Natural Solutions Foundation, as a 501(c)(3) exempt, nongovernmental organization does not lobby public officials, although we do our best to educate all decision makers about natural solutions to issues of pressing human need. That is why we teamed up with the Institute for Health Research to call upon organic, nutrient, natural products and natural remedies to form a 501(c)(4) lobbying alliance to tell state, national and international public officials that health freedom is essential for natural solutions. Here is the message we sent on May 31, 2008 – to the public email addresses of nearly 1,500 leaders in the industry:
May 31, 2008
Subject: International regulations threaten your business – what you can do.
An important message from Natural Solutions Foundation
Dear Natural Products Company CEO:
While various “insiders” in the nutrient industry tell us Codex Alimentarius (the World Food Code) is “no threat” to the industry because of the anti-harmonization statute, the US FDA -led delegation continues to lobby Codex for action. Why?
This suggests the FDA obviously feels Codex is an excellent wedge to get more control over the industry that DSHEA prevented. It was DSHEA, after all, that allowed our industry to grow from under a billion dollars before the law to over thirty billion dollars today! The FDA has repeatedly expressed its unhappiness with the continued existence of our industry and consistently creates new and ever more burdensome regulations and requirements, making our existence more difficult on a continuing basis. These requirements and regulations are all justified as bringing the US into Codex Compliance. In reality, the FDA pulls Codex where it wants to take it and then brings those requirements home to use against our industry.
If your voice is not represented where global political decisions are made that determine business practices, you may become a scapegoat. Witness the recent baseball steroid hearings, where dietary supplements were blamed for “sports heroes” shooting up steroid drugs. You know the distinction between foods and drugs, although FDA and Congress do not seem to understand the differences. This confusion is also evident at Codex itself, where its control over the international food trade includes nutrient products.
You may be familiar with my web site, www.VitaminLawyer.com, or you may have heard of the NonGovernmental Organization (NGO) of which I am proud to be a trustee, Natural Solutions Foundation. We are arguably the largest and most active “netroots” organization in the health freedom movement. But as a tax-exempt nonprofit, we are restricted in what we can do to promote natural solutions; we are permitted to educate Congress and demonstrate the wisdom of natural health strategies, but not to lobby. This is also true of other NGOs.
Since the NGOs cannot expend substantial funding on lobbying, we need your support for Codex consulting and international lobbying. Consider the expense a type of insurance against the industry (including your company) being “scapegoated” in the process of developing global regulations.
That’s why Natural Solutions Foundation (GlobalHealthFreedom.org) and the Institute for Health Research (Inhere.org) are spearheading the creation of an industry lobby for health freedom and natural solutions. Our sponsoring NGOs are “501(c)(3)” exempt entities so they cannot directly lobby. Instead, they have created “The Strategic Health Freedom Alliance”, which will be a “501(c)(4)” entity so it can lobby. What is the difference? One difference is that donations to a (c)(3) are tax deductible to individuals while consulting fees or contributions to a (c)(4) are a necessary business cost that can be expensed in your current business tax year.
Irrespective of what some have incorrectly suggested, that the “anti-harmonization statute,” 19 USC 3512, prevents of Codex being a threat to the US nutrient industry, the threat is real. That law applies to “Uruguay Round” trade agreements, and Codex is a pre-existing UN agency, not a trade agreement. The FDA had announced on October 11, 1995 in the Federal Register that it will “harmonize” American law with international regulations, even when not finalized. That includes Codex regulations.
This Codex “wedge” is part of what the Alliance is being formed to prevent. Under Codex, your product is regulated as if it were a dangerous industrial “toxin” – to be restricted in the interests of global “harmonization.”
What does your company get for joining the Alliance? Using the skills in new media we’ve painstakingly developed over the past several years, you’ll benefit from:
1. Our expertise in representing health freedom before regulatory agencies such as Codex. I’ve had 34 years experience representing companies like yours as The Vitamin Lawyer. I know my way around the agencies and the regulations. My my co-trustees bring even greater skills. Dr. Rima E. Laibow MD practiced drug free psychiatry and medicine for over 35 years, has testified before the FDA and spoken at many national and international venues; her video Nutricide has been seen well over a half million times. The Foundation President, Maj. Gen. Bert Stubblebine (USA ret), has defended freedom for his entire illustrious military career. Today Gen. Stubblebine is well respected for his leadership in patriot freedom circles.
2. The efforts of an experienced, registered “beltway” lobbyist, Charles Frohman – cfrohman.com -and several DC area health freedom advocates who know their way around, inside the beltway, as we know our way around the international agencies.
