Addressing activities related to food supplements in European pharmacists' codes of ethics: textual analysis and...

The exploding food supplement trade makes ensuring and monitoring their proper use and risk minimization by individuals increasingly difficult. Even though there is a common legal framework for those activities in the European Union (EU), too little importance has been given to respecting ethics in making them available to patients. Pharmacists involved in activities related to food supplements could play a decisive role in protecting the rights of patients who use them. The purpose of this study was to determine the position of European pharmacists in this field and to propose ethical standards for their activities related to food supplements.

We used textual analysis to investigate the pharmacists' codes of ethics in force in the EU Member States. Our findings led us to develop proposals to optimize the ethical standards for pharmacist activities related to food supplements. To position our proposals internationally, we performed a comparative analysis with ethical standards adopted in Australia and the United States (US).

Most of the codes of ethics we analysed address some of those activities through explicit and/or implicit provisions. From those provisions, we derived common ethical standards regarding the responsibility of pharmacists for the quality, safety and effectiveness of food supplements dispensed from pharmacies and for honesty and loyalty in promoting and advertising food supplements. As policy recommendations, we proposed optimized ethical standards, including standards for research and development, marketing notification, manufacturing, wholesale distribution, market surveillance, and risk management of food supplements. In the Australian Code of Ethics and US guidelines, we observed similar standards for most of these activities.

Establishing ethical standards for all pharmacists' activities related to food supplements would stimulate discussion, reflection, the evolution of their codes of ethics and practices, and professional development. The standards we proposed could serve as a starting point for developing national and international policies, using the motivational power of ethics. The commitment of professional associations of pharmacists, food companies, and competent health authorities to adopt ethical policies in all activities related to food supplements would make an important contribution to respecting patients' rights in using them.