Working on behalf of many of the client companies and members of the Direct Sellers Association, we've been involved in submitting many applications. One of the things we complain about most frequently in our internal chats is that the regulations now seem to be a bit of a moving target.
We appreciate that regulation must be in place. We support the notion of safety above all other things. But with respect to proving efficacy, we have often found that matching the scientific literature to the products and the product licence application has been exceptionally difficult. In many cases, it is virtually impossible. We are hoping that there will be some measure incorporated to permit either extrapolation from the scientific literature or interpolation within the scientific literature. This would ease our path.
I said that the regulations sometimes seem to be a moving target. We have submitted perhaps more than 100 submissions for vitamins and mineral supplements, yet we frequently find new things appearing in information request notices. We're looking for the opportunity to learn from experience, which sometimes is not possible. Three or four years into the process, just when we thought we'd started to master it, we find we are still facing things for the first time.