November 14, 2007
Today was the final day of deliberations for the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU). Tomorrow is a day off for the delegates who get to slog around in the cold, gray and wet German November (it snowed a bit today, mixing in with the rain for a fun walk back to the meeting hall after lunch!). While the delegates slosh around (or take the guided tour of German underground bunker cities designed for residence during a nuclear war – I kid you not!) the CCNFSDU Secretariat will take the discussion and turn it into a final report. Then delegates get 1.5 hours to examine it and the final session of the meeting is held where there is usually blood on the floor by the time the session is finished as delegates fight to have their positions included in the report if the CCNFSDU power elite does not want them there or fight to correct what their contributions have been altered into.
At the Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC) in Rome this past July, in fact, the Swiss delegation was so peeved about the report and its abuse of their position that they fought comma by comma, word by word, for several hours (overtime, of course) to get things the way they wanted them. So these final sessions are always fraught with numbing tedium interspersed with food fights. The whole thing would be pretty interesting (and occasionally entertaining from an anthropological or political science point of view) if the matter were not so serious and of such consequence to so many people on the global stage. If you have been reading the Natural Solutions Foundation email Health Freedom Alerts (which you can sign up for at www.HealthFreedomUSA.org) or have read, for example, the Codex 7 Point Summary (http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=157) you know that Codex is the international Food Code and that it serves not the needs of the needy or even the average consumer, but the multinational interests which profit from industrialization and globalization of the world’s food supply: Big Pharma, Big Chema, Big Biotech, Big Agribiz and Big Medica. Countries, especially the developing ones, mistakenly look to it for a level of safety and technical guidance on which they can base their own food laws and codes, erroneously believing the propaganda it puts out repeating endlessly that the purpose and impact of the Codex is protective and will enhance health and food safety through international trade and domestic regulation.
In fact, of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Codex is dangerous, deceptive and the very unequal playing field of the very rich countries and the multinational corporations whose interests they represent at Codex and elsewhere on the global stage.
Consider India: India is the world’s second largest country with a population of 1.2 billion people. She has a huge land mass and, like many developing countries, has a vast gulf between the affluent and the poor. The affluent include the burgeoning middle class, the obscenely wealthy. ” India’s middle class constituted less than 10% of the population in 1984 and 1985, according to the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER). Since then, it has more than tripled, but is [as of 2001 it was]still less than 20%. [It was projected in 2001 that] India’s individual purchasing power will climb from $2,149 in 1999 to $5,653 per person in 2020 — and to $16,500 in 2040. (Global Currents, http://www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=2195)
But the number of people living in slums in India, Asia’s fourth largest economy, has more than doubled in the past two decades. According to the Indian Junior Minister for Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, Kumari Selja, urban slum dwellers rose from 27.9 million in 1981 to 61.8 million in 2001 – the latest census data available.
India regularly asks for help from Codex, and particularly the CCNFSDU, which deals with food for special dietary uses, on setting standards for cereal based foods for children who are starving and seriously underweight. India, supported by many African and Asian countries, including, for example, Benin and Thailand, repeatedly states that the problem there is not reducing calories for children’s food (which occupies CCNFSDU’s focus when it deals with items like how to implement the World Health Organization’s much neglected Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health (http://www.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA57/A57_R17-en.pdf)
but finding internationally acceptable ways to increase the calories, protein and other nutrients available to save the lives of their millions of starving children.
Year after year this concern is raised by India when the Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC), Codex Committee on Food Labeling (CCFL) and CCNFSDU deal with calorie and sugar restriction in foods for infants and children (and decide, year after year, not to do the right thing. Sugar is left in baby food and weaning foods despite its health risks (including habituation for its young consumers), dangerous additives are permitted (like dangerous artificial colors, preservatives, artificial sweeteners which cause brain cancer, for example, and mono sodium glutamate). And year after year, nothing happens to help India set international standards to protect its starving children from supposedly calorie and protein enhanced foods which are, in fact, neither or which do not provide necessary nutrients, calories, protein, etc.
Consider: There are 146 million children in the developing world under the age of 5 who are underweight and more than half of them live in South Asia. Out of these 146 million babies, toddlers and preschoolers (assuming that they might some day go to school), 106 million of these dangerously underweight children live in 10 countries and 57 million of these starving children live in India Undernutition, according to the World Health Organization Report (2002) if the underlying cause of 60% of all deaths in children under 5 years of age (this figure was endorsed by Lancet in 2003). And, of course, the UNICEF publication “Progress for Children, a Report Card on Nutrition, No. 4, May 2006” says definitively that “the world must alter its priorities in order to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of reducing child under nutrition by half in 2015”. By the way, I believe firmly that the international organizations like UNICEF, WHO, FAO organizations are deeply flawed and, at some upper stratum, may be directly involved in highly dangerous social culling policies. But, like Codex, they are composed primarily of armies of good men and women doing good work, or trying to, while, unlike Codex, they often produce highly useful and informative documentation of the problems which the world faces.
One of the tricks that Codex uses is to create meaningless standards on the basis that they pertain “to the general population”, not to any single group in order to make sure that the apparent underlying goal of mandating under nutrition for the global population (while proclaiming just the opposite, of course) is achieved. If you recall that Codex functions as, in essence, a pharmaceutical and chemical marketing strategy, and that healthy people do not buy many drugs, this makes good sense. That is why, in our opinion, nutrients are restricted as if they were toxins (through phony science like “Risk Assessment” and the types and levels of available nutrients (such as the European-banned boron and vanadium which Dr. Grossklaus, who lives in Europe, admitted that he is taking to help heal his bone injury) to levels so low that they cannot aid anyone’s health very much but do make sure that people are good customers for Big Pharma and Industrialized Illness Care (IIC).
