Mr. Kevin Hurley:

VAT is applied on these products. There may not be any legal basis for doing so. In legal terms, there is no real difference between a body building supplement and a Vitamin C supplement for immune health but the industry as a whole applied VAT to those products in 2012. Everybody assumed that products similar to ginseng, such as probiotics or other botanicals were zero rated because of entries on Revenue's website for ginseng and royal jelly capsules at 0%. When royal jelly was first released into the market, it was marketed as the fountain of youth. I think ginseng was marketed as an aphrodisiac. Revenue might have taken the view that some of these supplements were being marketed for frivolous purposes but very many of the products Revenue said were zero rated, such as royal jelly capsules and ginseng, were marketed for equally frivolous purposes.