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Who’s On First in the Nutrient World-Series?

Thursday, July 14th, 2005

CODEX Daily Update
Rome Italy
July 14, 2005
Rima E. Laibow, MD

Pro-Illness forces are pushing hard to consolidate their gains at CODEX last week when the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline (VMG) was passed without any dissenting voices. Stepping back for a moment, where are we?

1. The Vitamin and Mineral Guideline (VMG) was ratified by CODEX ALIMENTARIUS Commission (CAC) on July 4 (!) in Rome. This means that “Risk Assessment”, a process by which toxins are evaluated and you are protected from them, is the ‘gold standard’ of nutritional evaluation for this body. It also means that developing nations are being urged to adopt this standard and the ones that will follow it as their domestic standards legislating starvation and chronic diseases like cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke and neurodegenerative diseases according to international sources like the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
The WHO and FAO are the parent organizations for CODEX and fund it from their own budgets. Stay tuned on the budget issue: it could turn out to be a great help to us.

2. The European Court of Justice, the European Union’s equivalent of our Supreme Court decided virtually every question in the challenge to the CODEX look-alike European Food Supplements Directive (EFSD) in favor of the EFSD except for a partial shift in the responsibility of the burden of proof onto the shoulders of the regulators in showing that a nutrient is dangerous and the allowance of natural sources for permitted nutrients (but still at ultra low doses). Otherwise, that round went to the pro-illness forces.

3. In preparation for the end of the dossier submission period on July 12, during which manufactures of nutrients could apply for an exemption (a “derogation”) from the EFSD ban (at least until the last day of December, 2009 when all derogations end) 500 dossiers were submitted. The UK supplied some of the costs to manufacturers since the costs were enormous and many small firms could not afford them. During the period when these dossiers are being processed, the product under consideration may not be banned. This will have the effect of softening the August 1 impact of EFSD-controlled dietary supplements. EFSD has been noted by the court, however, to be in the process of enacting similar restrictions for all other types of supplements even though they are only dealing with vitamins and minerals at this point.

3. US CODEX Policy supported the ratification of them dangerous pro-illness measure despite the fact that US law precludes us from harmonizing with international standards which violate US law. The VMG violates two US laws (DSHEA and Title 19, USC 3512) so we cannot harmonize with it legally. Stay tuned on that one since as long as DSHEA is intact this one can turn out to be very useful for us as well.

4. The WHO and FAO commissioned a report to evaluate CODEX. The consultants made 20 recommendations. No. 18 suggested that CODEX decide if it has a relationship with nutrition and, if so, what that relationship is. (in those words, no less!). The Chairman of the CODEX ALIMENTARIUS Commission did not permit discussion of this recommendation despite WHO’s bringing it up. The next day, at the end of the concluding session of the CAC’s deliberations, WHO noted that CAC has not made a contribution to world health [!] and demanded that CAC become involved in the WHO Global Strategy for health which involves diet, nutrition and exercise. WHO stated that CAC would need to change the mandate of the two committees that deal with nutrition (CODEX Committee on Food Labeling and CODEX Committee on Nutrition and Food for Special Dietary Uses) or create a new entity, a Task Force on Nutrition. Stay tuned on this issue since it could be of immense help to us!

5. Susan Davis (D-CA) introduced HR 3156 into the US House of Representatives which would give the FDA Secretary the authority to remove any nutrient (excluding Vitamins and Minerals, see CODEX VMG) from the market if there is the slightest risk to taking it even if there has been no harm caused by the nutrient. This bill would also set up an Adverse Event reporting requirement for nutrients but not for drugs, of course. The person who reports the suspected adverse event has the responsibility to investigate it within 15 days so the quality and consistency of any reporting would be highly irregular and questionable and, if suspected of being involved in any risk at all, the FDA can remove the substance from the market with no further process.
In addition, the manufacturers of supplements are required to carry out costly and burdensome post market studies to determine if there is any risk to their products. If there might be, Risk Assessment techniques from the science of toxicology, the substance gets removed from the market without regard to the benefit of the nutrient. So we gut DSHEA, the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act which classifies nutrients and herbs as foods and guarantees that we can select them for ourselves to use as we like. “Hello HR 3156, bye bye DSHEA”. Poof! Just like that.