There has been an ongoing struggle in CCNFSDU to introduce meaningful nutritional levels through the adoption of Nutrient Reference Values (NRVs) which would tell consumers all over the world how much of each nutrient, micro or macro nutrient, they should aim for. At least that was the intent of South Africa’s years long work on the topic. You may remember that in 2005, at the CCNFSDU meeting in Bonn, Germany, when the South African Delegate attempted to present the results of a several-year long Working Group to establish these NRVs “to promote optimum health” she was rudely and stunningly cut off by Dr. Grossklaus with these memorable words: “Codex is not about health. Codex is about trade. It would be nice if Codex could provide nutrient levels for health, but it is about trade, not health!” He then refused to allow her to proceed with her report (on which she and the other members of the Working Group had been working for years and instructed her to go back and redo the NRVs and bring them back next year! South Africa declined and Korea took over. During the presentation and discussion of the NRVs this year, Korea did not rouse the ire of the Chairman since it dutifully presented the principles, not the content, of the NRV standard. BUT the NRVs were declared to be “for the general population” and “for labeling purposes only, not for health or intake guidance”.
Here’s what that means:
NRVs will be listed on every package of food in international trade (and in domestically compliant countries). Consumers will see that this food provides x percent of their daily requirement of a particular nutrient and will, quite naturally, assume that this requirement applies to them. What they will not know is that the amount of the nutrient has nothing at all to do with their needs as a healthy man or woman, a pregnant woman, a man with HIV, a post menopausal woman, a 4 year old child, etc. They will not know that the NRV is derived from a process which took assumptions about a mythical ‘average expectable global diet’ without any reference to genetic, gender, environmental, health status or other specifics and set those values so low that, through the process of Risk Assessment, the nutrient in question might keep an average expectable global body alive, but certainly will not support health under any stress at all, let alone “optimal health”.
In the ladies room, while washing our hands side by side I spoke to the African delegate who invited me to mail her my comments before each meeting so that she could speak them since I cannot and the only “Health Freedom” observer group admitted by Codex does not do so either. I took the opportunity of clean hands and a quite room to say the following to her:
“Could you please explain to me”, I said, how it works that health claims for foods are strongly discouraged because, as stated earlier today in the meeting, ‘health claims on foods give the consumer the false impression that those foods confer a nutritional benefit'” [False? that’s why the claim is there: to tell the consumer that the food confers a nutritional benefit – REL] “but NRVs, which every consumer in the world will assume pertains to them when they read the food label, are to be derived from an amalgam of population statistics, where they exist, or from ‘probabalistic statistics’ [I swear: that is the term of art here in Codex for making up data! -REL] and ‘corrected’ by Risk Assessment to make sure that the nutrient levels do not exceed some mythical ‘Upper Safe Level’ which does not promote health?” She looked at me for a long time and then slowly said, “It doesn’t work. That makes no sense at all. I had never thought about it before!” Then we got into a long discussion about the real game of Codex and I handed her our updated Nutricide DVD (http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=156) with the added section on how the “Codex Two Step Process” works to allow countries to protect themselves from the deadly and irrational standards and guidelines of Codex and from the World Trade Organization’s trade sanctions. I also gave her a hard copy of the Codex eBook (http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=220)which shows how the Codex Two Step Process can be applied, in this case to the deadly Vitamin and Mineral Guideline (ratified by Codex July 4, 2005, Rome). So Codex is about trade, health claims would give people the idea that certain foods were good for them so must not be allowed without significant scientific agreement, (a standard which foods, which are safe, cannot meet and which the US FDA does not require drugs, which are dangerous, to meet) and NRVs are for labeling only and are derived from somebody’s guess about what the global average expectable person might need without any intent to provide health information or guidance.
Whew! What did the CCNFSDU body do? It fought over whether these NRVs should be produced for vitamins and minerals including global average expectable children from 6 to 36 months or just for global average expectable adults. The compromise was to produce a request for New Work that would go to the CAC and then the new NRVs, the ones that do not promote health but trade, would be produced for adults, following which, years and years down the road, they would also be produced for global average expectable children from 6 to 36 months. Consumers can rest assured that trade, if not their health, will someday be
enhanced by having meaningless information on the labels of their prepared food. What a way to go, Codex. Protecting the health of consumers, as mandated by your mandate:
The main purposes of this Programme are protecting health of the consumers and ensuring fair trade practices in the food trade, and promoting coordination of all food standards work undertaken by international governmental and non-governmental organizations.
http://www.codexalimentarius.net/web/index_en.jsp
Maybe tomorrow we can talk about the proud announcement of the Chair of the Codex Committee on Food Labeling (CCFL), Dr. Ann McKenzie, that the CCFL’s contribution to the implementation of the WHO Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health (which CCFL and CCNFSDU have been mandated to implement) was to set up a committee to standardize the names of foods internationally! Now that should certainly make a difference to the folks in the world dying from a contaminated food supply rich in sugar and saturated fats, artificial flavors, colors and pesticides, veterinary drugs and so forth, don’t you think?
