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.
