Here in Codex Land: Codex Report No. 3, Nov. 11, 2007
The rules here in Codex land are different from the ones that you and I know.
As you may know, Gen. Stubblebine and I are attending a Codex committee meeting in Germany. In our world, yours and mine, food should be clean and government agencies charged with protecting public health should prevent dangerous toxins from reaching our food or air, soil and water. But here in Codex-land, just the opposite seems to be true. Dangerous/profitable toxins of every sort are enthusiastically permitted into food and the environment EXCEPT for those alleged “toxins” which have a beneficial impact on health. In Codex-land, nutrients have to be controlled rigidly and kept at minimum levels, barely sustaining life but compromising health. That way, the preventable diseases of maximum profit caused by under nutrition can take root and flourish. You know what those diseases are; Codex’ parent UN agencies, the WHO and FAO have listed them: cancer, diabetes, heart disease…
As bizarre as it seems to us, all nutrients are treated as toxins here in Codex-land. So far, the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline doing so has been ratified, but the plan, articulated well today during the Codex session, is to treat all nutrients the same way: as toxins. But the one “health federation” group accorded “Official Observer” status does not get what is going on
Since natural therapies and health options (including herbs) are to be eliminated through Risk Assessment, the only legal strategies left to treat these preventable diseases of under nutrition will be … drugs! Considering the provable history of Codex as a drug industry idea, that makes pretty good sense, at least from their viewpoint!
Sunday was a fascinating (and troubling) day here in Codex-land. There was no amplification for the meeting (although it was an announced Working Group, just like yesterday’s session on Gluten-Free Foods for which amplification was provided) and the room where the meeting took place was full of reverberations making it very hard to hear (and making my verbatim note taking really challenging). There were hardly enough seats for everyone although the group was small so we were crowded together in a very big room nor were outlets provided as they usually are. That made electronic note-taking difficult unless you found a wall socket and plugged your computer in creating a hazard in the walkway. That’s what I did. I figured that my minor hazard was nothing compared to the global one they were creating in the meeting.
Dr. Rolf Grossklaus, Chair of CCNFSDU (Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses), supported by the European Union and the United States, of course, has been enthusiastically flogging the notion that nutrients should be treated like toxins for a very long time, since about 1995, in fact. (The fact that he runs a Risk Assessment company has nothing to do with his position on the issue, right?)
Today it became clear that everyone in the room, including those people who might well be expected to be on our team – the health freedom team – had succumbed to the lure of the group mind. The health freedom team was nowhere to be seen intellectually although a “health federation” which is an Official Observer (and can thus speak in the meetings) was actually physically present. Natural Solutions Foundation – as an NGO (nongovernmental) public observe – was relegated to the balcony – and has not been granted Official Observer status since, we were told, the Codex observer rule says that groups with similar interests are supposed to work together and, says Codex, such a group already has “status.” We have not, I am saddened to state, ever been invited to participate in the “official” health federation group, although, for example, industry groups are regularly allowed to participate in the official US delegation.
Well, the official health federation delegates’ contributions were dismally disappointing. Instead of representing the voice of reason and health freedom, neither the lawyer nor the scientist representing this group took the least exception to the idea that nutrients SHOULD be regulated as if they were dangerous. Instead, they spoke in favor of using ranges of permitted doses between the necessary minimum and the permitted upper limit of a nutrient instead of hard and fast numbers.
Let me ask you, WHAT upper limit?
Under US law there can be no upper limit set.
Because of biochemical individuality there can be no upper limit set.
When nutrients are used to restore lost health, mega doses may be needed on an individualized basis so there can be no upper limit set.
Nutrients are foods and, as such, generally regarded as safe so there can be no upper limit set.
But, first and foremost, we in the US are protected by DSHEA*, the 1994 law which says that there can be no upper limits set on nutrients are foods and, as such, generally regarded as safe so there can be no upper limit set.
So I ask again, WHAT upper limits?
The Health Freedom Movement, as fractured and dysfunctional as it may be, is united on one idea: no unscientific restrictions on access to nutrition. At least I thought that until today’s meeting.
