Conclusion
The reason ANH has chosen to pursue a separate legal challenge is quite simple. The conditions sought to be imposed upon it by NAHS and HFMA were quite unreasonable and unacceptable.
The stipulations in the draft Heads of Agreement (departing as they did in several respects from the matters discussed in the Nuneaton Meeting on 30 September 2003) effectively required ANH to fund in its entirety an application for Permission for Judicial Review, where not only did we not have any prior sight or knowledge of the case (e.g. draft Grounds of Claim, evidence, witness statements, expert evidence etc) which had been prepared by NAHS/ HFMA (which turned out subsequently to be threadbare) but also where we were not going to be have effective control of how the case was to be conducted. This was despite the fact that ANH was going to be the main funder of the action with HFMA providing no funds at all for that stage and NAHS only minimal funding. Additionally and very significantly ANH would most likely have had to lose the expertise of its specialist EU Counsel from Brick Court Chambers, the pioneers in EU constitutional law challenges to the validity of EU Directives of this kind.
Accordingly, for ANH's Directors to have signed the Heads of Agreement on these terms would have amounted to an abrogation of their responsibilities to their members. Leave aside the fact that it would also have been against the advice of its solicitors and Advisory Board.
Having to write this letter has been a most unsavoury and unproductive exercise as ANH would much rather concentrate all its energies and resources in the best interests of the food supplements industry as a whole.
It is most unfortunate that Messrs Pike and Law have chosen to make very public issue of the various serious inaccuracies and misrepresentations set out in your letter. This has obliged ANH to go public with a clear and detailed refutation. That was not our wish.
ANH hopes however that no more aspersions of the sort contained in your letter will be cast from your quarter. But rather the interests of HFMA and ANH Members will be made a priority by the concentration of all our efforts in defeating the very negative aspects of the FSD ban on non-positive list nutrients and the other EU legislation which is being proposed which is so damaging to this industry.
We await hearing from you with your answers to the questions raised in this letter. Yours sincerely
David C. Hinde LLB Solicitor
Legal Director
Alliance For Natural Health
www.alliance-natural-health.org.