Health Freedom is Our First Freedom
Mandating No HARMonization with CODEX, Food Safety and Food Regulation
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
April 3, 2009
A Natural Solutions Foundation White Paper
Regarding U.S. Codex Office and Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) for
Adoption of Codex Committee Policies by the U.S. Codex Delegation and FSIS
in Harmony with the Dietary Substances Health and Education Act (DSHEA),
19 USC 3512 (the Anti-Harmonization Statute) and other Statutory and Case Law
Weaponized Pandemic Viruses – Weaponized Mandated Vaccines…
Forced Industrialization of the Food Supply…
Action Item: Tell your members of Congress “NO! to forced industrialization of food” — DEFEAT the fake “Food Safety” bill HR 2749 or to amend to protect us all! Click here: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26714
Index
Introduction – The Foundation
Introduction – Purpose
Requests for Congressional Action
Statement of Grounds – Facts
Statement of Grounds – Legal
Recommended Findings of Fact
Conclusions
Sharing this White Paper
I. Introduction-A – Who Are We?
The Natural Solutions Foundation, founded in 2004, is an international NGO (Non Governmental Organization) focused on health freedom. We are active and registered in several countries and are a not for profit 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization in the United States.
The Mission of the Foundation is to discover, develop, demonstrate and disseminate natural solutions to the problems facing us and threatening our health and freedom, achieving and maintaining a healthy self, community and world. Since its founding, the Natural Solutions Foundation has pursued a vigorous program on many fronts, including educating Congress and decision makers about natural solutions to significant social problems involving health and wellness.
We consider health freedom to be an essential part of those solutions and have, for example, spearheaded a powerful citizens’ initiative to have “Health Freedom is Our First Freedom” recognized as one of the Top Ten Social Issues on http://www.Change.org. Once this was accomplished, “Health Freedom is Our First Freedom” was then accepted into President Obama’s official Briefing Book on http://www.Change.gov.
We have also developed an international presence, in part by attending Codex Alimentarius meetings around the world, helping to ban the use of fluoride in infant formulas intended for healthy infants by providing powerful scientific information to Codex delegates who were eager for ways to help their infants at the Codex Committee for Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU, Chaing Mai, 2006), shared vitally needed health-focused information with Codex member states and provided leadership to Codex member states on how to protect their country’s food supplies without running afoul of the World Trade Organization’s draconian trade sanctions.
The Natural Solutions Foundation understands that threats to health and freedom are both domestic and international, as are the solutions. We have well over two hundred thousand people on our Action eAlert supporter list. Individuals and other organizations are welcome to participate in our many programs and action options so that netroots and decision makers share the same information and conclusions about the solutions to problems touching us all.
Among the innovative solutions we are pursuing are “Mouse Warrior Campaigns” which allow everyone with Internet access to communicate their opinions and need for “Health Freedom as Our First Freedom” to members of Congress, executives, health and food quality/safety officials around the globe and other people making decisions about health freedom and health freedom policy. We urge everyone to join our free, secure Health Freedom Action eAlerts by visiting our home page, www.HealthFreedomUSA.org or our international page, http://www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org and signing up there. Our efforts include the International Decade of Nutrition Program and an alliance among Health Conscious Nations expressed through international cooperation at Codex (the World Food Code) and the creation of Valley of the Moon™ Eco Demonstration Project (VotM™) with its Beyond Organic, BioDynamic, Zero Emissions™ (BO-BD-ZE™), ecologically sound communities and schools for farmers and non-farmers alike. VotM™ exists to share high impact, low technology, natural solutions to permit economically and environmentally sustainable, chemical free farming and other sustainable techniques for health and economic stability. Among these solutions, we consider Fr. Godfrey Nzamajo’s UN Center of Excellent-recognized Songhai Community in Benin to provide an outstanding example. VotM™ has formed a strategic alliance with the Songhai Community, sponsoring and teaching BioDynamic methods testing in several countries including the Republic of Panama. See: www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org.
II. Introduction-B: What Does This White Paper Accomplish?
This White Paper addresses the urgent need for Congress to adopt further assurances that American access to clean, biologically effective, health promoting and wholesome nutrition will not be compromised by “HARMonization” with new Federal food safety laws (including HR 2749, 875, 759, S. 425, etc.) or domestic or international rules, regulations or standards such as the Guidelines and Standards ratified and promulgated by the Codex Alimentarius Commission (the World Food Code). Such assurances already exist in US law but are flagrantly ignored by those attending Codex Alimentarius. Reigning in that disregard is essential to the food safety and security of the United States. And, since nutrients and nutrition are essential to health, halting such disregard of the law will improve the national health and the national bottom line at the same time by reducing expenditures for health care and diet related illnesses, currently accounting for at a minimum of 1 out of every three dollars spent on health care. Diabetes, a disease of under nutrition, and its heartbreaking (and often lethal) consequences accounts for 1 out of every seven dollars spent in the health care sector in the US.
US participation in Codex Alimentarius and similar international activities drives food toward the unsustainable, the toxic, the non-nutritive and the undisclosed. It supports forced industrialization of food, denigrating natural and organic standards while placing unsustainable burdens on non-industrialized, family, home, private association food production, including home businesses, farms, ranches and gardens.
The assurances needed are that these assaults on local food production will change — we recommend protections built on the basis of the protections already enacted in the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), the Anti-Harmonization Act, 19 USC 3512, the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 USC sec 203 (s) (2) and the DSHEA savings clause 1011 of the 2007 FDA reorganization act, as well as the First Amendment since full disclosure and free dissemination of information about the relationship between health benefits and food components is illegally suppressed by the FDA through its claims policies and other regulatory measures.
The FDA was documented to be a failed agency by the November 2007 Report of the Subcommittee on Science and Technology, “FDA Science and Mission at Risk.”
That report concluded that FDA a failed agency because:
1) The FDA cannot fulfill its mission because its scientific base has eroded and its scientific organizational structure is weak.
2) The FDA cannot fulfill its mission because its scientific workforce does not have sufficient capacity and capability.
3) The FDA cannot fulfill its mission because its information technology (IT) infrastructure is inadequate.
4) FDA does not have the capacity to ensure the safety of food for the nation.
5) The development of medical products based on “new science” cannot be adequately regulated by the FDA.
6) There is insufficient capacity in modeling risk assessment and analysis.
7) The FDA science agenda lacks a coherent structure and vision, as well as effective coordination and prioritization.
8) The FDA has substantial recruitment and retention challenges.
9) The FDA has an inadequate and ineffective program for scientist performance.
10) The FDA has not taken sufficient advantage of external and internal collaborations.
11) The FDA lacks the information science capability and information infrastructure to fulfill is regulatory mandate.
12) The FDA cannot provide the information infrastructure support to regulate products based on new science.
We would add:
13. The FDA does little or nothing to control or prevent conflicts of interest leading to decision which impact the public health which are based, in whole or in part, on the financial and professional advancement and advantage of the decision-makers who are thus unable to act impartially.
In 1994 Congress unanimously adopted DSHEA, signaling a new approach to allowing Americans the freedom to develop the most advanced and dynamic nutritional marketplace in the world. Memorializing the essential concept that nutrients are to be treated as foods, and, as such, cannot be limited or controlled in their dose or combination any more than eating, for example, lamb flavored ice cream could – or should – be regulated, DSHEA created a legal climate which allows natural remedies, therapies that may benefit and medical treatment to flourish through the active participation of over 90% of the US population.
However, that expression of the People’s will has been continually undercut by a clear Federal agency [FDA, IOM, EPA, USDA] prejudice against natural, wholesome, non-industrialized food and nutrition. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), EPA, IOM, NIH and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) all fail the Public trust in this regard.
Nonetheless, the Dietary Supplement industry has responded with growth and expansion to massive consumer demand since the adoption of DSHEA. Much of this growth may be attributed to the thriving free market in Dietary Supplements established by DSHEA. As U.S. District Court Judge Tena Campbell stated in Nutraceutical Corporation and Solaray, Inc. v. Lester Crawford, Acting Commissioner, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Case No. 2:04CV409 TC, USDC, Utah Central Division, “the legislative history of the DSHEA indicates that Congress generally intended to harmonize the treatment of dietary supplements with that of foods when it added the dietary supplement subsection…”
Many people in the health and wellness industries, Health Freedom Advocates like the Natural Solutions Foundation and consumers fear that the Federal agencies’ avowed adherence to “HARMonizing” our laws and regulations to the Codex Alimentarius process (starting October 11, 1995, Federal Register and continuing unabated since then) is, over time, reversing these positive, and widely supported developments. There is great public consternation and well-earned concern that these agencies are seeking to HARMonize United States Standards, Guidelines and Codes of Practice with the restrictive rules and practices prevalent in certain countries outside the United States. These restrictive, anti-high-potency nutrient standards are consonant with Codex standards and guidelines such as the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline (VMG – ratified by Codex Alimentarius Commission July 4, 2005, Rome, Italy to the public jubilation of the US Delegate, despite the fact that this Guideline violates US law in both principle and fact), rather than with the freedom of access to nutrients and other wellness products protected and guaranteed by DSHEA.
Because of DSHEA, most of the world’s Dietary Supplement consumption and demand takes place in the United States, meaning that US law should be the basis for international HARMonization rather than the other way around. The United States has far more experience with the strong positive [and virtually absent negative ] consequences of free consumer access to nearly unlimited health supports than any other country and understands fully the importance both to health and to freedom of health choice embedded in this access pattern. The United States also has developed a wide clinical experience with diverse nutrients and substances which supports the conclusion that nutrients at levels chosen by consumers and the practitioners who use them for their patients are enviably safe and free of toxic effects and dangers. In fact, deaths from these products are virtually unknown, while their competitors, pharmaceutical drugs, are noted by the American Medical Association and others as constituting a major cause of death, even when used according to professional guidelines and recommendations.