Note that HR 3156 (which was co sponsored by Waxman of CA and Dingell of MI, by the way) takes care of the matter of our support of the CODEX VMG is illegal: it changes US law so that DSHEA no longer presents a problem. What a good idea if you make drugs. If, however, you value your health and freedom, you need to consider what failing to raise your electronic voice will mean to your future and your family’s.

Please visit our site so that you can send the new letter to Congress to every member of your delegation and take the rest of the 6 Easy Steps if you have not already done so. Then put a link to our site on your emails and your site and ask everyone you contact to take action.

Do you know why DSHEA was passed unanimously in 1994 by assent of Congress? For one reason and one reason only: enough people made it clear with millions of letters to enough Congressmen and women that this was a major issue for them that not one single Congressman or woman dared to stand against that tide of opinion. Not one, despite whatever payoffs from any corporate interest they might have been involved in. Not one member of Congress dared defy the will of the (voting) people.

We are right back there 11 years later. We did it before, we can do it again.

The Natural Solutions Foundation is in the process of organizing our voices through Congressional impact, through the Internet, through radio, through powerful collaborations domestically and internationally. But, in the end, it is our collective voices that will move Congress to protect your health freedom.

I mentioned that the WHO and FAO are very unhappy with the anti-nutrition stance of CODEX.

Part of our strategy is to support this unhappiness and bring the US DSHEA concept to the world bodies and nations for adoption as the international standard. Strong support of DSHEA here in the US will make this task easier. Embedding DSHEA in international policy will, in turn, help protect it here from the next assault on health freedom (and it will come again and again and again, we can almost be sure!) There is simply too much money to be made in drugs to imagine that the pharmaceutical industry will give up this time any more than they gave up when we won in 1994 and DSHEA was passed by unanimous Congressional assent.

So what is good for us (DSHEA) is good for the world and what is good for the world is also very good for us.

Now is the time. Oppose HR 3156 and all of the look alikes which will be coming out of the Congressional wood work. Oh, and you can expect an intensified negative slant in the press about the “dangers” of nutrients, herbs and supplements. Read the article on CODEX disinformation and just change the terms and you’ll have the picture.

Can we win? Absolutely! Can we afford to be smug and self-satisfied? Absolutely not!

Yours in Health and Freedom,

Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation

Posted in Activism, Events, Promising Developments, The Law & CODEX | No Comments »

Health Pearl Harbor: HR 3156

Wednesday, July 13th, 2005

CODEX Daily Update
July 13, 2005
Rome, Italy
Rima E. Laibow, MD

Health Pearl Harbor signals Domestic War on Health Freedom!

Hear Ye, Hear Ye! Those of you who have declared that the restrictive and anti-health CODEX Vitamin and Mineral Guideline (accepted on July 4, 2005 in Rome by CODEX with US support ) will have no impact on domestic nutrients, the wellness industry, natural medicine and personal health choices are wrong. Dead wrong! That’s “DEAD” as in war. That’s dead as in dead from the increased cancer, diabetes, degenerative neurological conditions (including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and ALS) which would result from the elimination of health choices right here in the good old USA! That’s unnecessary and preventable illness and death which will do only Big Pharma and Big Medica good and will cost you and your family your health and health freedom.

“Wait”, you may still be saying, “NNFA (Natural Nutritional Foods Assocation) and the FDA and the US CODEX Office and CRN (Council for Responsible Nutrition) have all told us that CODEX does not apply domestically so we have nothing to worry about!” Well, ladies and gentlemen, if you are still saying that and, worse, you believe it, listen up! Here is the game plan unless you and everyone you know wakes up and takes action: Having passed the pro-illness Vitamin and Mineral Guideline with strong US policy support to do so, the pro-illness forces have begun the onslaught to take away your access to the high potency nutrients which will keep you from developing the highly profitable, and misery-inducing diseases of chronic under-nutrition.

Take a look at the first piece of legislation in the assault HR 3156) and be afraid, very afraid. This astonishingly destructive legislation, introduced by Susan Davis of California and cosponsored by Dingle of Michigan and Waxman of California allows the Secretary of Health and Human Services (which contains the FDA) to remove nutrients from the market place if there is a risk, no matter how tiny, of any harm to anyone even if that risk has never occurred. It allows the Secretary of HHS to remove nutrients if they might have been associated with an adverse event and require the reporting of any possible adverse event associated with a nutrient and its investigation by the reporter. Note, the playing field is nowhere near level, folks: drugs have no adverse event reporting system, NONE. Let me say that again for those of you who might have become so mind boggled by that fact that you skipped over it: DRUGS HAVE NO REQUIRED ADVERSE EVENT REPORTING SYSTEM EVEN IN THE CASE OF DEATH.

