Codex Report #3

When Animals Flu:

A. For bird ‘flu you need tweetment and for swine ‘flu you need oinkment.

The Sound of Silence

Was the Self-Declared “Voice of Health Freedom” Asleep at Codex this Morning?

This morning at the Codex meeting here in Rome the topic was the relation of Private Standards to the Codex Standards. You will recall that Codex is a standard setting body. Their standards and guidelines, as you know, cover every bite of food or drink that goes into your body.

As you know, too, there is enormous money and political advantage to be gained from controlling those standards. If you manufacture chemicals/pesticides/veterinary drugs/fungicides, no matter how toxic, for example, you want standards and guidelines which allow as much of your materials in food residues as possible. Your company makes money, after all, from selling more of your stuff, no matter how dangerous or toxic your stuff might be.

Those defending access to clean, unadulterated food, on the other hand have a very different agenda: they want those standards and guidelines to be as low as possible to protect health and the environment. So there is a strong tension between the purveyors of poisons and adulterants and health freedom advocates.

Or at least, there should be. The organization which calls itself “The Voice of Health Freedom” did not utter a single word to protect your rights to clean, unadulterated food. Isn’t that why they are here? We cannot confirm that they are here, but they trumpet their role as the only health freedom organization which has a seat at the Codex table (and defensively commit slander and liable when we remind them that Codex rules and past Codex Chair say they need to share that table with other organizations, for example, us) but when there comes a moment for them to protect health and health freedom here at Codex, they remain astonishingly, disappointingly, but not surprisingly, totally silent. Not a word was said to assist you in maintaining your access to clean, wholesome nutrition.

Now, there is one other piece of information you need to understand my outrage (outage coming right up, folks): Private standards are set by national authorities (e.g., Iraqui Date Growers Organization”, regional ones (e.g., West African Coffee Growers Council”, industry ones (e.g., “Middle Eastern Pomegranate Manufacturers Association”, and global ones (e.g., “International Animal Feed Additive Foundation”) [note, these are not necessarily real organizations, I created their names to give you an idea of what these terms mean).

These private standard setters pose a real and direct threat to Codex in several ways.

First of all, they render Codex unnecessary if their standards are higher than those of Codex (and the easily can be since, as Singapore pointed out this morning, “Codex sets minimum standards and there are segments of the market such as consumers who want higher standards.”). If you have been following our Codex-related writings for a while, you will recall that we have developed a mechanism for countries to deviate from Codex standards by setting higher ones for their country which allows them to be safe from WTO (World Trade Organization) trade sanctions for doing so. We call it “The Codex 2 Step.”

Article 3 of the The Sanitary and PhytoSanitary Agreement (SPA, one of the group of agreements which forms the WTO) allows exactly that: different, higher standards which are then encoded by the nation which wishes to protect its food supply from the low – and potentially deadly – standard set by Codex at the behest of the industrial forces who seek to sell their products at the highest possible level without regard for health.

When the Natural Solutions Foundation, with the help of two outstanding attorneys, Ralph Fucetola, JD and Jim Turner, Esq., realized that possibility existed, we wrote the Codex eBook, http://drrimatruthreports.com/?page_id=220.

See our Counsel’s short video on “The Codex 2 Step” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QNg3MD6BxM

It is worth noting that this same organization attacked us ferociously for promulgating this solution, saying that we were naive in the extreme and that our solution was wrong-headed and naive. Well, as it happens, when countries (including Hungary, the Netherlands and Austria) have employed our technique, they have won their cases with WTO, just as we said that they would.

To continue, here we sat at Codex while the Codex “Biggies” fought a turf battle, saying that all standard setting should belong to them, and that private standard setting bodies should conform to Codex standards and guidelines!

Note, Codex, in its arrogance and industry-serving stance, did not say, “We should lift our standards to better levels protecting health because that is, after all, our first mandate!” No, what it said was, “All other standard setting bodies should conform to our standards!” And they didn’t add, “Which degrade organic standards, allow dangerous levels of toxins and generally provide cover for the worst practices of industrialized Big Agra Biz.”