Congress must reject the position stated by FDA in the US Federal Register (October 11, 1994) that it would “HARMonize” [emphasis added] our laws and regulations to international standards, even when those international standards were not yet completed. Further, Congress must mandate that delegates and participants in international standard setting bodies, of which Codex is only one, may ONLY support and ratify those standards, guideline or regulations which are directly supported by US law
In addition to the highly restrictive VMG, the Codex Committee on General Principles has prepared, among other things, “Proposed Draft Working Principles for Risk Analysis for Food Safety (Guidance to National Governments) [and] Proposed Amendments to the General Principles of the Codex Alimentarius” [and] “New definition of risk analysis terms related to food safety.” These principles include the definition developed by a World Health Organization Workshop on Application of Risk Analysis to Nutrients of an adverse event caused by nutrients as “any change in a bio marker” [emphasis added] regardless of the beneficial impact of those nutrients – http://www.who.int/ipcs/highlights/nutrientraproject/en/. The Codex Committee on Methods of Analysis and Sampling should consider the proper science and methods to apply to Dietary Supplements and nutritional products. Risk Assessment without regard to benefit is advised by the aforementioned Codex Vitamin and Mineral Guideline. National “Nutrient Risk Managers” are advised to use population data when it is available to set limits that prevent this bizarre class of events called “adverse events” which translate to “any change in a bio marker regardless of the beneficial impact of those nutrients”. When such population data are not available, this class of bureaucrats is advised to pool data from desperate populations and literally guess what those limits would be. If no data exist to be pooled, then they are advised to follow the same non-science-based process to set limits.
These principles and practices leave the health of whole populations literally subject to collapse. No such limit setting for nutrients is permitted under US law.
The same document also refers to “safe upper limits” for nutrients despite the fact that under DSHEA specifically exempts nutrients from upper limits of any type. Science makes it clear that biology concurs with US law in this case and the dangers of taking any type of supplement are virtually non-existent while the dangers of taking pharmaceutical drugs, whose sales are significantly impacted when people are free to use nutrients, are so great that the American Medical Association and other organizations have listed the unintended effects of properly used drugs as a major cause of death in the developed world.
Laibow, RE, et. al., Codex Book, Natural Solutions Foundation, 2005
http://www.fsis.usda.gov/Frame/FrameRedirect.asp?main=http://www.fsis.usda.gov/OPPDE/rdad/FRPubs/2006-0004.htm
III. Congressional Mandate and Protective Clause Request
We urge Congress (1) to mandate to the U.S. Codex Office. FSIS (or its successor) and all other agencies and government instrumentalities, all delegates to Codex or other national or international standard setting bodies that they shall adopt as the policy of the U.S. Codex [or other agency] Delegation and Agencies support only for harmonization of Codex Standards, Guidelines and Codes of Practice, or other international standards and regulations, that conforms to United States law and practice, and (2) to adopt DSHEA (and family/organic/small enterprise, church, school, club, garden, farm, ranch, seed saving and similar food-related enterprise) protective language in any food safety bill or other bill relating in any way to food (closely patterned after the “Rule of Interpretation” protecting DSHEA products added to the 2007 Kennedy FDA enabling act, Section 1011).
First, with respect to the agencies and delegates representing American interests internationally, they must be instructed specifically to:
1. Reject any international standard that is inconstant with the First Amendment to the United States Constitution or any other part of the US Constitution, DSHEA or with 19 USC 3512 or any other US law, statute or regulation,
2. Support the Congressional determination that vitamins and minerals are foods, not drugs or toxic chemicals, and, therefore,
3. Support the rejection of any regulation, standard or agreement which imposes upper limits on nutrients. Since optimal intake levels of nutrients is the result of biochemical individuality and may vary (based on complex, shifting, interdependent and interweaving factors such as age, diet, nutrient absorption capacity, the presence or absence of co-factors, genetic makeup, underlying nutritional status, disease state, toxic body burden), no maximum intake levels or upper limits for nutrients have biological significance and must not be determined or fixed by government policy, regulation or agreement. Nutrients are not toxins and must not be regulated as if they were. Nutrient combinations and doses have been demonstrated, through 14 years of US consumer and practitioner experience, to be remarkably safe at any desired level. In the same way that liver ice cream should not be prohibited by government legislators or regulators, so nutrients must not be the subject of such regulations since they pose no risk to consumers, although their hazards to the expensive illness care industry, which is widely acknowledged to be playing a significant role in helping to bankrupt the US economy, are significant.
Risk Assessment is a wholly unnecessary and a totally inappropriate mechanism for determining safety and dosage of nutrients although it is highly significant as a tool for limiting exposure to toxins. In their documents dealing with the use of Risk Assessment for nutrients, both WHO and Codex make note of the fact that Risk Assessment is a tool of toxicology and that its use for substances which are essential for survival is both untested, unproven and has never been subjected to either professional scrutiny or peer review. Given that Codex is supposed to operate strictly on a “Science Based” principle, this makes the use of Risk Assessment for determination of any aspect of nutrient policy totally inappropriate.
4. Support the biochemical reality embodied in DSHEA’s protection of all supplements and categories of nutrients which Codex, through the Codex Vitamin and Mineral Guideline and other texts, violates when it states that the principal nutritional value of foods comes from its vitamins and minerals. Food world wide is demineralized and diminished in nutrients, including the vitamins and other co-factors, including helpful and essential factors, many of which have yet to be identified in a laboratory but whose absence can be detected through the clinical problems and diseases which result.
Exemplary and abundant scientific and clinical evidence supports the importance of essential fatty acids, oils, complex plant residues with physiological impact in foods, flavinoids, antioxidants, amino acids and other vital factors, sisosterols, and many other compounds which are essential to health and which are found in food. All of these compounds are protected under DSHEA, but ignored or limited by the Codex Alimentarius Commission. Further, World Health Organization guidance in the above referenced Workshop document makes it clear that nutrients are treated as toxins and any effective biological activity is to be considered an adverse event.
In other documents, the World Health Organization identifies under-nutrition as the cause of the epidemic, preventable, non-communicable diseases which are the principle killers of the developed world:
Cancer
Cardiovascular Disease and Stroke
Diabetes
Obesity.
DSHEA allows nutrients to be used to protect against, mitigate, treat, or cure these conditions of under nutrition. Codex makes this impossible for any country following its guidelines, thus assuring massive under-nutrition. US delegates and agencies must be prevented from supporting anything which defies US law and supports massive under-nutrition. These guidelines, standards and other agreements stand in stark contradistinction to both the principles and intent of DSHEA.
5. The agencies must “Take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” (Article II, Section 3, United States Constitution) as established by DSHEA that, as foods, nutritional supplements of any type do not require safe upper limits, maximum potencies, maximum permissible upper limits or similar constraints on their use and that any such limits are antithetical to the legislative intent and guarantees of DSHEA.
6. Furthermore, the Natural Solutions Foundation urges support for the position, already enshrined in US law, that:
(a) Nutients are foods and should be regarded as such.
(b) Toxic burdens (industrial chemicals, pesticides, heavy metals, fungicides, food additives, artificial colors, preservatives and flavors, etc.) are well known to increase nutrient requirements to levels which cannot be met by food alone.
(c) High nutrient density dietary supplements may be required to counteract the deleterious effects on health of toxic burdens.
(d) Natural source dietary supplements present no significant health hazard, based on sound scientific analysis and a 14 year history of a self-imposed experiment by the American people who have taken massive amount of supplements and nutrients with no harm or negative consequences to their health although it can be argued that there has been harm done to the bottom lines of the industries that profit from their ill health.
(e) Synthetic/GMO source synthetic nutrients provide the only hazards associated with nutrient ingestion at any level which people select for themselves. Appendix 3 to the Final Report of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Foods Derived from Biotechnology, approved by the Codex Alimentarius Commission in 2008 makes it clear that neither the safety nor bio-availability of nutrients derived from Biotechnology (GMO)s) is known and that such compounds may actually function as “anti-nutrients”, interfereing with metabolism, absorption and enzyme function. The Final Report recommends testing their impact on large human populations, although involuntary testing, such as already being carried out through unlabeled GMOs in the food chain, violates both US and International law.
(f) Compounds which are, in fact, toxic, like pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, GMOs, industrial toxins and veterinary drug residues should be reduced via the principles of Risk Analysis and the Precautionary Principle, to levels which have no discernible impact on any human or animal system. Toxicology supports this principle for toxins while biochemistry refutes it for nutrients.
(g) Compounds which fail to pass the Ames or similar cancer protective tests should be banned from the human food chain as already required under US law.
(h) Optimal health should be the stated public policy goal of the world’s food standard setting bodies, including Codex Alimentarius, and of the United States. Delegates and representatives to all such bodies must be clearly instructed to support and endorse only those items which further this goal.
(i) Preservative techniques which increase free radical concentrations and/or which result in the degradation of food components to toxic or carcinogenic compounds [e.g., irradiation] should be globally banned.
(j) All known or suspected toxins which are applied to food or created through its farming, growth, processing, packaging, shipment or treatment should be clearly labeled to allow consumers optimal choice in their food supply.