So what is being proposed is the opportunity to manipulate make believe data (adverse event reports which may not be connected with the supplement blamed) about make believe problems (toxicity of nutrients which are exceptionally safe and helpful to even the most fragile people) about make believe toxins (nutrients are not toxic: they cannot induce death so the dose at which 50% of the test animals die, the LD 50, cannot be determined. By definition, they are therefore not toxic.) I know, it seems silly to non-toxicologists, but the consequences of this distinction are significant: if you cannot classify a compound as a toxin, then the use of Risk Assessment to determine a safe dose for it makes no sense. Risk Assessment is a technique that toxicologists use to determine what dose of this potentially lethal stuff can be allowed because it causes no discernable impact on people or animals. In other words, if you use Risk Assessment to determine doses of nutrients, there will be no biological effect at that dose, none! And you guarantee under nutrition if it is not adequately supplied by your diet.

Ready for something else really interesting? HR 3165 excludes vitamins and minerals! SO? So the work is already done on them: CODEX approved the pro-illness Vitamin and Mineral Guideline last week which is going to do the heavy lifting there: no need to waste the effort on them here in the US. Does that chill your enthusiasm for the accuracy of the NNFA, CRN, FDA, IADSA position that the actions of CODEX have no domestic impact? If not, you either work for them in their PR departments or you should.

I have a friend who told me that in Australia, as soon as the Trans Tasman Agreement had harmonized with CODEX ALIMENTARIUS long before the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline was passed last week, the protective legislation that Australians relied upon to give them access to their natural health products (like our DSHEA legislation) were quickly and efficiently annihilated. The execution team had been waiting in the wings and, at the signal, swept in before the opposition (the consumers) could begin to get organized. I have previously said that we would need to be alert to the same threat. And here it is! The first wave of the post VMG domestic assault on our rights as Americans to make, market and purchase high potency nutrients is here and its name is HR 3156. It will not be the last: this is a salvo, not the war itself.

Let’s talk about war, shall we, since we are now fighting what I call “The Vitamin Wars”. No one ever won a war on the defensive. Wars are won on the offensive.

Right now, the European Court of Justice has declared that Vitamins and Minerals (and other nutrients, too, in a short time) will be limited to those on a “Positive List” unless they are approved as to dose and source through a process initiated by the submission of an astonishingly expensive dossier or file on that nutrient from that particular source at that particular dose. In the UK, the government has created a pot of money to help defray the cost of these dossier submissions. Because they had to be submitted by July 12 of this year (the same day, coincidentally, that the ECJ ruled in favor of the European Food Supplements Directive and against health freedom in the EU), by yesterday nearly 500 dossiers had been submitted for consideration. Until they are approved or rejected, they may still be sold in the EU. That means that for some time, at least, those items will be available and the August 1 disaster has been softened, if not averted. Good news, right? Well, sort of, if you like defensive postures. The other items, not the subject of dossiers, will be pulled on August 1. And the dossier items? Well, if they succeed in winning a so-called “derogation” or exception, they will be sold until … December 31, 2009! At that point, all such derogations become irrelevant and we are back to the pro-illness situation where only the risk-assessed, ultra low level nutrients are permitted anyway.

Clearly, this defensive struggle must be fought, but it cannot be won.

The way you win a war is by going on the offensive and staying there. Those of you who have been reading my blogs and the Natural Solutions Foundation site and listening to our live radio show, FREE U.S./FREE US!, Wednesdays at 7-8 PM eastern time know that we are an action-oriented organization. There is a reason for being action-oriented: that’s how you win wars. In a war, if you apply the Principles of War and follow them you have a high likelihood of winning. The first Principle of War is OBJECTIVE: Protect, defend and expand Health Freedom in the United States and globally. The second Principle of War is OFFENSIVE. Find it, occupy it and stay there.