We could also talk about the fact that, not to be outdone, despite lots of what seemed to me like snide and contemptuous references to the Global Strategy during the meeting (and at last night’s pleasant social event for delegates) by the Dr. Grossklaus, the CCNFSDU decided that it had already fulfilled its requirement to implement the Global Strategy since they had sent a letter on the topic last year!
What support for the needs of the developing world! But, then, most of them are pretty poor and have no money to buy drugs. Do you think…….? You don’t suppose……?
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY
Yesterday had some very hopeful moments at the Codex Committee on Food Labeling (CCFL) meeting here in Ottawa. The World Health Organization (WHO) gave CCFL a bunch of action steps that is wanted Codex (through this committee and the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses) to use to implement the WHO Global Strategy on Diet, Physical activity and Diet. These steps include informative labels on pre-packaged food about the caloric content (“energy”), saturated and trans fats, sodium, sugars and nutrients. The purpose of this is to allow consumers to reduce their risk for the non-communicable diseases (NCDs) of under nutrition, identified by the WHO as cancers, cardiovascular disease and stroke, diabetes and obesity and manage them via dietary strategies.
That’s right: there IS a connection, says the WHO, between what goes into your mouth and what becomes of your body! And it is up to the world’s food standard setting body, the WHO says, to do something positive about it. Who could argue with that? Well, Canada, the US, Australia, Brazil, Mexico and a host of other countries, that’s who. You see, if the world’s people knew how to reduce their risk factors for the major killers (aside from properly prescribed drugs, of course), they would not be buying the really bad foods that comprise so much of the Standard American Diet (so aptly called “SAD”, but now rapidly becoming the “SGD”, Standard Global Diet). They might choose veggies, not fried chicken wings, fruits, not dough nuts, and local foods, not Big Macs and fries.
If they understood how to prevent the highly profitable killer diseases they might not spend billions and billions of dollars on drug-based illness care because they would not have illnesses that needed treatment and if they did have those illnesses, they could manage their conditions with diet reducing or eliminating the need for drugs (an drugs to control the side effects of those drugs, of course!)
If consumers knew that giving their babies and children sweets would give them heart disease and diabetes, they might make different choices for them resulting in the loss of more billions of dollars in kiddie food porn.
And if labels contained helpful information about macro nutrients (protein, fiber, sugar, sodium) and micro nutrients (vitamins, minerals, amino acids and other big impact, small dose diet components), they might decide to regulate their health for preventive, as well as therapeutic purposes. Eating patterns would change, disease expenditures would change, corporate profits would change and consumers would be making a heap of bother for the multinational corporations and the countries that serve their interests and call it public policy.
Other countries, of course, expressed strong commitment to the implementation strategies brought forward by the WHO. But it turned into a bad day at black rock anyway for consumer health.
A Bit of Necessary Background
The Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU) has been headed for decades by the autocratic, anti-nutrition and very powerful Dr. Rolf Grossklaus, a physician with a specialization in nutritional medicine (which is an option in Germany). Aside from humiliating and dismissing any one at all who does not support his point of view during each and every one of the CCNFSDU meetings, Dr. G. maintains that nutrition has no place in medicine (2003) and that only super low dose nutrients, in doses so tiny that they have no impact on any human, should be permitted. Dr. Grossklaus is also the Chairman of the Board of bFR, a State owned German company that performs “Risk Assessment” on toxins of various sorts. Dr. G. has sold the Codex world a very rotten bill of goods by selling the concept of “risk assessment” for nutrients. The net result? Codex treats nutrients as if they were dangerous industrial chemicals. Of course, if it is true that Dr. G serves both as the Chairman of the Board of a company that does Risk Assessment on a contract basis for Codex and serves as the chair of the committee that requires these same risk assessments would be highly questionable ethically.
Dr. Grossklaus has applied the toxicology tool of risk assessment to nutrients. Here is a very abbreviated list of the “Maximum Permissible Levels” (MPL) which bFR proposes for everyone in the world thus assuring global under nutrition (followed by the amount that I take on a daily basis for comparison)
Nutrient MPL My Daily Dose
Vitamin C 225 mg /// 3.5 grams (3500 mg)
Vitamin D 5 IU /// 8000 IU
Vitamin E 15 IU /// 1200 IU
Vitamin B3 17 mg /// 1000 mg
Vitamin B6 5.4 mg /// 250 mg
Vitamin B12 5 mcg /// 5000 mcg
Fluoride 3.8 mg /// 0.00 mg: significant toxin
Read more about this dangerous “risk assessment”.
And Codex buys it. Right now, the CCNFSDU is engaged in setting Nutrient Reference Values (NRVs) at the dangerously low levels for vitamins and minerals.
Back to Today at CCFL
When the WHO proposal was brought forward to make labeling of both macro and micro nutrients part of the information available on pre packaged foods, some countries thought that would help their consumers and were strongly in favor of it. Others, however, including the usual gang of suspects (which always seems to include the United States), proposed that the determination of the values to be indicated on labels as necessary to prevent or manage the NCDs (caused by under nutrition, you will recall) on food labels should be left to CCNFSDU. Since they were already working on the NRVs for vitamins and minerals, the countries said, CCNFSDU would be the perfect part of Codex to refer this task to.
Of course, what this means is that Dr. G’s overt hostility to effective doses of nutrients is virtually certain to lead to values so low that the concept of reducing risk of disease or managing that disease through these doses will be meaningless. Winner” Big Pharma and the other components of the Illness Care industry. Looser? You and I, our loved ones and our friends and neighbors.
For Shame!
