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The Natural Health Products Directorate (NHPD), Canada’s regulating authority for the assessment of safety and efficacy of natural health products (NHPs) marketed in that country, announced the selection of 6 new members to its Expert Advisory Committee (EAC) on Natural Health Products in October.1 The EAC is an external group composed of 10 to 14 non-government scientists and professionals with expertise in various areas of science or medicine. It provides the NHPD’s Director General with advice and guidance on issues related to the safety, quality, efficacy, and regulation of NHPs.
NHPs are defined under Canadian law as those products that contain the specific substances set out in Schedule 1 of the NHP Regulations (i.e., plant, bacterial, algal, fungal, and animal materials, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, essential fatty acids, and probiotics, including extracts, isolates, and synthetic duplicates) and must be sold or represented for use in the treatment or prevention of a disease or disorder, for restoring or correcting organic functions in humans, or for modifying organic functions in humans in a manner that maintains or promotes health.2
The 6 new members of the EAC are Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioner Michael Chung, PhD; nutrition expert Leonard Piché, PhD, RD, associate professor in the Department of Human Ecology at Brescia University College in Ontario; homeopathic practitioner David Brulé, DHMS; pharmacologist/toxicologist Francis Law, PhD; professor of environmental toxicology at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia; biochemist Fereidoon Shahidi, PhD, professor in the Department of Biochemistry at Memorial University of Newfoundland; and natural products formulation and process chemistry expert Colin Barrow, PhD, executive director of research and development of Ocean Nutrition Canada. NHPD issued an open call for nominations to the EAC in July, and more than 50 nominations were submitted for consideration.
The new members join current EAC members: pharmacist and CAM practice researcher Heather Boon, PhD, BScPhm, professor in the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Toronto; Gillian Leverkus, PhD, RHP, an herbalist and alternative medicine practitioner at the Integrated Complementary Medicine Clinic on Vancouver Island; Joseph Betz, PhD, program director for Dietary Supplements Methods and Reference Materials at the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Dietary Supplements; natural products chemistry and bioassay expert John Thor Arnason, PhD, professor of biology at the University of Ottawa; David Lescheid, PhD, ND, professor of basic sciences at the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine in Ontario; Andrew Macnab, MD, professor of pediatrics at the University of British Columbia; Ikhlas Khan, PhD, professor of pharmacognosy and research professor in the Research Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Mississippi; and Mary Hardy, MD, medical director of the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center program in Integrative Medicine and former associate director of the Center for Dietary Supplement Research in Botanicals at the University of California in Los Angeles.
Seven EAC members recently departed the committee: Frank Chandler, PhD, retired professor from the College of Pharmacy at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia; Paul Saunders, PhD, ND, DHANP, adjunct faculty member of the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine in Ontario; Ron Harris, HD, homeopathic practitioner and founder of the Canadian Institute of Homeopathic Medicine; Mark Goldberg, PhD, president and CEO of the toxicology firm GlobalTox; Patrick Choy, PhD, MD, associate dean of research in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Manitoba; Chinese botanist Albert Fok; and Henry Lu, PhD, DTCM, Lac, principal of the International College of Traditional Chinese Medicine in British Columbia.
The NHPD was created in 1999 to evaluate and regulate the growing body of NHPs being sold in the Canadian market. The NHPD is considered at the same level of the 2 other main divisions of Health Canada, the Food Directorate and the Therapeutic Products Directorate.
-Courtney Cavaliere
References
1. New look Expert Advisory Committee (EAC). NHPD Monthly Communique: 2(2). Ottawa, Ontario: Natural Health Products Directorate; October 2006.
2. Taller J. Canada issues final natural health product regulations. HerbalGram. 2003;60:62-65.
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