Back in July, I wrote three blog posts about claims made on the website of a food supplement manufacturer. As well as writing about their claims, I contacted the MHRA and Trading Standards.
The first post pointed out that the firm were selling industrially-produced herbal remedies and making medicinal claims for them. I wrote to the MHRA, linking to the relevant page, and enquired as to whether the claims made were acceptable. I got the following response:
Thank you for your e-mail and for bring this matter to our attention. We do regard these to be inappropriate medicinal claims.
Despite the MHRA regarding the claims made by Principle Healthcare in promoting their herbal remedies to be "inappropriate medicinal claims", they still appear on the Principle Healthcare website.
Parts two and three dealt with what I saw as breaches of the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 and the EU Regulations 1924/2006 on food labelling.
I contacted the Office of Fair Trading regarding the alleged breaches of the former regulations, who advised me to contact the Advertising Standards Authority. The problem with that suggestion is that material on a business's website does not come under the jurisdiction of the ASA.
I also made contact (regarding the alleged breaches of the latter regulations) with the relevant branch of Trading Standards. North Yorkshire Trading Standards have yet to respond to my email - which was sent four months ago.
Rather than waste time chasing up regulatory bodies who have either (a) referred me to another regulatory body that does not have the power to investigate the alleged breaches or (b) failed to even respond to my complaint, I thought it might be worth contacting my MP.
Before doing so I will, out of courtesy, contact the regulatory bodies once more and see if they are willing to actually take some kind of action against the firm in question. Even if it is just to request they remove the offending material from their website.
Wish me luck.
Edit, 15th November: there is now a follow-up post here.
http://layscience.net/trackback/722
Consider your luck wished :-)
Props to you for your tenacity.
Have you tried consumer direct, or emailing Trading Standards?
If 3 or 4 people do it, you may have some success. Send me the info and I will be one of the 3 or 4.
Trading Standards and the MHRA have now received follow-up emails. I will keep you posted.
Nice one, looking forward to seeing what they come up with!
Martin is the editor of layscience.net.
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The MHRA have responded to my follow-up email, but still nothing from Trading Standards. I will probably blog about the responses later this week.
Interesting, looking forward to seeing it.
Martin is the editor of layscience.net.
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