(k) No US delegation shall permit persons with any type of financial, professional or personal ties to the industries involved in the deliberations. Any other type of conflict of interest shall bar persons from participating as delegates. No private consultations with industry representatives or others who stand to gain from the particular outcome of any deliberation or action shall be permitted. All such contacts shall be open to the public and matters of clear public record.
(l) No US regulator or bureaucrat shall be permitted to take employment, remuneration, subsidy or support of any type from the industry with which that regulator or bureaucrat has been involved while on the public payroll for a period of 5 years following termination of their employment by the US or State governments, agencies, foundations, organizations or other bodies. Financial, professional or other conflicts of interest between government employees and industries which they are involved in regulation shall result in immediate dismissal and the possibility of civil or criminal charges.
Second, regarding all pending (sic) “Food Safety” bills, the Natural Solutions Foundation strongly recommends that public health and personal liberty require protective language, such as the following, be enacted in any such bill, whether the bill divests the FDA of food safety authority (as HR 875 would do, creating a new Food Safety Agency) or would further empower FDA (as HR 759 would do) [this language is patterned after the DSHEA protective clause, Section 1011, of the 2007 FDA act.]:
“Rule of Interpretation
“No provision of this act shall be deemed to apply (a) to any home, home-business, homestead, small farm (including organic or natural) agricultural activity, social club, association, church, school or other local organization, (b) to any family farm or ranch, or (c) to any natural or organic food product, including dietary supplements regulated under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994.”
Another version of the protective language that has been suggested is:
“Rule of Interpretation
Whereas Congress has determined that local, family and similar agriculture does not have a significant impact on interstate commerce with regard to food safety issues, and
Whereas large-scale industrial agriculture in the United States and elsewhere is the primary source of food contamination and food-borne illness,
No provision of Federal law or regulation, nor any expenditure of Federal funds shall be interpreted or used to interfere in any way with the food (including seed) related activities of
(a) any home garden, home-business, homestead, non-industrialized, family or owner operated, or organic or natural, agricultural activity (including organic or natural agricultural activity, social club, association, church, school or other local organization,
(b) any family farm or ranch, or
(c) any natural or organic food product, including dietary supplements.”
We also note the language of the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 USC sec 203 (s) (2) which provides, “(2) Any establishment that has as its only regular employees the owner thereof or the parent, spouse, child, or other member of the immediate family of such owner shall not be considered to be an enterprise engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce or a part of such an enterprise…” Language such as this would be helpful to allay our concerns.
If the FDA Center for Food Safety is to be moved into a new Food Safety Agency, then Dietary Supplements, regulated as foods under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) should be included in such agency, with the proviso that such substances, as foods, are deemed safe when used as directed.
We agree with the Public Statement of the Ad Hoc Alliance of health freedom advocates, consumer groups and family farm, home and natural food producers –
“We reject all forms of food dictatorship.
“We oppose all deceptive attempts to industrialize the food supply under the guise of “food safety.” Current bills before Congress such as HR875, S425, HR759, etc., lack any producer protective language patterned after Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 USCsec 203(s)(2) and DSHEA protective language of the 2007 FDA act, Section 1011.
“They are unacceptable to the members of a free society and must be defeated.
“Government or corporate entities must not infringe on a citizen’s land, their right to own, produce, sell, or use food, seeds or healing substances … , nor should any threat of war, emergency, or disease be used to abrogate or limit these rights.”
Action Item for Ad Hoc Public Statement:
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=27134
For well researched details about the potential threat posed by the (sic) “Food Safety” bills pending in Congress, see independent investigative reporter Linn Cohen Cole’s writings on this subject, which have been widely reprinted, including by the Foundation, for example, A Solemn Walk Through HR 875 by Sue Diederich and Linn Cohen-Cole: http://drrimatruthreports.com/?p=2287
These two sets of recommendations are predicated upon the clear expression from hundreds of thousands of Americans, representing the views of millions, that “Health Freedom is Our First Freedom.”
IV. Statement of Grounds
A. Factual Grounds
The Codex Alimentarius Commission has adopted Standards, Guidelines and Codes of Practice are based on regulatory principles that will, if the United States “Harmonizes” with them as announced, but despite US law, over time, limit access to nutrients, complementary therapies and dietary supplements of consumers in the United States, and that will significantly restrict access to clinically effective vitamin and mineral supplements worldwide. This will have a markedly deleterious impact on liberty and an equally significant one health, if the definition of the major killers of our time as preventable diseases of under-nutrition by the World Health Organization is be believed.
Based on evaluation of its contents and the public statements of the Chairman of the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU), Bonn, 2004, it is the intent and understanding of that Committee (which promulgated the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline, which was then ratified by the Codex Commission in full (July 4, 2005, Rome, Italy) that, despite the limited title of the Guideline, it will, because of the legal structure under which the Codex Alimentarius Commission operates, restrict all classes of nutrients, not just those classed as Vitamins and Minerals. While Codex texts, including this one, are voluntary, countries which deviate from them without following very specific steps, are liable to enormous WTO trade sanctions.
Furthermore, since the guidance offered by the aforementioned WHO Workshop makes it clear that high potency nutrients are to be considered as producing adverse events when their ingestion results in any change of a biomarker in any direction leading to change, no matter how beneficial, this guidance means that high potency nutrients will be unavailable in any HARMonized country, enhancing under-nutrition and the burden of suffering and death caused by preventable sub-optimal nutrition. High potency nutrients, absence of anti-nutrients and foods free from toxins are the antidote.
The US must not support restrictive and, under our laws, illegal, measures such as those ratified by Codex, with the US delegation’s vigorous approval and leadership.
If the Codex Alimentarius Commission continues to support restrictive measures, such as the Vitamin and Mineral Guidelines, Codex will restrict access to wholesome nutrition in several ways:
1. Setting so called “upper safe limits” (maximum potencies, maximum permissible upper limits or similar limitations) for each vitamin and mineral based on inappropriate scientific risk assessment from the science of toxicology, not the science of nutrition; this violates scientific sense and clinical experience. “Optimum levels” which carry no legal weight and are not used to restrict access to nutrients are a much more reasonable, clinically and scientifically supported standard and must be individually determined for each individual.
2. Setting any upper limits on supplements and nutrients; this directly violates US law by violating the legislative intent and provisions of DSHEA which hold that Dietary Supplements are Foods, not Drugs.
3. Marginalizing and eliminating nutrient supplement access for the nearly 1 billion people worldwide, who, by international standards and the assessments of the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization, now experience devastating widespread under nutrition and go hungry on a regular basis. Declines in IQs for the world’s hungry and under-nourished children are but one of the devastating results. Why would the US, which spends so much money in foreign aid, adopt or support positions which put the world’s most vulnerable into an even more vulnerable, but completely preventable, compromised position? In addition, the population-based Codex standard, which represent no strong science whatsoever, as made clear by the directions to National “Nutrient Risk Managers” under-appreciate the nutritional status of the world’s hungry 4.6 billion people, most of whom lack the recommended amount of one or more essential nutrient every day of their lives.
4. Creating, through setting maximum permitted vitamin and mineral consumption limits, an approach to regulating dietary supplements which is consistent with and leading the way toward, if not itself directly establishing, prior restraint, illegal under the US Constitution.
5. Substantially restricting the amount of nutrition and health information about vitamins and minerals consumers will be allowed to receive, asserting that only drugs can contain label claims for products that are suitable for the prevention, alleviation, treatment or cure of disease, disorder or particular physiological conditions; this violates the US Right of Free Speech guaranteed by the First Amendment.
6. Fostering the incorrect worldwide health assumption that adequate levels of nutrients can be found in a regular diet since the ideas of nutritional sufficiency and “average expectable daily diet” are totally unsupported by nutritional science while an abundant body of scientific literature and clinical experience as well as the repeated findings of international organizations like the World Health Organization, UNESCO and the Food and Agriculture Organization confounds these assumptions. Were either idea true, there would be no widespread malnutrition or under-nutrition in the world.
7. Continuing to fail to implement the WHO/FAO “Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health” which explicitly supports better health through better nutrition, including dietary supplementation, to address the epidemic of “preventable diseases of under-nutrition” including major killers like Cancer, Heart Disease and Stroke, Diabetes and Obesity.
American health consumers (otherwise know as “people”) are becoming active and organized to protect and expand their health rights. The threat to dietary supplements which DSHEA corrected in 1994 mobilized more letters to a pre-internet Congress than any other issue in the history of the United States, including the Viet Nam War.
Worldwide health is being significantly undermined by the Codex-created limits to nutrients available in many countries and regions when they make their regulations and laws “Codex Compliant”, according to official documents prepared jointly by the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization. Codex, by itself, cannot change U.S. law unless U.S. agencies adopt its regulations. To do so, US regulatory agencies would need to supersede US law. Indeed, FDA has done so on several occasions, most Codex’s upper potency limits, established for vitamins and minerals, will restrict U.S. consumer access to high-potency vitamins and minerals to which they are accustomed since US policy, legal or not, has been to “HARMonize with international standards in preference to US ones as articulated in the FDA statement on harmonization in the US Federal Register (October 11, 1995). “In a notice published in the Federal Register of October 11, 1995 (60 FR 53078), FDA articulated its policy regarding the development and use of standards with respect to the harmonization of various national and international regulatory requirements and guidelines” – http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~lrd/fr970707.html . Some U.S. companies are already choosing to “dumb down” their potencies to mirror their international formulations.
