French Plan For Health And Food Controls

Proposals on a strengthening of France's health care and food safetyfrom two senators, Claude Huriet and Charles Descours, envisage a unified regime which would control not only human-use pharmaceuticals but also all forms of food and nutritional products.

The senators have presented a draft law setting up three agencies, the Institute for Health Supervision, the French Agency for the Safety of Health Products and the French Agency for Food Safety, plus a national council for health safety, under the presidency of the prime minister.

The plan follows an earlier proposal by Health Secretary Herve Gaymard. The Institute for Health Supervision would supervise and take responsibility for the public health service network, with extra powers and a wider brief. The Agency for the Safety of Health Products would take over the functions and prerogatives of the Drugs Agency, but with wider functions and also covering products or foods, including nutritional supplements and nutraceuticals, which arguably have an influence on human health and for which responsibility is now spread between various Health Ministry departments.