ARE you stockpiling jars of your favourite vitamins yet? If not, then it might be advisable. Because it is now less than two months before an EU Directive that is set to ban nearly 300 vitamin and mineral forms is due to come into effect.

According to one informed source, the National Association of Health Stores, this could affect as many as 5,000 different products.

Ironically, it is the better absorbed and more easily utilised forms that face the ban.

Daniel Hannan MEP, has stated this Directive has come about as a result of lobbying by the pharmaceutical giants to the unelected EU bureaucrats.

Naturally, there has been a vigorous campaign to highlight the absurdity of this directive, which the Government says is all about being an "issue of safety".

Yet when asked to produce any evidence that the to be banned vitamin forms are unsafe is unable to do so. I wrote to Worcester MP Mike Foster on March 6 asking him to show me evidence that any of these products are unsafe. He has sent me none.

I have also suggested on a number of occasions, when his constituent, that we should meet to discuss this issue.

He has always declined. On May 5, in this paper I challenged him to a public debate. This topic was considered important enough that a few days later in this paper our MEP Philip Bushill-Matthews added his voice to my suggestion.

In a speech to the Institute for Public Policy Research at the end of May, the Prime Minister said that the rules implied by the supplements directive were "wholly out of proportion to the risks run".

This seems to indicate that Tony Blair himself now has doubts about this directive. Where does this put Mike Foster?

I again challenge him to a public debate so the people of Worcester can hear why he thinks vitamins and minerals safely sold and consumed over many years should be banned.

DAVID BARRIE,

Malvern.