Well, just in case anyone did not get it, at that point Singapore said that Codex set MINIMUM standards and consumers should have the right to other, better, higher standards. There were other countries which said that they felt the same way. The Chair, of course, was not eager to hear any such thing. But that is to be expected.

What is NOT to be expected, however, is that the ONLY “health freedom organization” permitted to speak, according to their own trumpeting account of themselves, said what?

[Sung to the tune of “Silent Night, Holy Night”]

Silent Night, Empty Night
Nothing Said, Group in Flight
Private Standards could help health grow
Nothing was said to let Codex know
Group keeps quiet in lap dog stance.

So, Rockabye, “Health Freedom Voice”

Here is what the Natural Solutions Foundation would have said if we hadn’t been shut out of the debate and censored:

“Mr. Chairman, the Natural Solutions Foundation, the world’s largest health freedom organization, thanks you for the opportunity to share the perspective of consumers who demand continuing and unhampered access to clean, unadulterated food. It is true, as Singapore has said, that Codex sets minimum standards from the point of view of quality, health promotion and safety since upper residue limits are routinely removed from dangerous agricultural chemicals and contaminants en bloc, leaving the consumer vulnerable to unlabeled dangers in their daily fare.

“It is also true that industry pressures have determined nearly every decision that Codex has taken leading to dangerous irradiation, hormone, veterinary drug, pesticide, GMO and other food degradation on a world-wide basis.

“It is equally true, Mr. Chairman, that the WTO allows for countries to adopt higher standards than those adopted by Codex if that country follows two steps: 1st, devising and adopting a higher standard or guideline than that ratified by the Codex Alimentarius Commission and 2nd, passing national legislation which embodies that higher standard.

“In this regard, consumers who demand food which is uncontaminated, and meets a higher standard, often find that private standard setting bodies offer them higher standards than those of Codex and may wish to have them enacted in the method I have briefly outlined above. These private, higher standards are of enormous importance in the protection of consumer health, environmental health and, perhaps most important, the freedom to access and choose healthy foods.

“The Natural Solutions Foundation strongly endorses the right of private bodies to set standards which exceed those of Codex, consumers to demand those standards, national governments to select these standards and enact legislation to support such standards and trade negotiations to lift other nations to these higher standards.

“Such an approach is also in keeping with WTO decisions over the decades to refuse to mandate Codex standards in trade disputes. Under WTO dispute resolution rules, Codex guidelines are merely presumptive evidence of the standards, unless a party to the dispute has adopted its own science-based standards.

“Thus, private standard setting bodies may play a role in the protection of both health and health freedom and we encourage Codex to work closely with those private standard setting bodies which elevate the quality of food on a national, regional and global basis. Health and freedom depend on it.”

But, of course, since the Natural Solutions Foundation has been excluded from the table by a group which is either not here, or mute, we were permitted to say no such thing.

We believe this is totally unacceptable. And is emblematic of what is seriously wrong with the Health Freedom Movement especially in the US and certain parts of Europe. What do you think?

When our Counsel was told, a year or so ago, by one of the “old hands” that his group could not work with us any more because “the other side” would ostracize them and criticize them for working with us, Gen. Bert remarked, “When you let the enemy dictate your actions, you are controlled by the enemy.” To which I hasten to add, “That’s why they call it a ‘controlled opposition’.”

And what is the opposite of controlled opposition?

We are the Free and Independent Opposition — you and we together — succeeding when we practice ‘push-back’ without regard to what the bureaucrats and lobbyists want.

Codex Report #1: Pig in a Poke, and Poking the Pig
http://drrimatruthreports.com/?p=3007

Codex Report #2: We’re Here for Your Health Freedom so They Attack Us
http://drrimatruthreports.com/?p=3015

Yours in health and freedom,