When you go to the Six Easy Steps on our site today, you will find a new letter to Congress (if you have already carried out the Six Easy Steps, then you can go straight to the new letter). The new letter outlines the dangers of the health assault in HR 3156 and the other bills like it to come and tells Congress that there is a committed and determined army of health freedom advocates who will do whatever democracy allows them to do, including removing members of Congress from office who do not protect their rights. Send it to your Congressional Delegation. Follow all of the other steps, too, and send the site to everyone you know.

Don’t forget the donation step. We have no other way of supporting this fight besides your support. We are fighting this together and your donations are our lifeblood. We appreciate the small donation and the large one equally. But consider this: what will it mean to you and your family, your business and your well-being if we falter? Why not make a pledge to the Natural Solutions Foundation for a monthly level of support which you can sustain and which you feel matches the importance of this fight.

We are at war. There is no way to win a war except to gain the offensive position and exploit it. In the coming days we will be doing that together.

Yours in health and freedom,

Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation

P.S. You can use the easy and quick “Email to Friend” buttons on the HealthFreedomUSA.org web site to tell all your friends.

Posted in Activism, CODEX Consequences, Events, The Law & CODEX | No Comments »

We Begin To Win – Let Us Continue Being Active

Saturday, July 9th, 2005

If you think that the significant gift handed to us by the World Health Organization means that we can relax and forget about the problem of health and health freedom, that’s not so. In fact, by the time that the CODEX Secretariat had produced the draft document of this week’s work for CAC approval today, the resistance to that gift was apparent. We have a great deal of work to do to win this one but we CAN win it. It will take time, effort, strategic sophistication and money but the victory we are striving for which will assure health freedom globally is achievable, thanks to the World Health Organization.

Read the summary of how we got to the report and then I will share with you the first counter strike of the CODEX ALIMENTARIUS Commission (CAC) so you will be able to work with me to counter the counter measure (and all the counter moves which surely follow).

Don’t forget, the forces that are very happy to support and profit from illness are neither stupid nor weak: we really need to press forward on this WHO initiative.

Here is the story so far:

The CODEX ALIMENTARIUS Commission (CAC) finished its 28th Commission meeting with the development of an extraordinary opportunity for us, the advocates of health and health choice. Our liklihood of success was magnified many fold by the intervention of the WHO in conjunction with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) when they stated their dissatisfaction with the failure of the CODEX process and CAC to make any significant contribution to human health over the 42 years of its existence. Although it has made contributions to the regulation of food, CODEX’s contribution to human health is a very different matter.

And that difference was strongly noted on Thursday by WHO Under Secretary for Food Safety, Karen Leitner, when she made the observation to the entire CAC body that CODEX had not done very much to promote health. The CAC Chairman, Dr. Stuart Alexander Slorach of Sweden, had just finished ignoring recommendation number 18 of the joint FAO and WHO Consultant Report (which noted that CODEX “should determine whether it had a relationship to nutrition and, if so, what that relationship is”). Although Dr. Slorach had allowed some discussion of other recommendations of the Consultant’s Report, he barred Recommendation No. 18 from consideration by the CAC.

Dr. Leitner then spoke sternly, sharply and scathingly of the fact that little contribution to human health had been made by CODEX yet they continued to ask for more money from both FAO and WHO for their continued work!

The Chairman curtly thanked her and rapidly moved along to the important business of adjourning the meeting for the day. It is my perception, based on my observations of the content and nature of the interactions, including body language, facial expression and verbal and non-verbal cues (including my brief discussion with Dr. Leitner immediately after her statement of dissatisfaction) that this was NOT a wise move on the part of the Chairman since funding for CODEX comes from WHO and FAO and they had just been publicly and rudely “blown off ” by CAC.

The next day, Thursday, at the very end of the deliberations of CAC for the year (except for the approval of the draft report today, Saturday), WHO laid their displeasure on the heads of the CAC and stated that
things would be different in the future.

CODEX will implement the WHO Global Strategy for world health through diet, physical exercise and nutrition and CODEX will develop a “relationship with nutrition” as demanded by WHO. How will CODEX do that? By redefining the “Terms of Reference” (i.e., the mandate) of the two committees which can deal with nutrition, the previously anti-nutritional claims and information CODEX Committee on Food Labelling and the highly “anti-prevention, anti treatment-or-cure-of-any-disease-or-condition and let-us-treat-nutrients-as-toxins” of the CODEX Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses, chaired by Dr. Rolf Grossklaus.

