The Health Supplement Bill proposed by the Union Ministry of Health will now be part of an integrated food law that is being finalised by the Ministry of Food Processing Industries (FPI). The scope of the section on food supplements in integrated food law will thus be expanded with the entire 'Health Supplement Bill’ of Health Ministry getting incorporated into it.

According to official sources, the ministry has passed on its draft Health Supplement Bill to the FPI Ministry and has decided not to pursue with the bid for regulating food supplements. However, the Drugs and Magic Remedies Act as well as the Drugs and Cosmetics Act are known to have already given sufficient powers to the drug regulatory officials to inspect all medicinal claims of food supplements.

What is to be known now is whether there is going to be any mention of the role of drug officials in the integrated food law. As of now, the health supplements have moved more towards the definition of "specialty food" and "medicine" thereby bringing in cheers among the nutraceutical industry who were lobbying hard with the health ministry to get "nutraceuticals" out of drug control department's purview.

The integrated food law planned by Ministry of FPI covers all aspects of food safety within its ambit with even the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act stands to get repealed with the enactment of the Food Safety and Standards Bill, 2005. Senior health ministry officials had earlier indicated that the government has decided not to have a third authority to regulate nutraceuticals in the country.

It should be recalled that the health ministry officials who spoke at the 2nd Nutraceutical Summit on February 3, 2005 had admitted the ambiguity in defining the emerging sector of nutraceuticals. Since none of the existing laws have defined nutraceuticals, there has been lot of interpretations by different state regulatory authorities leading to confusion among manufacturers, importers, regulators and analysts. The ministry seems to have finally decided to have health supplements under the integrated food law.

Interestingly, the concept of health supplements/nutraceuticals is comparatively new even in developed countries. This has given rise to a state where nobody has adequate experience to handle the situation, though there was an urgent need for stringent quality checks.