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MIS and DIS Information – CODEX Itself is the Problem, Not FTAA/CAFTA

Monday, July 11th, 2005

Daily CODEX Update
Rome, Italy
July 11, 2005

Rima E. Laibow, MD

Disseminating incorrect information is as old as human communication. Agencies and individuals do it for reasons they know and reasons they do not know. Sometimes we can distinguish between misinformation (incorrect but not meant to mislead) and disinformation (incorrect and intended to mislead). CODEX is rife with both and, as is often the case, sometimes it is hard to be sure which is which. But there is one CODEX area where the distinction, while interesting, is not even relevant: the information focusing on FTAA/CAFTA as the CODEX problem is wrong, just plain dead wrong.

Don’t get me wrong: I believe that CAFTA and FTAA are really, really bad for the US and the other countries being globalized. They are good for the multinational corporations and there will be a piñata of goodies showering on the people who help them gain control of global markets and global means of production if CAFTA and FTAA pass while the rest of us will suffer badly for a very long time. I would like FTAA and CAFTA to disappear and never present their ugly, greedy selves to us again since I believe they will harm both humans and the environment in dreadful ways. I am equally opposed to the national ID card passed by Congress recently (“Real ID”) because I believe it is bad for America and bad for liberty. But just as CODEX is not the Real ID card, so CODEX is neither CAFTA nor FTAA and stopping any or all of the three dead in their tracks, while a really good idea, will have no impact whatsoever on CODEX, none whatsoever. CAFTA/FTAA are nothing more than symptoms of globalization. Trying to stop CODEX by blocking them is like trying to remove a hornet’s nest by treating the hornet sting victim with medication to ease their pain. It reduces the pain for the moment, but leaves the problem free to develop unchecked.

FTAA and CAFTA are really bad ideas for US interests. But all the recent focus in them as related to the CODEX issue because they contain CODEX language is either an error in the understanding of the real nature of the CODEX problem or, worse yet, intentional disinformation to drain off energy and political force from opposition to CODEX ALIMENTARIUS. FTAA and CAFTA are totally irrelevant to the CODEX issue. I will repeat that for those of you who have been having your ears filled with the opposite position. If FTAA and CAFTA disappear tomorrow (which they should, to my thinking), we still have a major problem until CODEX is solved. CODEX is the problem and will be until CODEX’s devastatingly anti-health, pro-illness policies, positions and strategies are controlled and changed. I believe we can both control and change them and will write about that later in this blog, but this is a really important issue which must be addressed head on.

Some people in the CODEX arena are now focusing on FTAA and CAFTA and saying that it is a waste of time to focus in CODEX because FTAA and CAFTA contain CODEX language in their text. These forces are either using mis- or dis- information by misleading people to think that because these trade agreements contain CODEX language they somehow are a significant part of the Codex problem. Simple logic makes it clear that they are derivative problems, not the problem itself. They are symptoms of the problem, not its cause and not the problem itself.

They contain CODEX language because they are international agreements which must conform to the requirements and agreements of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Since the US is a party to the WTO and so are all of the nations which would participate in FTAA and CAFTA, OF COURSE they contain language which is consistent with CODEX and all of the other agreements. The Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement is a part of the WTO agreements and so is the Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement. Every international agreement we enter into will contain language which reflects them. But the trade agreements can only implement what the original agreements require or permit. Why would anyone putting together a WTO-based agreement not put language in which makes the agreement consistent with them and therefore legal in each country and permissible in the WTO?

Here is the real story: If FTAA and CAFTA comply with CODEX language and CODEX has been changed from its pro-illness, pro-corporate greed contents there is no CODEX-related problem. If they are defeated and CODEX is still pro-illness and pro-greed, then we still have the CODEX problem just as we did before all that energy was drained off from the CODEX battle by mis – or dis—information.

Why anyone would focus on FTAA and CAFTA as if they were the problem and not the symptom is beyond me if they are genuinely concerned with solving the problem unless they have been mislead. If they are focusing on it to divert political attention and effort, we are dealing with disinformation and that’s pretty ugly.

In any event, whatever the reason, focusing on FTAA and CAFTA instead of CODEX is absolutely as wrong-headed as the “reasoning” by which conventional medicine reaches its conclusions. In fact, it is allopathic reasoning: focusing on the symptom and confusing its suppression with the cure of the disease itself!