3. Strategically significant, private email alerts with our insider information you need to protect and conduct your business.
4. Regular private consultation opportunities with us and our experts (through Codex Consultants and AER Consultants) to allow you to bring your concerns to us while we keep you informed “up to the minute” about developments that will impact your business growth or to protect your market access.
What have we accomplished so far?
In addition to facilitating about one million messages to public decision makers, Dr. Rima, Gen. Bert and I learned to interact with Congresspeople and their senior staff to change the course of public affairs. We were active – and effective – last year in educating Congress about exempting DSHEA compliant products from the FDA ill-advised reauthorization bill’s enhanced authority, and, in fact, such a protective clause was adopted, over the objections of those same “industry insiders” who said it “wasn’t necessary…” using their tattered and outworn “no threat” mantra.
Here is another example: many health advocates and scientists have decried dosing our drinking water with the industrial toxin, fluoride. “Anti-fluoride health nuts” nearly became a standard political derisive joke. Yet, a year before the recent Scientific American article proclaiming that scientists were rethinking fluoride (and nine days before the American Dental Association amended its position to bring it into line with ours), a growing Coalition of Health Conscious Nations (HCN), informed by a Natural Solutions Foundation White Paper and scientific dossier on the dangers of fluoride for infants prevented Codex from adding fluoride to the list of ingredients allowed for healthy baby formula in international trade; a small victory for freedom of choice, perhaps, but a major one for formula-fed babies around the world.
Of more direct impact to your business might be what happened this February at the Codex workgroup meeting on GM (genetically modified) food labeling. The US offered what appeared to be a neutral working paper… until we looked at it closely and realized it institutionalized the assumption GM foods were automatically deemed “safe” – thereby approving the US position (which refuses to examine safety data and forbids the labeling of GM foods) and positioning any challenge to that assumption for a WTO sanction. The Coalition surfaced again and the maneuver was stopped. The US position on GM foods is truly bizarre: ‘Since,’ says the US representative, ‘studies show Americans prefer non-GM foods when they have the information, and since we, the government, know they shouldn’t care about that, we want to forbid them from having this information; no required GM labeling, no permitted GM-free labeling.’1
You can read more about what we’ve accomplished through our education and strategic efforts at: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=195
What we need from you.
We need your commitment to the Alliance. This entails two actions on your part:
(1) Sign up for a monthly contribution to the Strategic Health Freedom Alliance to enable our new (c)(4) lobby group to be formed, filed and start functioning, and
(2) Help us grow the Health Freedom eAlert list, now the largest in the health freedom movement; the larger the list, the stronger our voice.
Health Freedom e-Alert sign up: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=187
Your financial commitment to the Alliance is a regular business expense and will vary, depending on gross sales, from $250 to $2,000 per quarter. This allows us to provide you with regular consulting services, Congressional and global lobbying. You can also personally donate directly to our NGO and receive a personal tax deduction while furthering their educational missions. Deductible donations for educating and business expense contributions for lobbying: you and health freedom win both ways!
Please reply to this email or call me at 973-300-4594 with any questions or suggestions. Let me know whom I should be in touch with in your organization. We’ll have our first Advisory Board conference call shortly and hope that you will be on board to help us determine our priorities.
You can, as lobbyist Charles Frohman says, “Either be represented in the halls of power, or risk the industry becoming a scapegoat in the struggle for power…” The choice is yours. The time is now. The stakes are high and the team is ready.
For health and freedom,
Ralph Fucetola JD
Trustee, Natural Solutions Foundation
Organizer, Strategic Health Freedom Alliance
PS – A year ago, when the FDA tried to sneak through their infamous CAM guidance that would have turned many natural products into “drugs” or “medical devices,” Natural Solutions Foundation alerted the public with the result that 588,000+ people tried to tell the FDA that they opposed these draft regulations through the Foundation site. The FDA made sure that their email was blocked most of the time but the Foundation still managed to generate 198,000 eAlert messages to the FDA. It is interesting to note that the FDA never finalized that potentially disastrous guidance. We have proven we can not just “hold the line” but can advance a pro-natural products agenda in Codex and elsewhere. Now we need your participation to protect your access to the market. Please contact me today.
1 That US position is (I suspect this is no surprise to you…) contrary to US law as determined by the Supreme Court. In Thompson v Western States Medical, the Court held, “If the First Amendment means anything, it means that regulating speech must be a last – not first – resort. … We have previously rejected the notion that the Government has an interest in preventing the dissemination of truthful commercial information in order to prevent members of the public from making bad decisions with the information.”