Here is the counter move by CAC: in the draft report presented for approval by the CAC this morning, Saturday, June 10, NO MENTION WHATSOEVER of Dr. Leitner’s comments appeared in the draft. Furthermore, not one single nation picked up on it although every other word in the document was scrutinized with a microscopically fine tooth comb.

Not a word. Now I ask you, do you think that the WHO and FAO are going to be particularly pleased with this development? I think they wont be.

Here is what I propose: I asked yesterday for volunteers to help compile an outstanding bibliography to present to the US government employees who deal with CODEX policy and the WHO secretariat itself to illustrate exactly what the relationship of CODEX to nutrition needs to be to advance human health and precisely what recommendations and regulations CODEX, as a food standard setting body, should undertake.

I propose that we also establish a watchdog task force to keep track of legal maneuvering, which will surely take place in the US to weaken and distort our access to nutrients as food through congressional action in amendments and bills which might be sneaked in while we are not watching carefully. Every single person in every single circle of influence of each reader of this blog needs to contact the Congressional Delegation to inform them that we WILL be watching and supporting anything they do to protect our health freedoms and that we WILL take effective political action to oppose them in their primaries and general elections if they do not support those freedoms. Send a quick Congressional letter via our web site (Congressional letter) or write your own. Call and ask to speak to the Health Aide and direct them to this special web page for Congress representatives so that they can learn about CODEX. I assure you that most Congressional Offices have never heard of CODEX before HealthFreedomUSA.org came along. Many have heard of it now so there is awareness of CODEX – now we need to make sure that they don’t forget how serious the issue is. So keep those letters going.

While we have been in Rome at the CAC, we have had a chance to make excellent connections both with US groups and international officials who were totally unaware of the implications of Risk Assessment (the wrong science used by CODEX) of nutrients for the people of their countries and we will follow up on these connections.

Do we have an opportunity to protect our health freedom and that of the world? YES! Can we lose it through inaction or apathy? Yes again.

Let’s protect our health freedom and deliver that precious gift to the rest of the world as well!

Yours in health and freedom,

Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation

P.S. Support HealthFreedomUSA.org with your donations. Your donations help pay for all the work we are doing on behalf of your health freedom.

Posted in Activism, Events, Promising Developments | 1 Comment »

Miracle in Rome

Thursday, July 7th, 2005

I am experiencing significant technical difficulties so I will give you the news fast and quickly: At the very end of today’s deliberations, the WHO, one of the parent bodies of CODEX, made it clear that CODEX had done little to advance health during its 42 years of existence and that was about to end. The WHO Global strategy for diet, exercise, nutrition and health WOULD be implemented by CODEX and, in order to do that, the two committees of CODEX which could deal with nutrition WOULD deal with nutrition. The focus and mandate of the CODEX Committee on Food Labeling (which prohibits claims of any health benefit) and the CODEX COMMITTEE on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (Dr. Grossklaus’ committee) are going to change their Terms of Reference (focus and mandate) to include nutrition and CODEX will make a yearly report to the World Health Assembly about its progress in implementing the WHO Strategy!

No choice, no way out for CODEX out of this one. Unless, of course, the Bigs (Big Pharma, Big Agra Biz, Big Chema, Big Biotechna and Big Medica) get to twist some arms and fill some pockets.

The battle is not over, by any means, and the war is not won BUT we have some heavies, who, by the way, hold the purse strings for CODEX, on the side of health freedom. Now we need to lobby, support Congressional pressure on the process, become strongly useful to the WHO and FAO in shaping their policies and help the US CODEX Office turn into a bunch of heroes who help CODEX change direction and adopt DSHEA as the international standard.

It can be done. Let’s do it together!

We are already working on strategies domestically and internationally to make sure we do not lose this golden (and totally surprising) gift to our side.

Have you ever heard of anything in the health and health freedom arena which is such sudden, surprising and unexpected good news? I haven’t. This is unprecedented! Let’s make sure we don’t let this wonderful opportunity slip away either through complacency or inaction.

How do we make sure this is made the most of?

Tell everyone you know and, if you have not already done so, follow the six easy steps to protecting America from CODEX and turn up the volume. It seems the WHO and FAO are playing our tune, the tune of health freedom! Let’s all dance!