Round 2
Powdered infant formula is contaminated on a regular basis with at least two potentially deadly microbes. Only careful handling, short limits on use after mixing, and other strict precautions can keep babies from dying in significant numbers from contaminated formula, especially if there the baby already is weakened by malnutrition, parasites, etc. The International Breast Feeding Action Network (IBFAN), an NGO which speaks for the interests of pregnant women and babies, asked that a WHO report on the proper treatment and procedures of reconstituted powdered infant formula be referenced by the CCFL in its report. “Good idea” said the predictably pro-health countries. Bad, bad, bad idea said the “Pharma Phriends”: We do not need to tell mothers, care givers, hospitals, etc.
If there were logical reasons given for sentencing countless babies to serious illness and many of them to death, I missed them and I was listening pretty hard.
The good news today, however, is that we got invited to a special regional meeting set up to allow us to share our insights and opinions in an area ripe for action — they ARE mad as Hell and the ARE NOT going to take it any more.
I think you will have an easy time understanding why saying more is premature!
Remembering that World Trade Organization trade sanctions are the teeth of Codex, the Codex Working Group developed a strategy to make countries that choose not to follow Codex “Trade Sanction Proof”. You can imagine how veyr intersted health-friendly nations are!
We continue to build the “coalition of the willingly healthy” at Codex and in their own countries so that they can engage in real self determination through the application of our two step WTO Proofing Concept. One of the tools we provide is a hard copy of the Codex eBook. This is the identical book we offer to Codex Delegates, Ministers of Health and other decision makers. The Codex book provides the information necessary for any country to protect its people from any danger brought by Codex and still avoid World Trade Organization (WTO) trade sanctions by the application of a scientific and legislative template. We also make available our highly informative and startling Nutricide:the DVD, too.
As it happens, this Codex eBook is the application of the WTO-proof template has been applied to the dangerous and restrictive Vitamin and Mineral Guideline so it is exceptionally timely right now!
One final word: right now 180,623 people have submitted their comments on the destructive and deceptive FDA CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicine/Modalities) Guidance. Please take a moment to do the same if you haven’t already told the FDA how important the practices and products you rely on in Natural Health options are to you.
Thanks!
Yours in health freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
The Natural Solutions Foundation submitted comments to the United States Codex Office and the the FDA prior to the April 10, 2007 public meeting on US policy pertaining to the 2007 Codex Committee on Food Labeling (CCFL). One of the important items on the CCFL agenda is the Draft revised Guideline for organic food standards.
These same comments have been presented to health friendly (and potentially health friendly) nations attending Codex as well as to the US. Documents like these do double duty: we have been told that they have been influential in shaping national positions both inside Codex and at home. The Natural Solutions Foundation comment document on Fluoride, for example, was not only very helpful to a number of countries in allowing them to take a stand directly opposite to that of the US during the 2006 Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU) and bring about a ban on its use in formula for normal babies, but the information in that document was strong enough to spark national debate on a ban on fluoride in a number of countries following the meeting in Chiang Mai (Thailand).
During the first day of the CCFL Working Group meetings (April 28, 2007) prior to the meeting itself (April 30-May4, 2007) here in Ottawa several countries thanked us for our comments and stated that they were helpful to them in focusing their policy. This included some small countries new to the Codex process. The Working Group will meet today on this topic and its recommendations will be presented to the full CCFL during that committee’s meeting. Stay tuned to this blog for up to the minute information on Codex from inside one of its key meetings.
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
NATURAL SOLUTIONS FOUNDATION
Major General Albert N. Stubblebine III, President
Rima E. Laibow, MD, Medical Director
April 8, 2007
Comments by the Natural Solutions Foundation on Codex Committee on Food Labeling Agenda Item 4(A) CX/FL 07/35/5, Guidelines for the Production, Processing, Labeling and Marketing of Organically Produced Foods DRAFT REVISED ANNEX 2: TABLE 3 (PART 1 & 2)
(CL 2006/49-FL & CL 2006/12-FL, ALINORM 06/29/22 – APPENDIX III) and all subsequent Agenda sub items referring to Labeling of organically produced foods
The Natural Solutions Foundation strongly opposes the addition of sodium or potassium nitrates or nitrites in any food produce by organic means and labeled as “organic food” or “organically produced food” and urges the United States to oppose its use domestically and internationally. Permitting nitrates and nitrites, well-known and universally recognized carcinogens and co-carcinogens, to be added to organic food destroys any meaning the phrase might have and betrays consumers who trust the concept conveyed by certification of foods as organic. Allowing the addition of universally acknowledged toxins to organic foods betrays the consumer and constitutes false and misleading information which the FDA is tasked with eliminating in the food supply, not fostering.
Furthermore, the human and economic costs of preventable cancers induced by the introduction of unnecessary toxins into food which consumers pay a high premium for because they believe that such food is free from precisely those types of toxins is unacceptable.
Nitrates and nitrites are synthetic compounds added to meats, especially processed meats like bacon and sausages, for two purposes. These compounds aid in the maintenance of an attractive red color in processed meats like bacon, ham, sausage and similar products. This attractive color is associated by consumers with freshness and wholesomeness so this additive prolongs effective shelf life. In the absence of this additive, processed meat turns grey long before it decomposes or spoils. Since consumers are more willing to buy red meat than meat which has turned gray, the additives are extremely popular with producers.
