The Canadian market is one of the most complicated in the world when it comes to regulations, or at least significantly more complex than most. While some countries have a ban on select ingredients, and some require specific details and information on labels, Canada needs all that and a bit more. These sorts of things discourage international brands from coming into the market and make life quite a bit more difficult for domestic competitors.
As strict as the rules and regulations are in Canada, they are potentially going to get even tougher in the coming years, as the country is looking to introduce some modifications to further complicate the process, which the Canadian Health Food Association, or CHFA, is fighting. The team has set up the website saveoursupplements.ca, going over all of the important points and details regarding the proposed changes and how they’ll affect businesses.
There are two significant differences CHFA brings attention to in its Save Our Supplements campaign, starting with a different layout to the facts panel, where instead of listing everything in a nice neat table, it’s written out like one long sentence; CHFA has put together an example of that in the image above. The other key point is cost recovery, involving the introduction of fees for things like product evaluation, site licenses, and annual renewal.
Simply put, more is being asked of supplement companies in Canada, and if put into place, they will have a massive impact on the brands in that part of the world and anyone interested in competing there. CHFA and Save Our Supplements outline several highlights from a survey they ran, where two-thirds of brands say they’re considering leaving the Canadian market altogether, and about three-quarters say there is a good chance they’ll need to pull a product off the market due to what’s being implemented.
CHFA is encouraging everyone to get involved in preventing the new rules and regulations from being introduced, hence the launch and naming of Save Our Supplements. Over on saveoursupplements.ca, there is an action kit you can download to help spread the word on social media and any other platform you can, and a letter to fill out and send to your member of parliament, highlighting the effect it’ll have on consumers in terms of product selection, and smaller brands due to all of the costs involved.
