ASEAN Guiding Principles for Inclusion Into or Exclusion From the Negative List of Substances for Health Supplements

At-a-glance:This annex currently lists 77 ingredients unanimously agreed by all 10 ASEAN Member States that must not be used in any health supplement products sold in the ASEAN region.

Background:Going into the harmonisation process, a number of ASEAN countries had national negative lists in place to control the use of ingredients in health supplements. Negative lists are also used widely in other parts of the world. In light of this, it was decided that developing an ASEAN-wide negative list would be more straightforward and achievable than the alternative – a positive list of permitted ingredients. As a frst step, the task leads collated and analysed ASEAN members’ existing national negative lists in order to find common ground for a unified ASEAN list. Where there was divergence, the ATSC requested scientific substantiation so that a final decision could be reached. In a very small number of cases, no unanimous agreement to ban an ingredient in all the 10 ASEAN Member States was possible, and a separate restricted list was created outside the scope of the annex to record these. The restricted list will be reviewed periodically with a view to achieving even greater alignment in future.