Health Freedom disputes the decision regarding an advertising complaint made by Michelle Beckett of Natural Products New Zealand.

The complaint referred to statements made in a newspaper advertisement and on radio.

Annette King’s statement in today’s New Zealand Herald that she was up against hundreds of thousands of dollars is incorrect and highly misleading. The campaign was fought on a shoestring, approximately $11,000 worth of radio advertisements and $12,000 worth of Newspaper ads. A significant portion of the costs were raised from public donations collected at the Health Freedom rallies. It is hypocritical to imply we were well funded when she spent at least $6 million trying to get the bill passed, and the person who made the complaint, Michelle Beckett of Natural Products New Zealand represents an organization that has received thousands of dollars of tax payers money.

We believe we can justify all the statements made in the advertisements. We believe that if the Advertising Standards Authority did not think we provided sufficient evidence for various points, then they should have asked for clarification.

Of the two most important points outlined in today’s NZ Herald ‘that 60% of products would be forced from shelves’ this came from a statement made by Tony Ryall during parliamentary question time;
Hon Tony Ryall: Can the Minister understand why New Zealanders are so strongly opposed to her plan to cover natural health products when the Government’s own papers state that 60 to 65 percent of the products that are currently on shop shelves now will be wiped from those shelves under this proposal and when the advice of one of New Zealand’s leading natural health products companies is that the cost of regulating a product will go from $2,700 to $64,000 under her plan—a plan that she has mucked up completely?
The 60-65% figure was not refuted by Annette King, although she had the opportunity to do so. If these comments are accepted in parliament, and come from the governments own documents then this should be sufficient to include in an advertisement without the requirement of the word ‘opinion’.

The fact that prices for New Zealand products would have increased by 20%-100% were spelled out, with detailed costings during the select committee process. This is not difficult to appreciate when the regulatory requirements are so financially onerous. A simple phone call to a TGA registered contract manufacturer (the Australian regulator that would become the basis of ANZTPA) will yield this information.

We were lucky to work with MP’s from the Greens, Independants, NZ First, Act, National and the Maori party. These MP’s put the time in to educate themselves as to the veracity of the regulatory costs we claimed and concluded that they would indeed have caused many New Zealand companies to go out of business, especially smaller businesses.

As Health Freedom was fighting the government, and the government ultimately decides who sits on various government boards we believe there are several ASA board members who should have excused themselves from the decision making process due to an obvious conflict of interest. This information is available on the ASA website. We do not intend to target individual board members personally.

Health Freedom has not decided whether to appeal this decision.

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