Apparently my blog, “Miracle in Rome” left some people confused. Let me respond to the comments which some of you have been kind enough to share with us.
On Wednesday, July 6, the joint World Health Organization (WHO) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Consultant’s Report was presented to the 28the CODEX ALIMENTARIUS Commission (CAC). Its 20 recommendations were formally presented for discussion by the CAC at that time. This Consultant’s Report was commissioned in 2002 because of serious concern over CODEX and its work and this was an important opportunity for the CAC to deal with some suggestions for improvement in performance and reduction of bureaucratic overburden.
Out of the 20 recommendations by WHO and FAO, the 18th is what the excitement is all about: it notes that CODEX had no relationship with nutrition and that it needed to determine whether it had one and, if so, what that relationship is.
This is a stinging rebuke to Dr. Rolf Grossklaus, chair of the CODEX Committee on Nutrition and Food for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU), the 1994 decision of that committee to continue to classify nutrients as toxins, its use of toxicology (“Risk Assessment”) to prevent doses of nutrients high enough to have any clinical impact and his stated position that “nutrition has no place in medicine” (reported by Paul Anthony Taylor at the November, 2004 CCNFSDU meeting in Bonn, Germany). Dr. Grossklaus has railroaded the use of Risk Assessment, a branch of toxicology, to make any but clinically ineffective, ultra low doses of a few nutrients on a highly restricted list available. Everything else will be illegal, whether or not a doctor thinks you should have it.
At the same time, it is an equally stinging rebuke for the CODEX Committee on Food Labeling which has prohibited the discussion or mention of any benefits provided by nutrients under any conditions.
Astonishingly, the chairman of the CAC refused to allow discussion of that resolution. Read the hubris of that for a moment: the WHO and FAO had just made their evaluation of CODEX public and the recommendations that come from that evaluation were presented to the CAC for discussion and the CAC could not even have a discussion about whether CODEX should have a relationship to nutrition by his autocratic (but unopposed) decision. Health Freedom advocates should not be very proud of the US’s performance in this body, by the way. Don’t forget that harmonization with international regulations which violate US law (CODEX violates DSHEA) is illegal in the US and the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline will violate DSHEA (assuming that we can protect it from threats like HR 3156, of course).
The World Health representative and her FAO counterpart were not at all amused. Shortly before his autocratic dismissal of Recommendation No. 18,, when the Chairman and members of the CAC were demanding more money from WHO and FAO (who provide CAC’s funding), the CAC Chairman was busy chastising the WHO for not increasing its budget for several years. The WHO representative told CAC that it was not going to get more money “by griping about it here” and that the WHO was not likely to give more money to the CAC at all, in fact. Chief among the reason, she said, in public, to the assembled CAC, was that CODEX ALIMENTARIUS HAD FAILED TO MAKE A CONTRIBUTION TO WORLD HEALTH during its 42 year history!
Think about that from the point of view of a political analyst and you will see the opportunity presented to our side. There is clearly a pro-health side to this system. CODEX isn’t it, of course, but the pro-health forces control the purse strings. It is true that WHO has never been really big on nutrients, but it does recognize that they, along with diet and exercise, play a vital role in health preservation and disease prevention. CODEX, of course, does not.
Things got a whole lot better the next day, though. On Thursday, July 7, at the end of the day, after all of the CAC deliberations had concluded (with precisely zero attention to either the concepts of Recommendation No. 18 or the comments of the WHO representative), the WHO representative, along with those from FAO made it clear that CODEX would redirect its efforts and that it would make a contribution to human health by implementing the WHO Global Strategy on diet, nutrition and exercise either by redefining the purposes of the committees which deal with nutrition (CCFL and CCNFSDU) or, if CAC did not chose to do that, by creating a Task Force on Nutrition. The CAC meeting then came to a stunned close.
Suddenly the ground shifted and nutrition had a strong, protected foothold and two very protective advocates, the WHO and the FAO. That does not mean, of course, that the Bigs (Big Pharma, Big Agra-Biz, Big Chema, Big Biotechna and Big Medica) are going to role over and play dead. Quite the contrary. What it does mean, though, is that we, the health advocates, have people who are listening to our position on health and who have both CAC’s financial reins and the procedural ones.
The next day, Friday, July 8, was devoted to the CODEX Trust Fund, money set aside to bring the developing world into the CODEX process while Saturday morning, July 9, was a review of the report of the meeting provided by the CODEX Secretariat. Notably, not one word in that report reflected what I have just told you. It was as if it had never happened! But it did happen and, in fact, these events constitute the best news that health and health freedom have had since the passage of DSHEA in 1994!
We now have the opportunity to support the parent organizations in demanding that CODEX “make a contribution to human health” or that it cease its work!
If you have been following our interpretation of CODEX you know that it is far, far worse than just a restriction of nutrients. But CODEX has to make a contribution to human health and we have the opportunity to help it do just that! Up till now, we have been fighting the Bigs alone. Now we have two internationally respected and powerful organizations (which, by the way, control the funding of CODEX) on our side IF we communicate with them correctly. If we shout imprecations at them they will not listen to whatever we say. We need reasonable presentations of strong science, firm and rational logic and data well organized to make the point that CODEX’s anti-health guidelines and standards violate the very tenets upon which health rests for the planet.
Gift? Yes! Miracle? Apparently! Time to stop? Not if we want to preserve both health and health freedom on this planet!
Yours in health, freedom and hope,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
P.S. The trip to Rome was quite costly. If you can, please make a donation to support our expenses. Your donations are our only source of funding.
P.P.S. Dr. Grossklaus showed no signs of a sudden redemption and conversion to health advocacy. Neither did the US delegation, including our CODEX Manager, Dr. Scarbrough. But we had a very interesting conversation with Dr. Scarbrough. I’ve talked about it before, and I’ll talk about it again.