The second purpose for which they are used is to retard the germination of botulinum spores to prevent the occurrence of botulism. However botulinum spores germinate very slowly. Refrigeration, proper hygiene and, if desired, the use of salt in the curing process, retard the growth of botulinum spores much more successfully than nitrates/nitrites and do so without their significant health hazards. Foods prepared in this way could fairly be labeled as organic (provided they met the other requirements of such labeling) while foods with nitrates and nitrates in no way meets any meaningful definition of that term.
Canada and the US regulatory agencies have both demonstrated their awareness of the dangers presented by nitrates/nitrites: both have lowered permissible levels for use in foods. However, since even miniscule doses of nitrites can form potent carcinogenic nitrosamines, lowering permissible levels is not an effective health measure. This problem poses a severe health hazard because nitrosamines are so powerfully carcinogenic at tiny doses.
Organic foods are, by their nature, free of synthetic and chemical additives. Consumers expect that organic foods have no non-food, chemical preservative, artificial coloring agents or similar additives which are not produced spontaneously through the natural process of preparation. When consumers spend premium prices because they want to consume foods which have not been altered or adulterated by industrial food sourcing or processing techniques, they believe that they can eat organic food without the impact of additives, synthetic colors, preservatives, hormones or other non-food components. Nitrates and nitrites are well known to consumers as chemicals which carry significant risks when consumed either before additional cooking or after it.
Consumers are well aware that baby food manufacturers have voluntarily withdrawn nitrates/nitrites in baby food following the 1995 statement at the 44th meeting of FAO/WHO that “nitrite should not be used… in foods for infants below the age of three months.” According to FAO/WHO, babies are especially venerable to methemoglobin. In addition, fetal hemoglobin is more easily changed to methemoglobin so consumption of nitrite by pregnant women can reasonably be expected to pose a danger to the fetus. Nitrates impair the oxygen carrying capacity of hemoglobin, turning it into methemoglobin which cannot carry oxygen. Nitrite in large doses has been fatal for adults. Consumers who are particularly sensitive to this transition, who have profound anemia or suffer from other conditions which impair oxygen transport and seek to avoid nitrites expect that they are doing just that by purchasing organic sausages and preserved meats.
Several other serious and potentially lethal problems attend the use of nitrates/nitrites. Nitrates are associated with increased miscarriages, fetal deaths and birth defects in laboratory animals. Consumers are looking for food without added hazards when they purchase organic food and have the right to expect it.
Parents may spend the extra money for “safe” bacon and sausage for their children since babies and children are especially vulnerable because of their lower blood volume and greater susceptibility to the conversion of hemoglobin to methemoglobin.
Consumers sensitive to, or aware of the dangers of, nitrites may make significant efforts to avoid it only to find their efforts thwarted by a counterintuitive inclusion of dangerous synthetic additives in supposedly organic foods.
Numerous studies show that nitrite alone can cause cancer. However, an even more serious cause for concern is the well documented potential for nitrates/nitrites to cause cancer through the formation of nitrosamines, especially quaternary nitrosamines, formed when nitrites react with secondary amines. These secondary amines occur naturally in protein-containing foods such as the meat of the sausage or bacon to which they have been added.
Nitrosamines are among the most powerful carcinogens known. Numerous studies confirm the strong relationship between nitrate and nitrite intake and cancer including colorectal adeno carcinoma, prostate and breast, stomach cancers in humans. Animal studies make it clear that even minute amounts of certain nitrosamines can produce cancers.
Studies have found a correlation between nitrosamine-contaminated foods and childrens’ leukemia and brain cancer According to Dr. William Lijinsky, former director of the Chemical Carcinogenesis Program at the Frederik Carcinogenesis Center (Maryland) said in his US Senate testimony, “There is evidence to show that nitrites in meat are the most dangerous food additives today and that they are major contributors to cancer… producing cancer in 24 species of animals tested at the Frederick Cancer Research Centre.” Dr. Lijinsky, an internationally recognized expert in the biological impact of nitrates and nitrites, went on to state, “Most of the deaths [from cancer] are due to the foods people ate thirty to forty years ago.”
Adding known carcinogens to organics food is deceptive and misleading and must be avoided by the US and by all members of Codex both on principle and for health reasons.
Consumers and their government representative in many countries recognize that nitrates and nitrites have no place in organic foods. For example, Costa Rica says (CL 2006/49-FL) in its written comments on this issue,
“We must take into consideration that, in addition to accepting the additive [nitrate/nitrite], its use must comply with the organic production guidelines criteria, meaning they must not violate the principles established in those Guidelines. Therefore, … In the case of additives for use in animal origin foods, and particularly in the case of Sodium Nitrite (INS Nº 250) and Potassium Nitrate (INS Nº 252), it is important to note that these substances are known to present a risk for human health as they generate nitrous N compound that have been shown to be carcinogenic in experimental animals, some of them being mutagenic and others teratogenic, as well as having high levels of their salts associated with a higher incidence of stomach and esophagus cancers. Due to the aforesaid, our position is that the use of these substances in organic foods of animal origin violates the principles of organic production and, therefore, our country does not accept their inclusion in this list.”
Norway bans all nitrates and nitrites in all foods, organic or not, noting that proper hygiene and handling eliminate the need for the substances in food altogether noting,
“[250] [Sodium nitrite] For food of animal origin: Not accepted especially for prod. Group 8.2.2. Heattreated [sic], 8.2.3, 8.3. and 9.2.4.1 Should not at all be used for colour [sic] retention. Could doubtfully be used as a preservative. It is possible to produce products without these additives. This requires good hygiene, and HACCP should be in place. There are health concerns about using this additive. The Norwegian consumers do not expect to find this additive in organic products.” [Emphasis added]
252 Potassium nitrate The above mentioned categories are not included for 252. See 250
301 Sodium ascorbate See comments to 250 and 252 The use of this additive is linked to the use of nitrate/nitrite and should therefore not be used.”