Since one of the people on what I would have hoped was “our team” is a lawyer, you might suspect that he would know that. And since the other is a scientist, who has made many pronouncements on nutrition and nutrient needs, including the variation of requirements for them and the very wide range of individual needs for nutrients matched to their astonishing safety profiles, you would also expect him to have had more to say than ‘we need to be aware that there is both good and not-so-good evidence and we need to be cautious on that account’. This organization proudly flaunts the fact that it is an official observer so it can speak in Codex meetings. True enough. And so perhaps we all have a right to expect that they would actually be speaking for health freedom. But what they spoke for is the dangerous status quo as defined by the Pharma Phriendly Codex folks. Why would our team (if they are our team anymore) accept and acquiesce to the notion that there should be any upper limits on nutrients? Natural Solutions Foundation is a PUBLIC observer so we cannot speak during the meeting sessions while this organization has pointed out many times that it is in the unique position of being able to speak. In fact, the lawyer for this organization stated to the Natural Solutions Foundation two years ago that he was encouraged by Dr. Grossklaus to continue speaking out since he was able to act as “the conscience of Codex”. To be a conscience, though, one has to remain true to ones precepts and beliefs, not look for acceptance and an invitation to come have a drink at the old boy’s club. What’ll you have, boys, pesticide on the rocks with a twist of genetically modified lemon?
Tribute to George Orwell: Repeat Double Speak Long Enough and It Becomes the New Truth
Another contribution that “our team” made during today’s session was to point out that the example given in one section of the Nutrient Risk Assessment document under consideration was erroneous because the negative effects of the substance referred to (Beta Carotene) were only present if the synthetic version were used but were absent with the natural version of the supplement. The example was to show how “dangerous nutrients” should be controlled. He suggested that iron would be a better example for the document’s purposes.
Shame!
While that is correct, it begs the point: whether natural or synthetic beta carotene (or any other nutrient) is under consideration, its treatment as a member of a toxic class of materials violates US law, is therefore illegal under our legislation, cannot be approved by consensus or otherwise by the US or its employees in this or similar meetings, may not be implemented in the US and represents both bad science and bad global health policy since it mandates global under nutrition in any country which becomes Codex compliant in this regard. And, as you know, the only way for a country to avoid the WTO mandates that enforce Codex is to adopt the Natural Solutions Foundation “Codex 2 Step” – while others do ‘business as usual’ your Natural Solutions Foundation proposes solutions countries (including the US!) can adopt despite Codex manipulations. Click here for a discussion of how the Codex Two Step process works. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QNg3MD6BxM) on the Natural Solutions Foundation YouTube Channel, http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=NaturalSolutions.
The Delegates of this federation also joined in the discussion of the function of the Nutrient Risk Manager which each country will have under Codex. Whom would you like to nominate for the US Nutrient Risk Manager? Perhaps this very scientist who, just a year or two ago, was actually suing the European Food Supplements Directive because they were treating nutrients like toxins and limiting their doses to absurd and insufficient upper limits. He was here today, discussing what the Nutrient Risk Manager should do, instead of demanding an end to such pernicious bureaucracy. The Nutrition Czar of each country will keep nutrients out which s/he decides are not to her/his liking and limit the doses of those which are permitted to levels favored by Risk Assessment and Risk Analysis. Does that sound like US law or the will of the US population as expressed in our law? Not to me. Is that what you want? I don’t. But “our team” participated in this meeting by rearranging the cushions on the deck chairs on the Titanic when there was an alarm to be sounded, even thought it might be less welcome to the people who called the party than their balsamic participation in the global destruction of nutritional health freedom. That’s what Dr. Ron Paul called giving FDA more authority: “changing chairs on the Titanic…” and that thought applies to Codex too… but no one there who would have “spoken truth to power” was allowed to speak. Thanks, “team”!
We stand with former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor who wrote for the majority in Thompson v Western States, “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… Even if the Government did argue that it had an interest in preventing misleading advertisements, this interest could be satisfied by the far less restrictive alternative of requiring … a warning that … risks were unknown.”
On a Historical Note
Codex was, according to its own account – it’s happy picture of itself, created in 1962 and began promulgating standards and guidelines shortly thereafter. When the World Trade Organization (WTO) was created in 1994 by the Uruguay Round of GATT, the Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the US law which enabled our participation in the WTO specifically prohibited “HARMonization” with any aspect which compromised our nutritional freedoms. The FDA Modernization Act of 1997 did the same and so did USC 3512. The Natural Solutions Foundation’s challenge to the FDA’s illegal determination to restrict US nutrient access to comply with Codex (which you can join here [ [http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=184]) reminds the FDA of that in strong legal terms. In 1995, despite US law, the FDA had announced in the Federal Register (October 11, 1995) that it would pursue “HARMonization” with international standards – in other words, Codex; it never withdrew this position, preferring to ignore Congress’s strong mandate. If you recall that Codex was created at the behest of the Pharmaceutical industry, that makes pretty good sense: set the situation up so that real toxins are dealt with as if they are innocuous while really innocuous – and biologically necessary- competitors to the illness industry are treated as toxins.
