Westmorland and Lonsdale MP Tim Collins has backed a Kendal trader's campaign to prevent over-the-counter health supplements from being effectively banned in the UK.

Elizabeth Kan of Kan Foods has collected more than 200 names on a petition to be presented to the House of Commons asking MPs to save their supplements.

The combined impact of three separate European directives means many natural remedies will be reclassified as medicines meaning they will be subject to a rigorous, often costly, testing regime.

The directives are intended to tackle a previously unregulated area of the market.

But smaller,

specialist companies are not expected to be able to afford the process meaning many common dietary supplements could disappear from shop shelves across the country.

Whole food shop manager Elizabeth Kan said some of her most popular vitamin, minerals and herbal remedies including Zinc, St John's Wort and Ginseng, could all be banned if the European legislation is incorporated into UK law, almost

halving the stock sold in her shop.

"This must not happen.

Of all the countries in Europe we need these things more than most because of our northern diet.

We do not eat like the Italians or the Greeks.

We do not get the fish and oysters and the same fresh fruit and vegetables that are available elsewhere," she said.

"If it goes through it won't be the rich that suffer because they will always find a way of getting what they want.

It will be the poor people who lose out."

She said in recent years people had increasingly come to rely on natural remedies to help treat ailments ranging from depression to heart disease.

Mr Collins said: "This is a question of freedom of choice for the consumer.

Regrettably there are quite a few people who already use these sorts of products who won't realise what is happening until it is too late and they can no longer buy them here."