Yours in Health and Freedom,

Dr. Laibow, in sveltering Rome

P.S. Help keep HealthFreedomUSA.org running with your donations. Your donations are our only source of funding.

Posted in Activism, Events, Promising Developments | 1 Comment »

Does CODEX Need a Relationship to Nutrition?

Wednesday, July 6th, 2005

CODEX Update
July 6, 2005
Rome, Italy

Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
The Natural Solutions Foundation, sponsor of HealthFreedomUSA.org

It’s hot and stuffy in the large meeting room of the FAO Building (Food and Agriculture Organization) and the seats for the public have so little leg room that an average size person sitting there for a whole day endures physical discomfort nearly equal to the intellectual discomfort created by what is going on.

Since I wrote my last blog update yesterday at noon, here is what has happened in the CODEX chamber during the deliberations of “the world’s most important food standards body”:

1. The CODEX ALIMENTARIUS Commission (CAC) Chairman notified the CODEX body of the serious lack of finances available to the CAC and noted that the nearly $6M US supplied by the FAO was matched by less than $2M from the World Health Organization (WHO) and noted that this put significant pressure on the CAC to carry out its work. He appealed to Committees and other CODEX structures to use the wide range of scientific resources available to them only sparingly since they consume resources quickly. Interestingly, CAC defends its actions with its mantra that CODEX is “Science Based” so this restriction has a direct bearing on the ability of its work to be, in fact, “Science Based”

2. The WHO Under Secretary for Food Safety addressed the Chairman’s remarks by noting that the way to get money was not “to gripe about it here in the meeting” but to pressure the WTO member nations to demand more money for CODEX. She shared the fact that the amount of money allotted by the WTO in their annual budget amounted to about 2% of the total WHO budget. Then the Undersecretary went on to note that the WHO was not particularly convinced that CODEX was making much of a contribution to world health and unless and until that were true, it would not be easy for CODEX to get much more money out of the WHO.

As interesting as this was to hear, it gets much more interesting below. Keep reading!

3. When CAC resumed this morning, the first substantive discussion successfully avoided an attempt to define consensus. CAC operates on consensus and only when all attempts fail to reach consensus (or when a member calls the question and demands a vote) is actual voting used. Voting, in CODEX land, is seen as destructive to the process. (Of course, I thought that democracy involved voting and then going along with what the winner wants. Just goes to show you what I don’t know!) In fact, later in the day when Singapore did just that, demanded a vote, immense pressure was used to urge him to change his mind.

Now, in CODEX land, everything possible is decided by consensus: theoretically everyone agrees to whatever and we are just a happy family. Oddly enough, given the loosey-goosey nature of its decision-making, the other part of the CODEX mantra, besides “CODEX is science-based” is that it is “rule based”. But it is an odd rule base which does not define what serves for rules in CODEX.

In the wonderful and wacky world of CODEX, consensus has at least 3 meanings. In my world, it means everyone is comfortable enough with a particular choice that they are willing to go along with it. In CODEX land it can mean that everyone has been heard (once) or that there is no sustained opposition. Or it means something else entirely, depending upon the needs of the moment. Of course, since the chair has to push the button to turn on your mike or otherwise recognize you, if he/she does not do that, there is consensus because you were not heard from in the example in which everyone does what they are told and you never get to speak.

So, after a lot of fancy footwork and avoidance of the delegations which wanted to define CODEX since CODEX runs on consensus and there was a series of strongly non-consensual issues coming up, the Chairman managed to get himself a victory by skillfully avoiding the issue of of consensus (which could throw a monkey wrench in the works if people knew what it was and could thus judge for themselves if there were a consensus or not!)

4. In 2002 the WHO and FAO apparently decided that they were spending a very large amount of money to support CODEX and they were not at all sure that they were getting much for their money and were not convinced that CODEX was doing much for world health. So they commissioned a study by a group of consultants and the consultants came up with 20 recommendations. Here is No. 18:

The [CODEX ALIMENTARIUS] Commission should consider carefully whether nutrition should play a role in CODEX, and if so, what that role should be.

Take a moment to go back and re-read that recommendation. The world’s leading food standard setting body, charged with the full food safety and food regulatory responsibility of the world is asked by a group of consultants nearly 40 years after its founding, if it has any relationship to nutrition and, if it does, to please figure out what it might be.