Allopathic medicine focuses on symptoms, not causes. Allopathic medicine, while useful in many situations (such as trauma), reasons that by using toxic and dangerous means to suppress the symptoms of a disease, it has dealt with the problem in a satisfying and meaningful way. Diverting energy to FTAA and CAFTA that should go toward defeating CODEX may be well intentioned (or not, of course) but is naive and inefficient. Dealing with them as if they are the same thing takes energy vitally needed at this crucial juncture and dissipates it on another fight. CODEX itself is the root of the problem. CODEX language in FTAA/CAFTA is a symptom, nothing more.

But then, I am a physician who treats the underlying causes of a condition, not its symptoms. People very often get well when we work together even where conventional medicine (and less profound “alternative” approaches) has failed them. Conventional medicine reasons, for example, “You are a perfectly healthy woman, Mrs. Jones, except that you have breast cancer. Let’s make it go away and everything will be fine.” while Advanced Medicine (which is what I practice) says, “Your basic condition is immune compromise. Your immune system has been overwhelmed and the result is breast cancer, Mrs. Jones. Our task is to support your immune system so it can deal with the problem and make sure that any underlying causes are corrected. When that happens, you will be fine.”

So, there are those making the argument that if we make FTAA and CAFTA go away, we will be just fine. But if we don’t attend to the basic CODEX cancer, we will not be fine, because once ratified, CODEX is part of our world unless we can eliminate it in other ways. And now, because of the events that took place in two surprise moves by the WHO and FOA at CODEX last week, we can protect health freedom from CODEX!

There is no doubt in my mind that until this last week, the pro-health war we set out to win against the pro-illness, industrial forces who control CODEX (I call them, the “Bigs”) was an enormous undertaking which would require a series of mistakes on the part of the Bigs and strokes of good luck or divine intervention on our side (depending on how you look at things) for us to win and secure our fundamental rights to eternal health freedom.

The “Bigs” (that is, Big Pharma, Big AgraBiz, Big Chema, Big Biotechna and Big Medica) were set to win big via CODEX. Here is where they were headed:

  • Controlling the regulation of food and food components
  • Setting wildly elevated levels of pesticide, herbicide and veterinary drug contaminants
  • Compelling all food animals to be treated with antibiotics, growth hormones and other toxins
  • Forbidding nutritional information on labels
  • Defining nutrients as toxins so that anything that had a biological effect on a person was forbidden
  • Mandating irradiation of food
  • Allowing only synthetic varieties of those few ultra low level nutrients permitted.

It’s a long and deadly list but it was perfectly OK with the CODEX ALIMENTARIUS Commission (CAC) up until health freedom stood up and took control of the proceedings in the form of the very unhappy FAO and WHO representatives who spoke on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons last week and tilted the terrain in favor of health (people and planet), not corporate greed.

I have written in these Daily Blog Updates about what happened when the Under Secretary of Food Safety for the World Health Organization (WHO) noted with disgust that CODEX had made no contribution to health in its more than 40 years of existence (which was ignored in autocratic fashion by the Chairman of CAC).

I have also told you how the joint WHO/FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) Consultant’s Report and its 20 formal recommendations were briefly discussed on Wednesday afternoon and how the CAC Chairman refused to allow discussion of Recommendation No. 18 (which noted that CAC needed to determine whether it does or does not have a relationship with nutrition and what that relationship should be if it does have one). Think about that: the parents (WHO and FAO) tell the child, CAC, that it has a pretty poor report card and the CAC “disses” Mom and Dad and goes on about its business thinking there will be no consequences.

Wrong!

I have also kept you up to date about how WHO and FAO chose to respond by ordering the CAC to implement their health-oriented “Global Strategy” and demanded that CAC make a contribution to global health either by reformatting the 2 committees which have a logical connection to nutrition (including the one chaired by the anti-nutrition Dr. Rolf Grossklaus) or creating a new structure, a Task Force on Nutrition.

Could our side want much more of an opportunity handed to it on a silver organizational platter?

Here is our task, now that we have been given this gift: We need to become the go-to people who help the folks who make our international policy become heroes by providing them with the best possible scientific and clinical documentation of the importance of pro-health options (including the nutritional and environmental literature and clinical arts) so that they can support CODEX policies which make positive health impacts.