Similarly, Thailand states in its written comments, “It is acceptable for us to exclude the use of any kind of nitrate/nitrite from the organically produced food, especially food of animal origin such as sausages.”
Likewise, Germany has banned both substances in the foods.
The Natural Solutions Foundation believes that nitrates/nitrites have no appropriate place in the human food supply and that permitting their use in foods which are labeled “Organic” is totally unjustified and represents a profound betray of the trust placed in regulatory agencies by consumers. Hence, the Natural Solutions Foundation strongly urges the United States to instruct its Delegate to the Codex Committee on Food Labeling and all other Codex meetings and committees to vigorously oppose the use of nitrates and nitrites in human food under any circumstances and most especially, to preserve the meaning of organic food by using all means at its disposal to make sure these dangerous compounds are not permitted in organic foods.
Dated: April 8, 2007
Respectfully submitted,
Major General Albert N. Stubblebine III (US Army, Ret.)
Rima Laibow MD
For: Natural Solutions Foundation
www.healthfreedomusa.org
Codex Working Group on Labeling of Pre-Packaged Foods
Ottawa, Ontario
Labeling of pre-packaged food may not sound very sexy, but it is of extreme importance to consumer decision making and to the economics of Big Agribiz/Big Food. Less food in the food being sold, more permissible deception, more fillers, additives and contaminants means more money for low integrity food producers. Consumers’ interests were not very well served today at the first of two Working Groups.
There is certain sameness to all of Codex meetings: they are all long, exceedingly detail oriented and, if you are not watching the political, economic and corporate scenery very, very closely, mind-numbingly dull. Time after time, while the minute details receive excruciating attention, examination and discussion, the provisions which could actually protect people, exclusively referred to as “consumers” on Planet Codex, are left for last, and, fascinatingly, time after time get taken up with [literally] seconds to go before the end of the meeting. Oops! No time to discuss them. Translators have to leave. SO sorry!
Today’s Working Group was an excellent example of this industry-friendly, consumer-unfriendly process. We started the day with a report for consideration on the Quantitative Ingredient Disclosure (QUID) labeling of pre-packaged foods. QUID labeling means that foods have to declare what percentage of what food they are made with so consumers have more information and more choice about what they buy.
Who is the leader in the Codex anti effective QUID movement? The US, of course. My observation was that the representatives of the US beverage, grocery manufacturers and frozen food industries appeared pretty happy with the way their helpful regulatory friend, the FDA, handled the whole thing. The FDA’s Dr. Barbara Schneeman was, is serving, as she so often does, as the US Delegate to this session.
The US has been quite strongly opposed to QUID but other countries, like the EU, Norway, Switzerland, are very fond of QUID labeling which helps consumers. If, for example, you want to buy salmon rolls stuffed with scallops you would find out from a QUID label that one brand contains 8% scallops in the stuffing while another brand contains 16% scallops. You could then decide whether the extra money for the second brand was worth it to you.
It is not hard to figure out that manufacturers do not want the responsibility, the expense or the revelation of how little real food they put into pre packaged foods.
There were two sections in the document (a draft amendment to another document) under discussion today which were, in fact, quite protective and helpful to consumers. When the one day workshop convened this morning to work on the draft amendment before sending it back to the full Codex Committee on Food Labeling for consideration next week the Chairman of the Working Group had prepared a proposed amended draft report for the Working Group to consider based on the submitted country and organization comments. In that document the two really helpful items were struck out without discussion or debate.
An NGO (Non Governmental Organization) called “IACFO” or International Association of Consumer Food Organizations, pointed out that the majority of comments from nations and organizations were positive about these two items and questioned why they were struck out of the report. The Chairman said that there would be plenty of time to discuss them. IACFO returned to this comment again and again. The Chair’s response was the same each time: there will be plenty of time for full discussion.
Well, I am sure you have guessed the end of the story. As the meeting was adjourning and the translators had to leave, there were about 2 minutes available for discussion of the two consumer-friendly items which the Chair had slated for elimination. No effective discussion was possible, obviously.
Same song, different verse. That is how it is done at Codex. Consumer-friendly items get short shrift but the “democratic fantasy” of full discussion and decision by consensus is maintained. The big win for consumers today was that the NGO succeeded in keeping the items alive so that they might, just might, get a full discussion in another forum, some other time.
One more thing about QUID: there was a rather ferocious debate in which the concept of having to indicate the amount of food in the name of the food was beaten down. For example, the amount of corn in corn flakes or rye in rye bread does not have to be “QUIDed”. Nor does the amount of sugar added. Nor does any food additive or contaminant require QUIDing. Nor the amount of radiation the food has received. What gets QUIDed in international trade will be those ingredients which give the food its special characteristic or commercial value. That does NOT include the foods that, to my mind, the consumer actually buys the food for and believes he/she is buying. Nor does it include the food or non food items (e.g., water, fillers, un-named ingredients) which manufacturers add without mentioning them.
In short, QUID, a potentially useful system to alert and inform consumers about their food stuffs, has been watered down by the resistance of the US and its friends to favor the commercial interests of the food industry, leaving the consumer literally in the dark. Norway, Ghana and a few other nations, along with IACFO did their best but the weight of the US was behind this outcome and so the results were predictable.
