Government of Canada Highlights Successes of New Process for Natural Health Products

New improved process gets on-going results for Canadians

April 11, 2013
For immediate release

Vancouver - Today, Parliamentary Secretary of Health, Dr. Colin Carrie highlighted the ongoing success of Health Canada's more efficient approach to natural health products (NHPs), with more than 60,000 products authorized.

"By reducing the burden for authorizing those natural health products that we know a lot about, Health Canada can focus its efforts on evaluating the more complex ones," Dr. Carrie said at the Canadian Health Food Association Trade Show in Vancouver.

While the new approach is more efficient, safety remains the Government of Canada's top priority. Under the new approach, the measures in place to protect consumer safety stay the same, and products continue to be labelled with important information to help consumers make informed choices.

"The Government of Canada takes the health and safety of Canadians seriously," said Dr. Carrie. "As we demonstrated again in the recent federal budget, we're also committed to operating as efficiently as possible."

The new approach played a key role in clearing the backlog of more than 10,000 natural health product applications and has created a stable, predictable regulatory environment for the efficient review of these products.

Health Canada will continue to work with the natural health products industry to ensure all NHPs sold in Canada have natural product numbers (NPNs). Products bearing NPNs have been authorized by Health Canada and are safe and effective when used according to the instructions on the label.

The new approach is in keeping with the Natural Health Products Regulations, which have been in place since 2004 and continue to set the standard and requirements for authorizing NHPs in Canada.

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Media Enquiries:

Health Canada
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Cailin Rodgers
Office of the Honourable Leona Aglukkaq
Federal Minister of Health
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