FDA’s highly restrictive and by their own analysis, crushingly expensive for small companies, unnecessary imposition of Current Good Manufacturing Procedures on the industry, more akin to drug industry rules than food industry in a sector which is filled with small Mom-and-Pop business providing innovation and leadership at low financial return, furthers this process. These cGMPs will become fully effective over the next year. FDA has admitted that about 2/3 of small nutrient companies will go out of business because of the cost and burdens of this imposition.
Codex Alimentarius standards and guidelines are enforced at the international level via trade sanctions imposed by the World Trade Organization (WTO) through its dispute resolution process. However, there is grave concern in many quarters that statements such as this, from the WTO web site, “the SPS Agreement explicitly permits governments to choose not to use the international standards. However, if the national requirement results in a greater restriction of trade, a country may be asked to provide scientific justification,” – http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/sps_e/spsund_e.htm – make it incumbent upon each member nation of the WTO to bring its domestic standards into conformity with Codex standards and guidelines in order to avoid the creation of hidden barriers to international trade. This would violate both DSHEA and with 19 USC 3512. Codex misapplies an inappropriate toxic chemicals risk assessment model to regulate helpful nutrients which have virtually no known toxicity and therefore, present virtually no consumer or environmental danger. Any assessment of vitamin and mineral usage should evaluate nutrients using nutritional science rather than with toxicological science which is properly used to evaluate toxin and dangerous industrial chemicals. Since supplements, including vitamins and minerals, are defined as foods under DSHEA, upper limits of any type are inappropriate, unnecessary and violate US law. They should therefore be opposed by the United States with vigor both in Codex meetings and otherwise rather than enthusiastically endorsed in violation of US law.
The Natural Solutions Foundation has publicized what we refer to as “The Codex Two Step Process” showing how any country can lawfully opt out of Codex restrictions to protect its national nutrition and food traditions, without WTO sanction. See our short video on the subject at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QNg3MD6BxM
A fully developed template of just how this would work, called the “Codex Book”, is available from the Natural Solutions Foundation at http://drrimatruthreports.com/?page_id=220.
An essential principle to remember here is that, despite propagandistic junk science to the contrary, nutrients have no meaningful toxicity. The human body is able to rid itself of excess doses of nutrients or store them for future use in times of shortfall, whereas it is not able to rid itself adequately of toxic and dangerous chemicals. This difference, coupled with differential impact of nutrients and detrimental impact of toxins, is precisely the distinction upon which the determination that the latter are, in fact, toxic while the former are clearly non-toxic. The Codex Vitamin and Mineral Guideline (VMG) disregards the unique biological individuality which determines the basic nutritional needs of each individual. Biological requirements can vary widely (by orders of magnitude) during the life span since nutritional requirements are affected by climate, dietary supply, genetics, energy output, toxic load, emotional, organ and immune health, electromagnetic and geopathic stress as well as normal and pathological aging processes and enzymatic decline with aging. Codex disregards this and all other short and long term biological individuality. Codex fails in this fundamental requirement by erroneously disregarding biological, physiological and pathophysiologic variation in nutrient needs.
Codex was founded upon the initiative of pharmaceutical executives who stand to profit from under nutrition because it leads to diseases they make treatments for. It was not founded by nutritionists or humanitarians.
The US delegation to Codex is packed with representatives of, and people representing the interests of, corporate concerns who manufacture and market drugs for humans and animals, agricultural chemicals, industrialized food supply companies whose and other industrial sectors whose interests run counter to health and consumer protection. Consumers and health professionals are scant on Codex delegations and their positions are given virtually no weight either in the Codex deliberations or the preparation of US Codex positions.
Codex documents make it clear that the process of risk assessment does not properly apply to nutrients and that the process must be modified to account for the differences between nutrients and toxins. But whether or not Codex continued with its wrong-headed approach, the US is violating its own law when it presses for these strategies, approves them, does not oppose them and seeks to implement them at home.
The procedures employed to accomplish that modification are untested through scientific or clinical evaluations and are entirely theoretical. Their devastating impact upon the earth’s population, however, is easily predicted and devastating.
Briefly, Codex fails in its fundamental requirement of protecting consumers, as stated in its Mandate, by erroneously applying toxic chemical risk assessment principles to nutrients which are foods, not toxins, erroneously asserting that
1. Nutrients should be treated and evaluated as toxins.
2. Such evaluation requires and relies upon novel, non peer-reviewed and untested procedures whose accuracy and utility have not been evaluated through appropriate studies and trials.
3. Dietary Supplements, including vitamins and minerals are toxins, not foods, and therefore require upper limits on ingestion
4. Foods and nutrients are not useful in treating disease.
5. Dietary supplements have little value because people can get the limited amounts they need from food.
6. The nutritional quality of foods is due primarily to the vitamin and mineral content of those foods.
7. Rigid, low limits should be set for vitamins and nutrients because nutritional requirements do not change with biochemical, age-related, genetic and other assaults and do not vary from person to person, despite abundantly documented genetic and environmental variations within and between populations.
8. Theoretical reference values are more important than unique individual nutrient needs and clinical requirements.
9. Toxicology science is preferred to individual choice as the best control on access to foods such as Dietary Supplements.
10. Dietary Supplements require control on access despite the fact that they are foods under DSHEA.
The well documented safety of Dietary Supplements, as foods, is documented by La Leva di Archimede at http://www.laleva.cc/petizione/english/ronlaw_eng.html, with particular reference to http://www.laleva.cc/petizione/ron_law_tables/tabella.html, http://www.laleva.cc/petizione/ronlaw/australia_societal_vs_individual_risks2.pdf, http://www.laleva.cc/supplements/medical_injury_law.pdf, http://www.laleva.cc/petizione/ronlaw/leape_relative%20risks1.pdf, http://www.laleva.cc/petizione/ronlaw/relative_risk_boeing72.pdf , http://www.laleva.cc/petizione/ronlaw/relative_risks_bubbles3.pdf) and Dr. Andrew Saul’s presentation to the Canadian Parliament, “Where Are The Bodies?”, http://www.doctoryourself.com/testimony.htm .
Codex reinforces, in its Vitamin and Mineral Guidelines, related documents and positions, and numerous other texts, its already existing prohibition on preventing truthful information about the ability of foods and nutrients to treat, diagnose, prevent, mitigate and cure disease and prohibiting the truthful association of health benefits and food components. Codex prohibits supplemental nutritional feeding world wide with disastrous potential results and the dissemination of information on the positive impact of nutritional supplementation and support on chronic, degenerative disease. Codex rejects without scientific basis or support the position supporting access to nutrients strongly documented and endorsed by a vast scientific literature and numerous joint publications of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) which detail the essential contribution of nutrition to the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases in both the developing and developed world. World hunger experts recognize that nutrient supplementation can be extraordinarily useful in improving world health and eliminating disease (vitamin A supplements in developing countries can offer 30 times as much social improvement as millions of dollars of development aid), a fact the Codex Vitamin and Mineral Guideline (VMG) and related texts ignore without scientific support or validation for their position. Shockingly, the US is clearly the driving force behind this position, despite the fact that it violates US law.
Codex ignores the WHO-documented high costs of under nutrition in loss of life, degraded quality of life and economic loss created by the chronic diseases of nutrient-deficiency which are so abundantly documented in clinical, biochemistry and epidemiological literature. The human and economic impact/costs of under nutrition are recognized by the World Health Organization and the Food and the Food and Agriculture Organization who document that chronic disease (e.g., heart disease and stroke, diabetes, obesity, cancer, etc.) is a non-contagious epidemic problem which can be prevented, treated and cured through adequate nutrition. These sources further document that nutrition often cannot be provided by diet. Clinically necessary nutrient intake is, however, prohibited under the proposed Codex Vitamin and Mineral Guideline.
At loggerheads with the US positions at Codex and similar bodies, The United States Supreme Court has spoken forcefully, enforcing consumers’ right to truthful information about health care issues. See: Thompson v Western States Medical Centers – 535 U.S. 357, where Justice O’Connor wrote,
“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 . . . its risks were unknown.”
The basic rule, announced by the case, to determine constitutionally permitted government restrictions on Commercial Speech (speech that makes or is about an offer for a transaction, such as the sale of Dietary Supplements) is a Two Prong Test: the first prong is to ask two questions: (1) is the speech in question about unlawful activity and (2) is the speech misleading. If “no” to both, the speech is entitled to protection unless the Government can carry its burden and prove (1) the governmental interest involved is “substantial”, (2) the regulation must “directly advance” the governmental interest and (3) the regulation of Commercial Speech cannot be “more extensive than is necessary to serve that interest” (quoting Central Hudson v Public Service, 447 US 557, at 566).
B. Statement of Grounds – Legal Authority
1. The primary Legal Basis for the actions Congress should take to mandate a policy that “Health Freedom is Our First Freedom” is the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States: “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the . . . the right of the people . . .to the Freedom of Speech..” and of Association.
2. A further Legal Basis for the Proposed Policy is Section 3512 of Title 19 and specifically, 19 USC 3512(a)(1) and (a)(2) as applied to the protection of human life through DSHEA.
Section 3512. Relationship of agreements to United States law and State law
(a) Relationship of agreements to United States law
(1) United States law to prevail in conflict
No provision of any of the Uruguay Round Agreements, nor the application of any such provision to any person or circumstance, that is inconsistent with any law of the United States shall have effect.
(2) Construction
Nothing in this Act shall be construed –
(A) to amend or modify any law of the United States, including any law relating to –
(i) the protection of human, animal, or plant life or health,
(ii) the protection of the environment, or
(iii) worker safety, or
(B) to limit any authority conferred under any law of the United States, including section 2411 of this title, unless specifically provided for in this Act.