Then, although the idea is as absurd as needing a drug for every emotion or experience in life, or the “fact” that properly used drugs, the leading cause of death in the US, are actually good for you, the Pharma clones just keep banging away and repeating the notion that nutrients need to be strictly limited since they can be “dangerous” and eventually, if the audience is not thinking very hard or very fast, they will buy into the oft-repeated, but wrong (and dangerous) idea: “Yup! Nutrients are like dangerous toxins and should be limited as if they were. Dangerous toxins like pesticides and veterinary drugs (including antibiotics) are really OK, see, but nutrients are very, very dangerous.”
That doesn’t hide the truth: nutrients are foods!
But repeat the lie and repeat it and repeat it and, with enough propaganda and enough pseudoscience, people – governments, delegates, even the “health freedom team?” – will finally buy in to the idea as if it did, indeed, make sense. The principle is the same as repeated ads for drugs. It apparently does not make any difference that happy, healthy people running through fields of wild flowers probably do not need drugs: bring the two ideas together enough times and people will conclude that IN ORDER to be happy and healthy and run through fields of flowers gaily, they NEED drugs. So … ask your doctor! And ignore the rapid fire, quickly intoned and quickly forgotten reality disclosures of what these drugs do to you, whether you need them or not.
Back here in Codex-land, the Sunday morning session was a short one, just two hours, to discuss Risk Assessment as it applies to nutrients was a short one, just two hours. And it ended about 45 minutes early. The work was done rapidly and with seeming banal boredom. No passion, all civility. Quietly and politely set up a system that will condemn who knows how many people – billions? – to chronic under nutrition and what the World Health Organization identifies as its inevitable results: cancers, cardio-vascular diseases, stroke, diabetes and obesity. Here in Codex-land we can just decide to treat nutrients as if they were dangerous toxins. That lets us set minimum intake levels (since, unlike toxins, even in Codex-land a total lack of nutrients is a very bad thing). In fact, the Australian Chairwoman of the meeting noted that traditional Risk Assessment does not apply to things which are necessary for life, only to those which are toxic to us. “Modifications” which have never been tested by science, have been made to the Risk Assessment profile and procedure to account for this difficulty. Never mind that these modifications have no scientific validity. The much-vaunted “Science Based” ethic of Codex is, as it says in Porgy and Bess, “a sometime thing”.)
Once the inhabitants of Codex-land got that point established, they could make the decision to set nutrient upper limits (ULs) since, here in Codex-land we don’t want people to have enough nutrients to stay, or get, healthy. Remember, not only did Dr. Grossklaus, the Chairman of CCNFSDU, state in 2003 that “Nutrition has no role in health” but even if it did, it would not be permitted. You see, “healthy” is a very, very bad idea here in Codex land. Sick and taking drugs in Codex-land. Now THAT’s a good idea!
The Council for Responsible Nutrition,, or CRN, a US supplement trade group, has been a huge fan of setting upper limits for nutrients using Risk Assessment. (see, for example, http://www.crnusa.org/pdfs/CRNCommentsCAC062804.pdf )
I was not really looking, after all this time, for much support for the idea of high potency nutrients as our legal right in the US from Council for Responsible Nutrition, whose John Hathcock was at the meeting asking for limits to guide manufacturers, no matter how low, nor from the IADSA, http://www.iadsa.org/ , the, International Alliance of Dietary Supplement Associations, another trade group which seems to have missed the point that if nutrients are limited to doses so low that they, by design, have no impact on people, then people will stop buying nutrients. Duh! In other words, the supplement industry is blindly shooting itself in the pill bottle. Could that be because of the guidance it is getting from its trade organizations, NPA ( http://www.naturalproductsassoc.org/site/PageServer ) and CRN? And could THAT be due to the influence of their board members who are from drug, biotech and Agribiz industries, whose wishes and whims control Codex? Hmmm.
I was not looking for their support in protecting your high potency self determination from CRN or IADSA and I was not disappointed. It is true, I must admit, that John Hathcock did kindly point out that the Codex Two Step” (a template which we have applied to the Codex Vitamin and Mineral Guideline in our Codex eBook ( http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=220), is a valid process and open to any nation that wants to use it. He did not call it that, he just identified the portions of the WTO trade agreements which makes it both legal and accessible to any country which wishes to protect itself from Codex. So thank you for that, John. It is also true that the attorney representing the “Health Freedom” federation at this meeting has repeatedly condemned, derided and scoffed at the Codex Two Step process. As a lawyer, I would have expected better. So Mr. Hathcock got that point, at least, exactly right.
But the two “Health Freedom” team members? Where were they? Rearranging the cushions.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
*Dietary Supplements Health and Education Act, passed in 1994 by unanimous Congressional Consent says that nutrients are foods which are generally regarded as safe.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
*Dietary Supplements Health and Education Act, passed in 1994 by unanimous Congressional Consent says that nutrients are foods which are generally regarded as safe.