Tomorrow the Working Group will focus on Organic Standards. The Natural Solutions Foundation has prepared a formal submission on the topic which we have made available both to the United States Government in time for their pre-CCFL (Codex Committee on Food Labeling) meeting on April 10, 2007 and to various health friendly nations. You will find it in its entirety in the blog post called “Codex Organic Standards Comments by Natural Solutions Foundation”
Stay tuned for a day by day report on the CCFL meeting this week. We’re here for you!
And remember to spread the word on the urgent need to submit public comments during the extended comment period on the dangerous (but often soft-pedaled) FDA Guidance on CAM (which either means “Complementary and Alternative Medicine” or “Complementary and Alternative Modalities” – the difference is huge!) We’ve got 166,704 comments in already. If each person motivates 10 others, we will have enough to stem the tide of this dangerous attempt to eliminate all natural procedures, practices and products.
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
March 11, 2007
Weapons for Winning a War Without Fighting
You are a target in a war. So are your children, grandchildren, parents, and the people half way around the world whom you have never met. The war is for resources and you are in the way.
You Are In the Way. It’s that simple.
US foreign policy became very clear in the December 10, 1974 National Security Study Memorandum, “NSSM 200, Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests” also called the Kissinger Document. In it, an explicit policy by which the US would promote rapid population decline in 13 countries was articulated. Kissinger’s now famous (and declassified) quote sums up the elaborate plan:
“Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world, because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries.”
NSSM 200 became official US policy in November 1975 under President Gerald Ford. Birth control, war and famine were all tools to serve US access to mineral resources without impediments caused by third word populations who were to be eliminated. Brent Scowcroft, Kissinger’s replacement as National Security Adviser was put in charge of implementing the plan. CIA Director George Bush was ordered to assist Scowcroft, along with the Secretaries of State, Treasury, Defense, and Agriculture.
Brazil Noticed
Carrying out this depopulation agenda, other agencies besides those most closely identified publicly with the US are active as well.
Former Brazilian Health Minster Carlos Santana, for example, pointed out that “The World Bank, through their reports of its Presidents, has always made its proselytizing for a rigid birth control policy explicit,” and that included in World Bank credit packages and investment in Third World countries is an implicit agenda of depopulation. He questioned why Brazil was targeted for birth reduction, with approximately forty per cent of Brazilian woman having been already sterilized.
Quotes Worth Noting
The architects and engineers of global depopulation include iconic figures, corporate and governmental leaders and national decision-makers.
Depopulation programs worldwide are directed and funded by major international money interests, including McGeorge Bundy of the Council on Foreign Relations, (the architect of the US nuclear Mutual Assured Destruction or MAD policy); Warren E. Buffet, the second wealthiest man in the United States; and, long term supporters of eugenics, the Rockefellers.
In 1998, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, announced “In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation.”**
Ted Turner, in an interview with Audubon Magazine said, “A total world population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.” and is using his purported $1Billion “gift” to the UN to further global depopulation programs.
UNESCO Courier, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, the famous Emmy award winning film producer and ambassador for the environmental movement, said in 1991,
“It’s terrible to have to say this. World population must be stabilized and to do that we must eliminate 350,000 people per day.”
As Alex Jones pointed out, “That works out to 127,750,000 people per year, and 1.27 billion people over 10 years.”***
But what about the US? Is anyone trying to get rid of us? Look at what the USDA and FDA permit as “food” and tell me whether the preventable diseases of under nutrition and toxicity which are killing us to the great profit of the “Bigs” (Big Pharma at the top of the list, of course, but Big Chema, Big Biotechna, Big Abgribiz and Big Medica) could possibly have been regulated this disastrously by accident alone.
Help Me Out Here
Tell me if you believe
* That the permission to market spectacularly toxic drugs long after their dangers are know is caused by simple incompetence and greed.
* That the policies which support regulators who consistently protect drugs and pesticides and GM “FrankenFoods” which are killing the American population are the simple results of corruption.
* That the CDC’s decision to hide the harm being done to our young while protecting the vaccine industry’s profits is mere corruption or whether somewhere, at some level, the real impact of treatments and procedures which are destroying our population through completely preventable disasters is simply a grave error of judgment and that the scientists who try to correct these problems in the regulatory agencies are intimidated and harassed as random acts of administrative error.
* That a multi-trillion dollar business which treats people with chemotherapy agents which the industry supported American Cancer Society admits provides any benefit for a mere 3-4% of people suffering from cancer while the US government ruthlessly suppresses effective, inexpensive and safe cancer treatments is simply a result of unalloyed greed.
If so, then you can buy the notion that the disastrous (and wildly profitable) deaths by pharmaceuticals which account for huge numbers of preventable deaths in the developed world (according to journals like the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Lancet, etc.) could be due to corrupt regulators alone.
It also means that you buy the story that degraded and depleted food laced with poisons is regulated onto our tables and shelves by accident. That Donald Rumsfeld’s statement (as the CEO of Searle) that he wanted Aspartame approved by the FDA and he did “not care how many people it killed” was just a poor turn of phrase.
That means that you are comfortable that the depopulation agenda being so vigorously pursued elsewhere in the world does not touch the shores of the US.
Are You Disposable?
No one, rich or poor, believes they are disposable. And they are right.