3. Additionally, the Statutes authorizing the various agencies involved contain general provisions that support the actions needed. Federal Law includes provisions that grant the relevant Secretary broad authority to promulgate rules and regulations “necessary to carry out the Act[s].”
4. Codex Alimentarius (“Codex”) is the World Food Code, an international agency under the joint sponsorship of WHO (World Health Organization) and FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization), two primary organs of the United Nations.
According to its Statute, the purposes of Codex are “protecting the health of the consumers and ensuring fair practices in the food trade.” (Codex Statute, Article 1(a)) Codex does this by promulgating standards, codes of practice and guidelines. Codex General Principles, 1 reads:
“The Codex Alimentarius is a collection of internationally adopted food standards presented in a uniform manner. These food standards aim at protecting consumers’ health and ensuring fair practices in the food trade. The Codex Alimentarius also includes provisions of an advisory nature in the form of codes of practice, guidelines and other recommended measures intended to assist in achieving the purposes of the Codex Alimentarius. The publication of the Codex Alimentarius is intended to guide and promote the elaboration and establishment of definitions and requirements for foods to assist in their harmonization and in doing so to facilitate international trade.”
Finalized standards, after “acceptance by governments” are published by Codex. (Codex Statute, Article 1(d)) It is clear from this language that Codex guidelines, being only advisory, do not impose any requirements on marketers unless and until they are adopted by individual national governments.
V The Findings of Fact that Congress Should Adopt
In acting to protect the Public from “HARMonization” to further protect Health Freedom as Our First Freedom, we urge Congress to find:
(a) The Vitamin and Mineral Guideline adopted by CODEX on July 4 2005 uses inappropriate science (i.e., Risk Assessment procedures [Toxicology]) rather than appropriate science (i.e., Nutritional Science [Biochemistry]) which is very likely to inappropriately mandate maximum permissible levels of nutrients so low that they are, by intention, without impact on any human being, the intended outcome of Risk Assessment procedures; a Fact Hearing must be, and petitioner hereby requests that a fact hearing be, held to determine the scientifically factual and appropriate basis for the use of Risk Analysis [Toxicology] rather than more appropriate nutritional [Biochemistry] scientific standards in all decisions pertaining to nutrition.
(b) Codex has accepted the use of Risk Assessment procedures for nutrients. However, Risk Assessment is a methodology relevant only to toxicology and both irrelevant and antithetical to Nutritional Science and biochemistry. The Risk Assessment methodology employed by CODEX has been arbitrarily modified without scientific validation or professional consensus to restrict permissible dosages of nutrients essential to life to levels which can, by intent, have no impact on any human being, no matter how sensitive. This misapplication, distortion and misconstruction of Risk Assessment is in clear contradiction to the principles of toxicology and scientific Risk Assessment procedures which have been developed to determine the highest dosages of dangerous industrial and natural toxins to which humans can be exposed to without discernible effect. For this reason, instead of evaluating vitamin and mineral upper limits using inappropriately modified and unscientific Risk Analysis, US Policy must further the use of Nutritional Science to support the liberal access to nutrients enjoyed under legislative protection in the US. Under the Dietary Supplements Health and Education Act, passed by unanimous Congressional consent in 1994, while a nutrient may be dealt with by the FDA if it is shown to pose a significant risk to health and safety, nutrients are treated as foods which, as such, may have no upper limits set upon their use.
(c) The United States has failed to oppose the use of these scientifically unsupported and unverified Risk Assessment techniques in the CODEX Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses. It has failed to note or oppose these procedures on the basis of the substantial Conflict of Interest represented by the publicly acknowledged personal, professional and financial involvement in commercial Risk Assessment by the Chairman of the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses as the head of the BfR, a commercial Risk Assessment company. The United States has failed to oppose the classification of nutrients as toxins in 1994, by that same committee despite the clear violation of US law which that classification represents. And, since 1994, the United States has failed to present any opposition to the use of Risk Analysis and other attempts to limit access to nutrients in order to prevent the restrictive (and illegal under US law) Vitamin and Mineral Guideline from reaching Step 8 and from being ratified on July 4, 2005 at the 28th Codex Alimentarius Commission meeting in Rome, Italy, contrary to DSHEA (Dietary Supplement health and Education Act of 1994) and the unanimous determination of Congress that Dietary Supplements are Foods, not toxic substances and, as foods, can have no upper limit set upon their intake or use.
(d) U.S. District Court Judge Campbell stated in April 2005 (Nutraceutical Corporation and Solaray, Inc. v. Lester Crawford, Acting Commissioner, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Case No. 2:04CV409 TC, USDC, Utah Central Division),
“…the legislative history of the DSHEA indicates that Congress generally intended to harmonize the treatment of dietary supplements with that of foods when it added the dietary supplement subsection…”
(e) The CODEX Technical Report discussing the application of Risk Assessment to nutrients makes it clear that this procedure does not apply to nutrients because, unlike drugs, they have minimum intake limits that are required for life and health. Risk Assessment procedures were modified for application to vitamin and mineral supplements without scientific validation, peer review or clinical testing.
There is a considerable body of established scientific literature supporting the nutritional harm caused by low-level intake of essential and vital nutrients. Has the United States held a public fact finding hearing to determine if this jerry-rigged statistical system has any applicability to Nutritional Science and what the risks to the US and global population are when Risk Assessment is applied to nutrients? If not, why has the US supported the use of this technique in the nutritional determinations made by the CCNFSDU when so many lives are at stake in this issue, estimated by public health scientists to exceed 3 Billion consequential deaths world-wide? Why has the US supported and adopted this scientifically, biologically and factually indefensible Policy which should be abandoned in favor of a Policy which supports and promotes nutrients as foods, as DSHEA mandates, as the domestic and international standard which are so strongly supported by both science and US Law? A fact Hearing must be, and petitioner hereby request that a fact hearing be, held to determine the impact on public health in the United States from the use of Risk Analysis [Toxicology] rather than more appropriate nutritional [Biochemistry] scientific standards.
The Natural Solutions Foundation entered a Citizens Petition and Comments to the USDA and FDA on this topic in 2005 and 2006. The Media Release of June 9,2006 stated:
“Gen. Albert N. Stubblebine III (US Army, Ret.) announced today that the Natural Solutions Foundation is Petitioning the U.S. Codex Office and the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) – Docket No. FSIS-2006-0004 (both agencies of the U.S. Department of Agriculture) to adopt support for international nutrient regulations (and any other international harmonization) only as it conforms to United States law and practice as the policy of the U.S. Codex Delegation.”
Neither USDA nor FDA responded to the Petition of the Citizens concerned with this issue, although several hundred thousand messages were sent to the agencies in support thereof.
Source: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/06/prweb397379.htm
(f) The Dietary Supplement Health Education Act (DSHEA), 1994 classifies supplements as foods which therefore may have no Safe Upper Limits, Maximum Permissible Upper Limits or other restrictions upon their use.
(g) FDA has improperly adopted a policy of harmonization with International Standards, even where those standards are not finalized when those standards are in violation of US law or regulatory practice. “In a notice published in the Federal Register of October 11, 1995 (60 FR 53078), FDA articulated its policy regarding the development and use of standards with respect to the harmonization of various national and international regulatory requirements and guidelines” – http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~lrd/fr970707.html .
(h) The adoption of the Risk Assessment Model and the anti-DSHEA harmonization Policy are ultra vires and premature; have occurred without sufficient Public Hearings and in direct contravention of the Public Policy of the United States as enacted by Congress. The appropriate US agencies must therefore assert a Nutritional Standard as the only lawful alternative to the inappropriate and unscientific use of toxicological Risk Assessment with regard to Dietary Substances. It is incumbent upon the United States therefore to ensure that the proper science is presented and considered in the process of attempting to set upper limits for nutrient supplements and to vigorously support the reopening of the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline to correct its scientific deficiencies since the science upon which it is based, relying on toxicology while ignoring the appropriate science, biochemistry, is flawed, creating a position that is contrary to US legal requirements and domestic (as well as global) health and well being of every man, woman and child on the planet.
Because the US delegations to Codex have consistently acted against the interest of US law and the public interest, and because on the issue of the Codex Vitamin and Mineral Guideline the science used to support it is deeply flawed, and because the science which supports the use of high potency nutrients is abundant, Congress should direct the US delegation at Codex to call for the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline to be reopened and further direct it to press for adoption of a DSHEA-like standard to allow the world to harmonize to a health-promoting standard of nutritional sufficiency. Access to wholesome nutrients should not be restricted under the guise of (sic) “Food Safety” bills that merely force the industrialization of all food production.
VI Conclusions
The Natural Solutions Foundation urges Congress to take urgent action with regard to CODEX and the International Food Safety Agency:
Specifically, Congress should hold Public Hearings on following Questions of Fact:
1. Whether or not the use of Toxic Risk Assessment to determine the allowable forms and dosages of Vitamins and Minerals will promote public health. We believe it will not, as the use of Risk Assessment is inappropriate science with reference to Foods, including Vitamins and Minerals
2. Whether forms and dosages of Vitamins and Minerals determined through Toxic Risk Assessment will adversely impact on the health and well-being of the residents and Citizens of the United States.
3. Whether Codex delegations acted against US legislative and regulatory policy and, if so, upon whose authority, whether Codex delegations should be free of industry personnel and include health, consumer and health freedom personnel and whether standards, including the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline and related texts, should be reopened upon application by the US to bring these standards into line with both science and US law.
