The Supplement World is Changing - Health Canada Updates
A few weeks ago a customer came in, visibly upset. Not at me., but FOR me. She was the first person to tell me about the drastic changes Health Canada was implementing for natural health product businesses (us, in terms of our Collagen). I dove into my own research and at first everything I could find was very fear based information . . . it felt extreme and unverified, so I decided to step back and wait until I could read the report put out directly from Health Canada. Now that I have had a chance to dive in and start to understand some of the changes coming, I thought some of you would be interested as well.
The research and reading I have done so far was focussed in the area of how it will effect me, as a health product manufacturer - so this article is not meant to cover all of the bases in terms of a consumer stand point.
In order to better regulate health products, Health Canada is proposing huge fee changes for natural health businesses (think supplements, adaptogens, vitamins). We LOVE the idea of a better regulated industry . . . but the fees they are implementing to make it happen are astronomical and the power the government will hold over regulating this industry is extreme. New fees will be implemented for site licenses, pre market evaluations and the right to sell. New requirements for packaging will make for expensive changes as well. Health Canada is moving to impose new regulatory burdens and give itself a lot more power over the health product community. It will cause many businesses to close, and others to drastically increase prices. For consumers, it means rising costs and many products disappearing from shelves.
At GLJ our brand promise is to help people FEEL GOOD. Sharing bad news has never been are vibe . . . but we know a lot of you come to us as a trusted source for information, and we wanted to loop you in with what we found. We’ll work to keep you in the loop as we learn more in regards to what we can try and do to stop these changes from going into effect.
This article is meant to give you the briefest of summaries from the perspective of a manufacturer of health products.
At the end of the article I share a link directly to the initiative from Health Canada
as well as useful discussion from the National Health Product Protection Association.
I wouldn’t have been able to gather this information without my amazing colleague Nicollette, who helped find the facts and presented them to me in digestible bite size servings. From there, I was ready to dive in and get educated. Nicollette was a HUGE part of us getting our site license to be a health + drug manufacturer in the first place when I decided I wanted to sell our own line of collagen. She spent the bulk of an entire year, using 2-3 shifts per week on the paper work to get us there.
It was a massive undertaking.
Summary of Changes
from the perspective of a health product manufacturer
SITE LICENSE - New Fees. (Currently free)
A site license is required for company’s like us, to prove that our manufacturing practices in our facility are up to standard. So far this has always been free, but moving forward fees will be based on a variety of things such as importing, manufacturing, and packaging. Fees will range from $4000-$40,000. That fee is just the application fee. Basically paying the government to process the application. For company’s like us who already have a license, we will incur a renewal fee, which is new as well.
What we find pretty wild, is that it’s not just a flat fee for the application, but rather, each activity has its own fee. Importing, manufacturing, packaging, and labelling each have their own fee. And each fee is in the thousands of dollars annually.
PRODUCT LICENSE - New Fees. (Currently free)
This is an annual right to sell fee for each individual product. Fees range between $1000 and $58,000 per sku. For small businesses with multiple skus this makes doing business unaffordable. This is the main reason why these changes will force many small business to close or move operations outside of Canada. Luckily for us, we only have one sku - Collagen, so we are hopeful we may be able bear the burden of these fees . . . but we have a lot of work ahead of us to figure it out.
ADMINISTRATIVE BURDENS - Drastically increased
Maintaining the records and application takes a lot of time, and therefore wages will drastically increase in order to process everything.
PACKAGING - Changes required
With so much more information required, it will require companies to re-design their packaging and in some cases make their packaging bigger to fit everything in.
NEW PRODUCT APPROVAL + HEALTH CLAIMS - Changes coming
This is big. We don’t love the amount of power Health Canada will now have over the health product community and what they are allowed to say. Far stricter guidelines are being put into place when it comes to natural health products - making it harder for consumers to find which health products could help them.
NEW INSPECTIONS - Why all these fees are happening
Inspections are great because they keep companies accountable for good manufacturing practices and we are all for it! It’s like being prepared for a test. We know it’s coming, and we want to get an A+. So we stay on top of things and we are always inspection ready. We welcome more inspections - this part we are on board for. HOWEVER - more inspections will cost Health Canada money, and the money has to come from somewhere. Hence all of the above changes to fees.
Canada already has some pretty strict regulations compared to other countries (such as the US) when it comes to getting a Site License, creating products, and making health claims. With these added fees and restrictions, many companies (who have the means to do so), will be moving their business outside of Canada.
Summary of Changes
from the perspective of a customer
The big pro that Health Canada is claiming is that products we will be better regulated and therefore; safer and more reliable. The cons will be that there will be less of them including the disappearance of products themselves and way few company’s manufacturing in Canada. Inevitably, this affects jobs and the ability you have to buy Canadian made supplements. They will be much more expensive to buy as well because companies are going to have to increase their prices to consumers to cover these new costs. It will dramatically reduce the number of natural health products you can buy and the number of natural health practitioners. There will be far less innovation and new products in the future and health Canada will be silencing truthful health information by not allowing it on packaging - making it harder for consumers to find which health products could aid their health concern.
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