UK Sport eases position on food supplements

21-Jul-2008 - Last updated on 25-Jul-2008 at 13:42 GMT

UK Sport has altered its position in regard to the use of food supplements and now says supplements such as whey, isotonic drinks, creatine and multivitamin and mineral complexes should be safe in most cases.

UK Sport - the Lotteries-funded agency that advises elite athletes in the UK - made its announcement last week in conjunction with a new product testing service being offered by UK-based third party testing service, HFL Sports Science.

The food supplements industry and sports regulation groups were consulted in developing the service.

Informed Sport

HFL's service, called Informed Sport, tests products for substances such as steroids and stimulants that appear on the WADA's List of Prohibited Substances and Methods.

Food supplements companies are charged between €220 and €315 to have products tested by HFL.

A similar system exists in the Netherlands where companies can pay a fee of between €550 and €800 to have their products tested in a Cologne lab set up to meet WADA requirements.

"The issues around supplements are well known and we continue to see cases where-by an adverse finding on an athlete may be linked back to a supplement which contains prohibited substances that didn't appear on the label," said Andy Parkinson, acting director of Drug-Free Sport at UK Sport.

Informed Sport's formation reflects the reality that many athletes use supplements despite the risk of contamination - however small - of the risk involved.

"Despite the risks we know that many athletes continue to use supplements," Parkinson added."With that in mind, our role is very much to help them make sensible, informed decisions to minimise the risk they face of inadvertent doping as, under the rules of 'strict liability' in sport, they are responsible for any substances found in their system. Ignorance about the threat of contamination isn't an excuse."

A spokesperson for UK-based sports supplements specialist, Maximuscle, said all its products were tested to International Olympic Committee (IOC) standards as it sponsored many professional sporting teams whose members were regularly submitted to WADA testing.

Melanie Hickie, regulatory affairs manager at UK-based supplements manufacturer and retailer, Holland & Barrett, and a vice chair with the European Specialist Sports Nutrition Alliance (ESSNA), said the retailers offerings would be unaffected by the move, because WADA testing was unnecessary and too costly for "the man on the street" that purchased its products.

"But it sends a positive signal about the industry if athletes are safely using food supplements to help them remain in optimum shape," she told NutraIngredients.com.

"But for us test all of our products to WADA standards would be place an unfair and unnecessary financial burden upon our customers and would not be feasible across the 1500 products we offer."

Parkinson said the establishment of HFL's service would help alert athletes to those companies that were pursuing best practices.

"Part of the process athletes need to go through when thinking about using supplements is to distinguish between companies that follow quality assurance procedures to the highest standards and those companies that do not," he said.

"This is particularly important with so many products readily available via the internet which may lay claim to being 'drug-free' when there are no guarantees that this is the case."