Thereafter, Congress should adopt appropriate legislation further protecting the inalienable right of the People to “Health Freedom as Our First Freedom.”
The policy of FDA and the USDA in the various Codex Committees (and in other multinational arenas, such as the (sic) “North American Union”) should be a policy of strict support for the Dietary Supplement Health Education Act (DSHEA) food-based standard as the international standard for vitamin, minerals and all other dietary supplements as well as all other US laws. Additionally, all standards and regulations promulgated by the US should facilitate consumer choice and protection.
DSHEA, passed unanimously by the U.S. Congress in 1994, recognizes and protects the value of individuals making personal nutritional and health choices in a way that is rejected by the Codex guidelines. It also protects all speech concerning health benefits associated with nutrients or food. Any attempt to restrict or limit dosages, potency, information or access to supplements or information about nutrition, food and supplements denigrates their classification under DSHEA as foods and, hence, without need for access restriction.
The culmination of 50 years of U.S. legislation and litigation has refined the supplement policy of the United States ensuring that individual choice and desire play a key role in ensuring private and public health. The Codex guideline subordinates individual choice to scientifically inaccurate and unsupported, supposed professional expertise. The DSHEA balances professionals, science and people.
Members of the public have continually warned United States policy makers that pending international regulations fail to meet both the standards of United States law and the requirements of the international law.
See for example, Public Citizen’s comments regarding harmonization:
http://www.citizen.org/trade/harmonization/comments/articles.cfm?ID=4394
And the National Health Federation, “Codex Breaks its own Rules” http://www.thenhf.com/codex_may_2005_nhf_press_release.htm
Also, the European Alliance for Natural Health Submission on Risk Assessment at:
http://www.alliance-natural-health.org/_docs/ANHwebsiteDoc_120.pdf
See also these Media Releases from the Foundation:
June 3, 2005
Natural Solutions Foundation files Emergency Citizen Petition to Support DSHEA in CODEX Crisis
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/06/prweb246972.htm
July 5, 2006
Codex Chairman Seeks to Thwart Natural Solutions Foundation Pro Health Codex Initiative
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/07/prweb406560.htm
October 10, 2006:
US Urged by Natural Solutions Foundation to Alter Codex Course, Support WHO Global Strategy to End World Hunger, Promote World Health
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/10/prweb444957.htm
We therefore urge Congress to mandate that the U.S. Codex Office, FSIS and all other Federal agencies adopt as Public Policy support only for regional, multinational and international Standards, Guidelines and Codes of Practice that conform to United States law and practice, which support consumer choice and natural well-being and specifically the provisions of DSHEA through 19 USC 3512, “United States law to prevail in conflict – No provision of any of the Uruguay Round Agreements, nor the application of any such provision to any person or circumstance, that is inconsistent with any law of the United States shall have effect.”
We further urge Congress to direct the US Codex Office and all future delegations to call for a reopening of any Codex standard, guideline or other text which violates US law.
Finally, Congress must include clear and unambiguous protection for homes, farms, ranches, small businesses and natural products from enhanced food safety laws (such as H.R. 875 and 759) and regulations that may be applied to industrialized agriculture but which would have a chilling effect on local and natural food and nutrition.
“Health Freedom is Our First Freedom” and the People must be free to engage in farm and food activities that enhance their health and prosperity.
Dated: April 2, 2009
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
This White Paper has been published at: http://drrimatruthreports.com/?p=2394
Maj. Gen. Albert N. Stubblebine III (US Army, Ret.)
President & Trustee
Rima Laibow, MD
Medical Director & Trustee
Ralph Fucetola JD
Vice President – Legal & Trustee
Sharing this information
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http://drrimatruthreports.com/?p=2413
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http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26996
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http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26714
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
You know the old adage, “Give a man a fish, feed him for a day, teach him to farm, feed him for life.” Change the word “Fish” to “Farm” and you’ve got a way to solve the hunger problem not only in the US, but in the entire industrialized world. Intensive urban agriculture is that powerful And, in addition to providing food, indoors or out, in-ground or in containers, for people, thus ending food shortages on a family-by-family basis, reclaiming the production of food, again on a family-by-family basis, this simple strategy can end, yes, END, the high calorie under nutrition that is killing us.
You will recall that both the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization, in their Joint WHO/FAO Expert Consultation on Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases (2002 : Geneva, Switzerland) noted that the chronic, non communicable, PREVENTABLE [emphasis added – Dr. Rima] diseases of under nutrition are –
Cancer
Cardiovascular Disease and Stroke
Diabetes and
Obesity.
You will also recall that these are the principle killers in the developed nations and, as the developing world moves toward consuming the Standard American Diet, or “SAD”, these PREVENTABLE killers are making their inroads in their lives (and deaths), too.
You will surely recall as well that these PREVENTABLE diseases are also the principle money makers for the pharmaceutical industry, which is behind Codex Alimentarius (the World Food Code), which corrupts and weaponizes food on a world-wide basis to make as many of us as sick as possible for as long as possible with diseases which could have been prevented – and can be cured – by nutrition.
So when a suggestion arose to feed the hungry in the US by recycling food to give to them, that suggestion, while kindly in its intent, literally appalled me. Why not, I thought, teach the hungry to use tiny pieces of land, or easily available containers, to feed themselves, helping our efforts to reclaim the production of food world-wide, and eliminating the high calorie under nutrition that is killing so many of us to the misery of ourselves and our communities and the profit of the illness mongering so-called “health care industry”?
I hope that you will take this idea seriously, apply it to yourselves and teach your neighbors.
Step 1: look around your garden (if you have a year-long growing season where you live) or your home if you do not, and find a place to plant a garden in your yard, your closet (with grow lights), a corner of your apartment, your balcony or wherever.
Step 2: Start thinking about the veggies you would like to eat. Start making a list of them now so you will be ready to plant when the time comes (shortly).
Step 3. Enlist your kids, if you have them. If you home school, make this a project. If you do not home school, make it a project, anyway. It is vitally important now, and will be much more important in the near future, for everyone to know these techniques, and kids naturally take great pleasure in making things grow.
Step 4. Go to www.HealthFreedomUSA.org or www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org and sign up for the Natural Solutions Health Freedom Action eAlerts so that you will be sure to get notification of the new eNewsletter now in planning. Within a short time we’ll be able to send you regular eNewsletters to guide you through the process on your own, get your feedback and share our accumulated wisdom as we reclaim our nutrition and our birthright to healthy, unadulterated food, despite the plans of the disease mongering forces. Once you do that, of course, you will be able to take action to protect your health freedom, too.
In the meantime, join our Food and Farming Forum –
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/natural-solutions-food-and-farming/
Step 5. Talk to your friends, church groups, neighbors, relatives, anyone you know who eats. It is especially important to alert anyone you know who has children so that they can start growing healthy, unadulterated food for them to protect their immune systems and assist their bodies – and brains – to grow to their maximum health and functional potential. Healthy food, as we all know, does all of that and more. But the food that we eat, especially if it is prepared food, meets few (or none) of those characteristics since it is grown in demineralized soil, laden with dangerous chemicals and irradiated, to say nothing of the fact that some 90%+ of our prepared food contains GMO ingredients. Why are we so sick, so young and so long? Because of our food supply.
These Intensive Urban Gardens cost virtually nothing, require little labor and will feed you and your family abundantly, at least as far as vegetable crops go. This will help us all reclaim the production of food while protecting our health.
Oh, yes, there is one more advantage: President Obama and his First Lady, Michelle Obama, have begun planting an organic vegetable garden on the White House lawn. This, at least for this one time, is immensely important to us. Even while the Congress is preparing to pass HR 875 (HR 759) and S 425, disastrous legislation which will plunder the ability of small farmers to stay in the game, leaving ALL food production to the industrialized food chain forces, including GMO and nutrient poor, chemical rich, irradiated food producers, the thrust for clean food production through organic small gardens has been put into our hands by this disingenuous move on the part of the public face of control, the While House.
So let’s use this initiative for all that it is worth and create V2-Gardens. And, while we are talking about it, please visit:
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26714
RIGHT NOW, while you are thinking about it, to tell Congress not to pass these horrific bills. I hope you’ll take a moment, too, when you have finished reading this article, to send everyone on your contact list the link I just gave you so that they, too, can help defend their right to clean, unadulterated food and the right to grow it.
Victory Gardens (V-Gardens) were encouraged during WW II so that effort could be diverted from food production and transportation to war efforts. People grew their own food in huge numbers. Today, the victory is over those who would take away our health AND our health freedom. They will not gladly see us healthy and prospering through the ingestion of nutrient-dense food. But that is exactly what these gardens will allow. This is the second time in modern American history that it is necessary to route the forces we are struggling against through ensuring our nutrition. Therefore, the Natural Solutions Foundation, always the leader in health and freedom protection, urges V2 Gardens to protect our freedoms and our health at the same time.
Stay tuned for the launch issue of the Natural Solutions Foundation’s “Freedom Food eNewsletter: V2 Gardens for Health and Freedom“. Happy gardening.
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org
www.Organics4U.org
www.NaturalSolutionsMarketPlace.org
Posted blog:
Food is astonishingly important both as a human necessity and as a weapon – history shows us that over and over again. The Natural Solutions Foundation, www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org, of which I am the Medical Director, is deeply concerned with the weaponization and contamination of food on a global basis.
Codex Alimentarius, the UN’s “Food Code” sets standards and guidelines for everything that goes into the mouths of the world’s population (voluntary as the Codex texts are, they are backed up the by WTO unless a country follows several very specific procedure which our Foundation has determined exist and has promulgated to these countries through our work at Codex meetings in in their home countries).
