ANH News Beat (18/2026)

ANH-USA Update

• A new US bill, the FRESH Act, is being presented as a meaningful reform to the GRAS framework. Closer examination reveals a troubling expansion of federal oversight that could ultimately harm consumers and innovators alike. By eliminating the long-standing self-GRAS pathway, the bill effectively converts what was once a flexible safety standard into a de facto pre-market approval system — a significant regulatory overhaul in all but name. Read more about the threat to consumer choice and the restriction of natural ingredients.
• The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is moving toward a narrower interpretation of what qualifies as a “dietary substance,” a shift with far-reaching consequences for the natural health industry on both sides of the Atlantic. Many natural, traditional, and innovative ingredients could be excluded from the dietary supplement category, forcing them into a costly drug approval process or leaving them in regulatory limbo. Support ANH-USA to preserve consumer access to a broad range of dietary supplements.
• A federal court dismissed ANH’s homeopathy lawsuit, to protect homeopathy, on procedural grounds—so ANH-USA is taking the fight directly back to the FDA. Find out more…

Free Speech Threats

• It became apparent that the UK government has made up its mind about restricting under-16s use of social media platforms, even though a consultation is currently underway, after the education minister told Parliament what’s going to happen. The minister confirmed action of some description will be taken, regardless of the consultation, it’s the form it will take that needs to now be decided, including the potential for curfews. Such action would result in continuous verification so that your scrolling will be logged even if you’re not under-16. Such action normalises censorship under the banner of ‘safety’ leaving it wide open to abuse by authorities.
• Recent research by the Molly Rose Foundation and YouthInsight reveals over 50% of child users in Australia are still able to access social media despite the ban on under-16s. The authors warn the ban is failing already and that it would be a ‘high stakes gamble’ for the UK to follow Australia’s lead without further legislation to regulate access, which could impose yet more draconian ID checks on all users.
• In the EU, member states are being urged to adopt the EU’s age verification app by the end of 2026. The recommendation from the EU Commission comes after IT experts destroyed the app’s credibility by exposing significant and serious security issues just a week ago, which the EU says have been fixed. It remains to be seen whether member States will adopt its use and just how secure or otherwise users’ data will be.

Post-covid related

• A key advisor to Anthony Fauci, David Morens, is being prosecuted for destroying evidence related to the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in order to evade Freedom of Information requests. Fauci has previously distanced himself from Morens.
• A new paper published in Frontiers in Psychology explores the impact of lockdowns on adolescents. Perhaps the most striking factor of the study is the authors’ framing of their findings as preparation for “future lockdowns or other significant life events”. A casual assumption that mass restrictions on civil liberties will happen again that deserves far more public scrutiny than it is currently receiving.
• A damning new investigation from Real Clear Investigations has pieced together the full, troubling story of scientist Ralph Baric whose gain-of-function research at the University of North Carolina (UNC), conducted in collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, has long been suspected as the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. The federal government has quietly removed Baric from all his NIH grants, UNC has placed him on leave, and the university has refused to cooperate with NIH officials attempting to gather facts about his coronavirus research — yet the scientific establishment spent years dismissing any such connection as a “conspiracy theory.” Transparency campaigner Gary Ruskin of US Right to Know, who has been suing UNC since 2020 to access Baric’s communications, summed it up simply: “Six years later, we still know so little. The public deserves to know what happened.”