As part of Befrit agreement, Italy has finalised its list of allowed Botanicals and will be putting in into law later this year.

The interesting thing about this botanical list is that it allows the use of Wasabia japonica as a food supplement while France and Belgium do not have it on their allowed botanicals list.

As you can see these concept are the opposite of each other. The Napoleonic concept requires everything to be specifically documented, while the English Common Law concept only requires the banned items or activities to be documented.

The BEL-FR-IT list is a collaboration between BELgium, FRance and ITaly in order to define and develop a common positive list of botanicals that are legal for use in food supplements.

In the United Kingdom and in many of the other 28 EU Member States there are only guidance documents on the legality of botanicals. These guidance documents may or may not give commentary on the part of the plant, the dose or a component in the plant that may be approved or carry restrictions. However, another reason national lists are limited is there is often no rationale as why a restriction or risk of medicinal status is in place.

​An example is Brassica oleracea which is considered as having medicinal use in the United Kingdom - where simply accepting that such an ingredient is to be banned without any deeper consideration would be a mistake and limit formulation options. Brassica oleracea is also known as Cabbage. Why is a common staple of ordinary foods considered medicinal? This is not explained on the guidance document but easily defended as a legal food ingredient and not medicinal.

More paperwork required

“Ingredient manufacturers as well as companies selling food supplements with plants in Italy should be ready to provide all documents required under the guidelines, when this decree is approved and becomes legally binding.”

The above quote is an indication that traditional herbs, foods and spices that have been used for millennia to alleviate and in some cases cure a human ailment will be removed from the marketplace by the simple expedient of demanding more supporting paperwork.

At some point a bureaucrat (or many of them) will decide that all food should be classified as medicinal because it alleviates the most dangerous of all human ailments - DEATH!

This might appear to be absurd, but the idea that there are illegal food ingredients is also absurd. If a food ingredient kills or damages you it cannot possibly be regarded as a food ingredient.

To understand the possibility of absurdity controlling peoples lives then I suggest watching the film Idiocracy might help.​

​During the 2016 presidential primaries, the writer of Idiocracy, Etan Cohen and others expressed opinions that the film's predictions were converging on accuracy, which, during the general election, director Mike Judge also said. At the time, Judge also compared Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump—who later won and became President of the United States—to the movie's dim-witted wrestler-turned-president, Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho. When asked about predicting the future, he remarked, "I'm no prophet, I was off by 490 years."