We are already working with other organizations to pool our resources and our abilities to do just that nationally and internationally. FTAA? CAFTA? Symptoms, not diseases, results, not causes.

Mis information or dis information (or something else), the Natural Solutions Foundation advises every person who values the market economy to oppose FTAA and CAFTA. But make sure to preserve your energy, focus, attention and involvement for dealing with a current and immediate threat called CODEX. With your input and action, CODEX now can be changed from a global disaster to a global opportunity to bring American values like the DSHEA style classification of nutrients and herbs as foods allowing people to make their own health choices and other pro-health positions to the world. Focus on FTAA and CAFTA and our failure is assured since they are hemispheric while CODEX is global. The WHO and FAO are not setting policy for FTAA or CAFTA but they are setting health-focused requirements for CODEX which will determine the provisions of CODEX in FTAA and CAFTA.

Go to the Six Easy Steps and let Congress know that you value our health freedoms and want CODEX to support health and US law. Take the other steps, too, and tell everyone you know how important to winning this battle it is for them to join in now! Put a link to our site on your emails and site and spread the word (you can use our marketing material)!

Listen to our internet Radio Show, FREE U.S./FREE US! live from Rome this Wednesday, July 13, 2005 on www.FICAA.com at 7-8 PM Eastern. And stay tuned for tomorrow’s blog update.

Yours in health and freedom,

Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation

P.S. Please support the Natural Solutions Foundation with your donations.

Posted in CODEX Consequences, Events, Promising Developments | 2 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 »

Seizing the Critical Terrain

Friday, July 8th, 2005

This is a short and essential blog.

I need your help if you are a physician or health scientist (or know any physicians or health scientists).

Yesterday, the terrain in CODEX land changed dramatically when the World Health Organization (WHO) made it clear that CODEX’s impact on health, as opposed to regulation, was significantly lacking and that CODEX would now be required to relate to nutrition, not just control food. The WHO Global Strategy on health focuses on diet, nutrition and physical exercise and CODEX is expected to help implement that strategy. This is our opportunity: we can shape and impact both US and global policy based on the WHO directive if we are organized, focused, effecive and clever.

General Stubblebine and I are staying at the same hotel as the US Delegation to CODEX and had the opportunity to chat informally and congenially with Dr. Ed Scarbrough, the US CODEX Manager, about this change of terrain over our excellent Italian coffee (although it is probably not organic, it is delicious!) this morning. Now the responsiblity falls upon us to make proper use of it. Dr. Scarbrough offered to help us find the proper people inside the US to work with to support our belief that US Policy should support DSHEA as the international standard because it offers choice, not restriction, and is consistent with US law.

Dr. Scarbrough made it very clear that he cannot be an advocate of our position but he would help us find our way through the CODEX system. I’ll take that! Having another point of contact with whom we have cordial relations is always useful and Dr. Scarbrough is willing to help us get our information to the right places.

One of his interesting comments was on the fragmented and dysfunctional nature of the Health Freedom Movement and we agreed that adult, reasoned discourse and data would go a lot further than shaking fists in the air and making irrational accusations. Sounds good to me!

We now have the opportunity to apply the useful and wise military notion of shifting and capturing the critical terrain. Part of the critical terrain is the database from which decision-makers are operating and how CODEX seeks to be science based. So here is what we need: a volunteer corps of people skilled in science and scientific methodology to compile the sharpest, strongest and most compelling research on the science of nutrition to present to the US Delegation to CODEX, the FDA, the CODEX Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses next November in Bonn, Congress and elsewhere in the universe of policy decision making.

Science-based is the paradigm: we have the science on the side of health freedom, supporting nutrients as effective means of health promotion (whereas Risk Assessment – a branch of the science of toxicology – as used by CODEX to assess nutrients is unscientific because nutrients are not toxins). Now we need to really prove that science is on the side of the case for laws such as DSHEA. If you have the skills and the passion, come onboard, and welcome! The creation of the science base (supporting the use of nutrients and other natural health products) for our policy makers is crucial. Write to me at rima.laibow@healthfreedomusa.org and tell me what your expertise is and we’ll put the task force together. Let’s make the best use of the critical terrain for the sake of health and health freedom!

Yours in Health and Freedom,

Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation

Posted in The Law & CODEX | 9 Comments »

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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