Trading Standards and Medicines Rules Force Linseed Rebrand

Thursday 1 September 2005

Farmer-owned High Barn Oils has repackaged its best-selling linseed oil products in response to Trading Standards and Medicines Authority edicts that ban making medical claims for foods.

With its high Omega 3 value, High Barn Oils’ Linseed Oil is one of the best ways of ensuring the body is getting enough of the essential fatty acid missing from many Western diets, but no reference to how it can aid in the treatment of specific health problems can now be made on leaflets and labels,

Sussex grower and processor Durwin Banks says it’s unfair and illogical that people are not allowed to have the information about food and nutrition necessary to make up there own minds about what chemicals to put in the chemical factory that is the body.

“Drug companies can make medical claims after long and detailed research, but they hedge around contra indications and various degrees of side effects. Recently, two widely used drugs have been in the spotlight: Vioxx this has been proved to kill people, while another anti depressant actually increases the chance of committing suicide,” says Durwin.

“Farmers can make no medical claims for any foods or herbs, in spite of the fact that these are the raw materials for the body – unless you license your food as a medicine you may not even say something that is true and backed by considerable research.

“The finger of blame for causing many modern ailments quite clearly points at junk food, but the government makes no attempt to ban hydrogenated vegetable oils or inverted, modified or man-made additives – no doubt because the food industry is far more powerful than farmers.

“If we are not allowed to make any positive health claims for our natural products, then at the very least, all food that does contain artificial ingredients needs to carry a health warning in the same way as cigarettes.”

High Barn Oils’ new labelling instead concentrates on linseed’s importance as a modern food source.

“People have been eating linseed seed and linseed oil as part of their ordinary diet for thousands of years – we’ve just captured the plant’s natural goodness and delivered it in a convenient modern format,” says Durwin who sells the oil as a culinary ingredient and in capsules.