 25