Tragically, these standards and guidelines are set at the request and wishes of the US Government, the “Big Dog” at Codex. Armed with the wishes of the multinational corporations, the US makes sure, through its might and economic weight, that Codex is run for the benefit if the “Bigs”, Big Pharma, Big Agribiz, Big Chema, Big Biotechna and Big Medical.
In fact, the US comes to the Codex meetings around the world with representatives of these industries on its delegation, unlike virtually any other country in the world.
So the quality of food is rapidly being degraded world wide.
Nowhere is this more true than in the US where the nutritive value of food is decreasing with the intensification of industrial food production (indeed, even Avian Flu outbreaks have been laid squarely at industrial food production of poultry AND VACCINATION WITH AVIAN VACCINES WHICH PRECIPITATE THE DISEASE IN VACCINATED BIRDS).
At the same time, Codex permits contamination of food through unlimited irradiation, permitted dangerous chemicals at high levels, hormones and dangerous drugs like antibiotics and hormones permitted in the rearing or animals, biotech crops and animals, degradation of “organic” standards and a host of other affronts to ALL food consumed by humans is being met by the introduction of laws like the devastatingly dangerous HR 875 (HR 759)and S 425 in the US. Similar laws, to which the US statues “HARMonize”, have been adopted in Europe and elsewhere.
It is useful to note that Codex was created on the inspiration of Convicted WWII War Criminal Fritz ter Meer, the head of Germany’s IG Farben during that war, and Beyer Pharmaceutical head before – and after – the war. More information on the pharmaceutical industry’s attempt -so far lethally successful – to degrade food to the point that it will not support health and therefore will support illness very well, is available in our video “Nutricide”, available under the video section of our websites, www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org and www.HealthFreedomUSA.org.
To remedy this situation, it is absolutely necessary to reclaim the production of food. There is, it seems to me, little point to wasting the opportunity to feed hungry Americans by allowing the food they eat to consist of the same deadly mix of irradiated biotech food, both demineralized and filled with dangerous chemicals, of which the Standard American Diet, aptly called “SAD” for short, consists.
The Natural Solutions Foundation has created a the Valley of the Moon Eco Demonstration Project in the temperate, bountiful and magnificent Highlands of Panama to teach farmers how to grow without chemicals. More information on this project is available at www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org. But we are also focused on the need to grow our own food, something that HR 875 (HR 759) and S 425 could forbid.
On a 4×4 patch of ground, or set of pots, it is possible to create an outdoor – or indoor – garden which can grow enough food for a family of four with nearly no expense and at minimal effort.
Why not teach the hungry to grow clean, unadulterated, safe and nourishing food, not give them recycled junk, whether it is considered “junk food” or not?
In the ancient wisdom of giving a man a fish, or teaching him to fish, why not teach him to garden and feed his family, his friends and himself?
If you believe in a vegetarian diet, you would thus be teaching people to find the means to achieve and sustain it. If you do not, you are giving people the means to acheive and sustain a healthy crop portion of their diet. Those whose physical situations allows them to grow healthy chickens can obtain inexpensive protein from them – both meat and eggs.
This, it seems to me, is the answer to the problem in the US and elsewhere.
The Natural Solutions Foundation will be teaching Intensive Urban Agriculture at its Panama Center and is also instituting a special e-newsletter to assist people in doing just that: taking back the control and quality of their own food supply.
People interested in this option can go to www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org or www.HealthFreedomUSA.org in order to sign up for the free, secure Health Freedom Action eAlerts where they will be able to join in the fight to protect our health freedom AND sign up [shortly] for our new e-Newsletter.
The initiative to feed the US is a good one. Why not use it as the opportunity to create a healthy food supply under the control of each and every household or person?
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org”
Posted to http://uspoverty.change.org/blog/view/fighting_hunger_with_technology
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.NaturalSolutionsEurope.org
Once again, the Natural Solutions Foundation wants to thank the Environmental Working Group for their outstanding work. For 5 years the EWG has published a list of the safest, and most dangerous, types of produce, focusing on pesticide levels.
Here is this year’s list. Numbers in front of the item indicate how bad it is (higher is worse), numbers after the item indicate its pesticide load. So eat from the bottom of the list if you are not buying organic. If you are eating organic, you can enjoy the whole bounty of spring’s harvest.
But think for a moment, before you begin to plan your shopping this season, what it means to have foods like peaches, apples and sweet peppers so contaminated that eating them is, quite literally, taking your life onto your fork and into your hands.
That is what the industrialized food producers have done so far: introduced, with the blessings of our weak and dangerous government regulators who allegedly are keeping our food safe, chemicals and genetic alterations, irradiation and other degredations which have made our food not only unwholesome, but downright dangerous.
But WAIT!! There’s more. HR 875, S 425 and the associated bills working their way rapidly through our clueless (or worse!!!) Congress are fixing to make the current level of contamination look like Grandma’s home grown goodies. Click here to tell Congress in no uncertain terms that this set of bills must not pass and, if pass, MUST be ammended to protect home and organic food production, growing and farming.
HR 875 and S 425 (and their associated bills) provide for a level of industrial control of our food supply that will, not might, may, could or can, but WILL guarantee that you and your family WILL get sick from even more poisoned food. Maybe not this week, maybe not until a few years down the road, but nutritional under supply (from foods grown in soil fertilized with synthetic fertilizers and depleted from de mineralization never really corrected) and toxic overload WILL weaken your immune system, divert you from your life pursuits with chronic and often lethal illness. Freedom? You’ll be too sick to care.
Your food WILL be genetically modified. GMO crops require 4 times more pesticide than conventional ones and a great many of them require huge amounts of herbicides (like glyphosate or Roundup(C), a wildly dangerous chemical which is associated with cancer, infertility, auto immune diseases and more.
Roundup(C) is, of course, just one of a wide variety of horrifically toxic chemicals whose regulation these new laws put into the hands of unelected bureaucrats whose discretion is breathtaking. Their interest is not in food safety. Their interest is in serving the needs of their corporate masters, and their corporate masters’ masters.
If that does not ring right with you, take a look at the lethal mess our food supply is in today. And then consider that it is the US FDA and USDA, again serving their corporate masters, who run the show at Codex Alimentarius, bringing us horrific standards and guidelines which have the potential to degrade the health, and shorten the life, of every man, woman and child on the planet who eats food grown inside the corporate corral. Of course, for you and me, NOT doing so will be a crime. Saving seeds will be a crime. Growing pristine organic food (or better) will, if the laws currently under consideration are implemented, quickly become a criminal act. The SWAT teams who raided the Ohio family organic cooperative a couple of months ago, the raw milk farmer in Pennsylvania who was taken to jail for selling his clean product and a host of other food atrocities will look, I am afraid, like the “Good Old Days” should these laws reach their logical – and lethal – consequences.
Remember, the law is one thing. Contaminated food is quite another.
Government regulatory agencies regulate for the sake of corporate interests. Yours are nowhere to be seen, unless, of course, you are Monsanto. In fact, the Representative who introduced HR 875 is married, as was a previous, and deeply destructive long-time US Codex delegate, to a Monsanto lawyer. No accident.
The proposed new food agency and the new food powers (under these laws) are nothing short of cataclysmic and over the line insane from a health perspective. The Natural Solutions Foundation proposes removing ALL food regulatory power from the federal government which has, for about 80 years now, proven itself to be increasingly unable to push back the demands of industry, whether Big Pharma, Big Agribiz or Big Chema (or Big Medica, for that matter) weighed against the public good. Deadly drugs, deadly food, deadly environmental contamination and an unrelenting, accelerating assault on health aids like supplements and Nano silver are the result.
Click the link below to tell Congress that, while you want the FDA, USDA, EPA and other inept and dangerous government agencies stripped of their food regulatory powers and those powers returned to newly constructed agencies at the State level controlled by consumers, statutorily devoid of corporate impact or connection, with harsh penalties for any breech of the perimeter keeping industry out of food regulation, we oppose the pending bills, HR875 and S425 which do not contain language to protect family farms and ranches; organic and natural products.
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26714
More about this at: http://drrimatruthreports.com/?p=2287
When an agency or program has failed, the typical political situation is to throw money at it to “reform it”, making it bigger, giving it more powers and then watch it fail worse – followed by more money and more power.
This is precisely what has happened with the latest FDA modernization and revitalization bills. More money, more power, more curruption, less safety of either food or drugs.
Drugs you can avoid voluntarily. Food you cannot.
The Natural Solutions Foundation has been warning for several years that home grown and produced food, and organic food, would be coming under sustained and terminal attack. Unfortunately, we were right and that attack is being mounted now. Therefore, the counter thrust must be mounted now, and it must be swift, effective and decisive.
Food MUST be taken out of the hands of the corrupt federal agencies and given back to the people. And saved seed, a corner stone of liberty, along with clean, unadulterated food, MUST not be taken out of your hands and mine.
If you love fascism, sit back and do nothing. If you want to see farmers forced to leave their land and their livlihoods, unable to produce clean food for you, sit back and do nothing. If you want to be forbidden to grow, can, preserver or share your own good food in the US of farmland from sea to shining sea, sit back and do nothing.
If you want the laws of the US “HARMonized” with the draconian food laws of Europe, where a cucumber cannot be sold unless its curvature is correct and where the hundreds of seed companies that once flourished have been reduced to a rapidly dwindling handful, please, sit back and do nothing.