I have traveled to places populated by some of the most abjectly poor people in the world on the health freedom trail. People without any way out of that abject poverty, people starving and watching their children starve, have not been willing, just as you and I are not willing, to hold up their hands and say, “Yes, I am a useless eater! For the sake of the elite and their comforts, my children and I are willing to be eliminated.”
Yet read what a leading proponent of eugenics/depopulation has to say about those stubborn people who for some reason will not willingly class themselves as useless eaters for their own good!:
“The very word eugenics is in disrepute in some quarters … We must ask ourselves, what have we done wrong?
I think we have failed to take into account a trait which is almost universal and is very deep in human nature. People simply are not willing to accept the idea that the genetic base on which their character was formed is inferior and should not be repeated in the next generation. We have asked whole groups of people to accept this idea and we have asked individuals to accept it. They have constantly refused and we have all but killed the eugenic movement … they won’t accept the idea that they are in general second rate. We must rely on other motivation. … it is surely possible to build a system of voluntary unconscious selection. But the reasons advanced must be generally acceptable reasons. Let’s stop telling anyone that they have a generally inferior genetic quality, for they will never agree. Let’s base our proposals on the desirability of having children born in homes where they will get affectionate and responsible care, and perhaps our proposals will be accepted.”
– From Galton and Mid Century Eugenics by Frederick Osborn, Galton Lecture 1956, in Eugenics Review, vol. 48, 1, 1956
Weaponizing Food
Using food as a weapon goes back to the beginning of inter-group struggle. Sieges are mounted to starve the opposing side. Scorched earth policies deprive peasant and warrior alike of the food they need to survive. Food has been a weapon of tribal and national policy since there were tribes and nations. The US upper echelon policy makers and their friends the would-be masters of the planet have taken this ancient form of intentional misery and death one step further.
With chilling directness, food was officially weaponized by NSSM 200 which the US has never repudiated. The document states, “Since population growth is a major determinant of increases in food demand, allocation of scarce PL 480 resources should take account of what steps a country is taking in population control as well as food production. In these sensitive relations, however, it is important in style as well as substance to avoid the appearance of coercion.”…. “Mandatory programs may be needed and we should be considering these possibilities now,” the document continued, adding, “Would food be considered an instrument of national power? … Is the U.S. prepared to accept food rationing to help people who can’t/won’t control their population growth?” Among the conclusions reached by NSSM 200 is that “mandatory [emphasis added] population control measures” may be “appropriate.”* NSSM 200 states that “large-scale famine of a kind not experienced for several decades—a kind the world thought had been permanently banished,…can be expected” as policy events and points out “In these sensitive relations, however, it is important in style as well as substance to avoid the appearance of coercion” and suggests that the UN and other agencies be used to carry out these policies.
Codex: A Perfect Disguise
Codex works perfectly for that purpose. If you were turning food into a tool of depopulation and political control, wouldn’t you do exactly what the Codex Commission has done? Wouldn’t you create a high sounding international body to “protect consumer health” and “ensure the free trade of food” while bringing your less developed brethren along to develop their “science based” agriculture and food processing capabilities? Wouldn’t you make sure that higher and higher levels of deadly chemicals, hormones and other toxins (including heavy metals and animal drug residues) were lacing their foods and get them to want to pay you premium prices for helping them to contaminate their own food and buy your illness-inducing “food” at the same time? Wouldn’t you set up seemingly scientific “risk analysis” procedures to mandate global mal- and under-nutrition knowing that, as Linus Pauling said, every disease is caused by a nutritional deficiency”? Then you could sanctimoniously declare that the “preventable diseases of under nutrition” were killing more and more and more people and wasn’t it terrible!
Supposedly “Science Based” and advisory in nature, and backed up by WTO trade sanctions (unless countries follow our two step protective strategy), Codex serves the interests of the multinational corporations which are controlled by people whose idea of a really great planet is one without 5/6 of the people on it now. You have to hand it to the would-be masters: Codex is a brilliantly constructed, glossy and beautifully crafted deception and disinformation system.
Third world countries are led down the disastrous garden path of depleted and damaged food resulting in peoples with weakened immune systems who are under nourished and over fed on nutrient poor food. Their food is irradiated, contaminated with highly profitable chemicals, genetically modified foods and the results are inevitable.
Codex Delegates Disinformed
The men and women who attend Codex as National Representatives and Delegates, by the way, are, in my experience, in the main, good, decent and hard working people who have been totally hoodwinked by brilliant misrepresentation and pseudo science. The amazing thing is how quickly they convert their nagging suspicions and unease to clear understanding when we present the facts as we understand them in personal and direct conversation.
We Are the Ones We’ve Been Waiting For
Success in taking back our food and our freedom is really up to us. We have the information and we have the power to take back our futures. This war has been brought to our tables and our bodies. It is up to us to “Join the Mouth Revolution” in more ways than just spitting out fake food. We need to speak, we need to educate, we need to purchase healthy foods and nutrients, and we need to share what we know with everyone we reach. The stakes are literally life and death. Yours, mine and theirs.
Marshalling Resources
No army can fight without resources. Human resources are precious and so are monetary resources. We need your creativity as volunteers, organizers, and artists. And, yes, we need your donation.
We still have $22,341 to raise by the end of March in order to meet our goal. It’s really important that we do meet it so we can continue our work. We need your help.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
*http://www.schillerinstitute.org/food_for_peace/kiss_nssm_jb_1995.html
** Reported by Deutsche Pres Agentur, August 1998
*** http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/august2005/290805chickenlittle.htm