Fair takes away my breath, that one!

Now, in CODEX land, countries make their remarks on paper and at the time of the meeting. Here is what the Republic of Korea has to say to this recommendation:

“The Republic of Korea believes that the report underestimated the role of Nutrition by focusing its role on nutrition labeling and foods for special dietary use. We would like to stress that Nutrition works are important in CODEX in relation to the protection of Consumer’s health and all of these works are not related to either labeling or foods for special dietary use… Therefore we assert that both CCNFSDU (The only CODEX Committee dealing with nutrition and the one where the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline was passed without dissent yesterday) and CCFL (the CODEX Committee on food labeling) stand together in CODEX and each committee had better carry out its role and works continuously. Bet we believe that it is necessary to clarify demarcation of Nutrition work between CCNFSDU and CCFL before new work will start.”

Another show stopper. Food, nutrition, food, nutrition. Hmmmmm. Do you think they might have some relationship? Maybe we need a scientific commission to study the proposition, as several countries suggested.

After lunch, CAC devoted its attention to, as Monty Python says, “Something completely different!!”

When CAC reconvened, it was time for the Great Parmesan Debate, Take 5 (or 6, perhaps). Here’s the deal: The Vitamin and Mineral Guideline passed without a whimper (well, China did say that nutrition should be left to nations based on diet and need and a Non Governmental Organization spokesperson pointed out procedural violations to the body ruled by science (forget individual biological variation and need) and rule (forget procedural irregularities). But parmesan cheese, now THERE is something really important!

The Great Parmesan Debate has been going on for more than 5 years. The problem? Italy owns the term (“Intellectual Property” ) and if someone else, say Bolivia, makes Parmesan and calls it that, then the consumer will not be protected. I kid you not!

On this issue of monumental significance, the entire body was in an uproar for hours and hours. The European Community would not allow the name to be used but would allow the “Extra Hard Grating Cheese” standard to go ahead. No go. We want “Parmesan!” You can’t have it! It’s mine! and on and on and on.

Finally, Singapore had had enough and called the vote. Stillness descended and since it was Singapore’s procedural right to have the vote today, the Chairman asked if Singapore would allow the definition of today to extend until tomorrow so the various sides could try again to reach consensus (still undefined) and avoid a “destructive” vote. Destructive vote? Didn’t we learn that voting is part of democracy? Wrong Civics Class, I guess.

And so to consensus and perhaps to bed.

What does all this mean? It means the bureaucrats running this process for their countries have been hoodwinked. It means that they are being herded down paths that lead straight to food disaster and they do not know it.

Why do I say they do not know it? Remember, the mantra is “Science based, Rule based”. And CODEX needs to think about whether it has a relationship to nutrition.

Stir that in with the bias of the committee which has been doing all the heavy lifting around so-called “nutrition” and you realize that the delegates have been sold a bill of goods by being told that “Risk Assessment” can be used to determine appropriate nutritional levels. It is “science”, after all. So it must be “OK” to use it.

Well, one of the things I have been doing is creating rapid relationships with delegates and pointing out to them what Risk Assessment means to their people. Their eyes widen in genuine horror and, when they get it, they really get it.

One of the other things I realize is that CODEX is a vulnerable institution. We will pursue that awareness but you can understand that I would rather not say much about that at this point.

What can you do? Simple, use our online tools to WRITE TO CONGRESS AND TELL CONGRESS THAT YOU WANT YOUR HEALTH FREEDOMS PROTECTED! If you have already used the form letter we provided, change it and send another version of the same message. And carry out the other 5 action steps, too.

We can win this one but only if you and everyone you know takes the task of telling Congress (and signing the Citizen’s Petition) very, very seriously. Grass roots will keep CODEX from our lives. It is not too late. For the sake of everyone you love, act now. Oh, yes, you’ll have more to do as the battle progresses, but we need you right now to simply take action to flood Congress with the message that CODEX ALIMENTARIUS is an usurpation of our individual liberties! Congress will be coming back into session next week. Let’s send them a summer surprise: activated constituents!

Yours in health and freedom,

Rima E. Laibow, MD

P.S. Help keep HealthFreedomUSA.org running with your donations. Your donations are our only source of funding.

Posted in Activism, CODEX Consequences, Events, Promising Developments, The Law & CODEX | 2 Comments »

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