But if you, like me, are aghast at these options, then stand up and be counted. Start disseminating and rousing support for the following action items as if your very life (and that of your children and grandchildren) deepened upon it. Your life and their does depend upon it.
Click below to read a detailed analysis of HR 875 and S 425 and their frighteningly (and absurdly) vague permissiveness giving industry full reign over your food and therefore, your health.
Alarm Bells Ringing in Europe and the US – http://drrimatruthreports.com/?p=2349
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org
www.ValleyoftheMoonCoffee.org
www.Organics4U.org
www.NaturalSolutionsMarketPlace.org
The Full List: 47 Fruits & Veggies
RANK Lower numbers are worse
SCORE Higher numbers are worse
1 (worst) Peach 100 (highest pesticide load)
2 Apple 93
3 Sweet Bell Pepper 83
4 Celery 82
5 Nectarine 81
6 Strawberries 80
7 Cherries 73
8 Kale 69
9 Lettuce 67
10 Grapes – Imported 66
11 Carrot 63
12 Pear 63
13 Collard Greens 60
14 Spinach 58
15 Potato 56
16 Green Beans 53
17 Summer Squash 53
18 Pepper 51
19 Cucumber 50
20 Raspberries 46
21 Grapes – Domestic 44
22 Plum 44
23 Orange 44
24 Cauliflower 39
25 Tangerine 37
26 Mushrooms 36
27 Banana 34
28 Winter Squash 34
29 Cantaloupe 33
30 Cranberries 33
31 Honeydew Melon 30
32 Grapefruit 29
33 Sweet Potato 29
34 Tomato 29
35 Broccoli 28
36 Watermelon 26
37 Papaya 20
38 Eggplant 20
39 Cabbage 17
40 Kiwi 13
41 Sweet Peas – Frozen 10
42 Asparagus 10
43 Mango 9
44 Pineapple 7
45 Sweet Corn – Frozen 2
46 Avocado 1
47 (best) Onion 1 (lowest pesticide load)
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.GlobalhealthFreedom.org
We reproduce below, with permission, A Solemn Walk Through “Food Safety”.
Index
Introduction
A Solemn Walk
Natural Solutions White Paper
———————————————-
Food is becoming a battle ground like no other: freedom, survival, fascistic take over of a once-free people (more or less, at least), corporate triumph over independent producers – it’s all happening around food. And the mechanism is simple: a set of bills ostensibly devoted to “food safety” and “food security”.
Urgent Action Item:
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26714
Tell Congress that the Farm Bills MUST be defeated. Time is short and the issue is of immense importance.
In essence, these bills are a sneak attack implementation of Codex Alimentarius. The Natural Solutions Foundation has been warning that organic farming and home growing, clean food and food freedom were under heavy attack. Here is the Mother of All Food Fascism Assaults and we still have some time to defeat it.
Congress often comes up with bad ideas. This is not just a bad idea: it is a catastrophically bad idea for health and freedom. In fact, it is nothing short of food tyranny and will kill not only organic farming, but lots of people as well, along with the entire private farming sector. Your own gardens are at risk as well.
I cannot urge you strongly enough to take action NOW (we have only a few days to create the urgent push-back needed to fend off this disastrous legislation. These are bad, deceptive and extraordinarily dangerous bills which make the eternal link between fascism and food crystal clear. But the bills are written in neutral, even calming tones. Please go to the articles below to read a brilliantly annotated version of the bills and a summary and learn just how dangerous they are. My thanks to Sue Diederich and Linn Cohen-Cole for their tireless work on this vital issue.
Just as –
~ “homeland security” is anything but assured by the Department of Homeland Security’s destruction of our rights,
~ “health” is not served by a healthcare system devoted to propagating illness for profit,
~ “democracy” is not served by corrupt voting machines and “man in the middle programs”
so food security and safety are not served by agencies and laws which –
~ drive independent farmers out of business,
~ forbid seed saving,
~ destroy safe food production and organic farming,
~ propagate dangerous and destructive industrial farming practices,
~ guarantee the total control of the food system by industrial forces known for unsafe food production while destroying the capacity of independent farmers to survive a regulatory onslaught created specifically to destroy them,
~ put home food production in jeopardy,
~ “HARMonize food production with pro-industry, pro-WTO controlled, lowest common denominator practices of Codex Alimentarius.
These are tragically solemn times calling for solemn re-dedication of each of us to the fight to retain and restore freedom. Food is just about the best place possible to start. Killing HR 875, S 425 and all related bills is the best place to start.
Click here (http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26714) to tell Congress in no uncertain terms how imperative killing these dastardly bills is to you. Then tell everyone you know how important this push-back is.
Now think for a moment how important this information is to your life, your liberty and your society. Would you have had it without the Natural Solutions Foundation? We work very hard at being your health freedom advocates and we need your help. Please make regular donations, small or large, to the Natural Solutions Foundation – an astounding 100% of your donations goes directly to our work. People write to us to tell us that you need us and we certainly need you. Click here (http://drrimatruthreports.com/?page_id=189) to make your tax deductible donation to the Natural Solutions Foundation.
This action, and this issue, cannot wait.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org
www.ValleyoftheMoonCoffee.org
www.Organics4U.org
www.NaturalSolutionsMarketPlace.org
Index ——————————————-
Solemn Walk Through HR 875
By Sue Diederich and Linn Cohen-Cole
Walk Index
First Walk: Myths and Misinformation
Second Walk: End of Organics
Third Walk: Meaning of the Bills
Fourth Walk: Conclusion
The Pennsylvania Sustainable Agriculture Association, PASA, sent out information about HR 875 which lists ‘facts’ to counter ‘myths’ and ‘rumors’ on the internet. It gives no specifics to back up its ‘facts,’ so the following close up view of the bill and accompanying commentary offers readers a chance to decide for themselves what is myth and what is fact. Neither of us are lawyers, but we both can read. Sue Diederich heads the Illinois Independent Consumers and Farmers Association, an organization formed to protect the rights of farmers and consumers to deal directly with each other without government interference.
PASA’s assertions are in regular lower case font, as are the inserted portions of the bill which have all been provided by Sue Diederich who also provides her own comments in italics usually. My comments are in bold face. [Note: these type faces have been altered from the original to permit publication in the program used to publish this blog which lacks color font options – Dr. Rima]
Occasionally, we feel something is essential for people to see and those comments are in CAPITAL LETTERS. (It should all be in CAPITAL LETTERS [font changed to allow publication in this program – Dr. Rima], really, since so few organizations appear to have read the bill or seem to know how to read the bill or have thought through its massive cumulative impact or been concerned at its endlessly broad reach and over incredibly vague things.)
People seem to expect the bill to be titled “The Criminalization of Organic Farming and the Take over of the US Food Supply,” and when they don’t see any words to that effect anywhere in the bill, they declare “this bill is fine” and those seeing dangers are “alarmists.” Do they think the industrial side is composed of fools? These are the same people who make cheery cereals with cartoon characters on the box when, inside, high fructose corn syrup is all over the cereal which comes from Bt-corn associated with diabetes. HFCS is, too, and there is an epidemic of diabetes here even among children. They know how to package. Why do people understand that industrial food inside a box can be a problem and yet are so innocent about looking at the bills, not realizing there is packaging there, too, or how much is at stake that the public and even legislators not see since this is about taking control. The industrial side isn’t stupid.
Understanding parts of the bill at times depends on smelling smoke as you read it. Here in the US, we still have only smoke … an Ohio state ag department SWAT team raid on an organic coop, Pennsylvania ag department raids on horse and buggy Mennonites, California setting coliform levels so low fresh milk dairy farmers would need cows that produced pasteurized milk right out the udder, arrest and handcuffing of a single mother in front of her children for selling goat milk, the USDA paying its agents bonuses for foreclosing on farms, … But in the EU where 60% of the Polish farmers are now gone because of identical bills enacted into law there, and 60 UK farmers have committed suicide, there is fire. And in Iraq, where they have been rendered helpless serfs by the theft of their country’s seeds and criminalization of farmers’ collection of their own seed, it is roaring. And in India where 182,000 farmers have committed suicide since the WTO and IMF got hold of agriculture and our Big Ag firms went in there, and 8 million farmers have left the land, it is out of control.
The WTO, run by the multinational meat packers and genetic engineering corporations, want HR 875, here. The bills are “harmonized” rules for globalization of food and lower food safety standards to allow for it. Those corporations are members of NIAA, a corporate consortium that brought NAIS, created by Anne Veneman, to the USDA to be made into law.
Walk Index
First Walk… Myths and Misinformation
We begin with PASA offering FWW’s take on the bills to its members:
Myths and Facts? H.R. 875 – The Food Safety Modernization Act
PASA members: The following information about a bill now before Congress, HR 875, was developed by our friends at Food and Water Watch, and forwarded to us by the National Sustainable Ag Coalition (NSAC), of which PASA is a member.
This Myth/Fact sheet was developed to help answer some of the rumors that are fairly rampant on the Internet right now. We will keep a close eye on the situation, and share further updates from NSAC as they become available. ?
MYTH: H.R. 875 “makes it illegal to grow your own garden” and would result in the “criminalization of the backyard gardner.”
FACT: There is no language in the bill that would regulate, penalize, or shut down backyard gardens. This bill is focused on ensuring the safety of foods sold in supermarkets.
Though private residences are not specifically included, nor are they specifically excluded. While this does not immediately affect home owners growing tomatoes in the backyard, entered testimony leaves the door open for just that in the future. Referring back to the Bio-Terrorism Act, in a discussion on this very topic and entered in the official record of debate on the interim rule, (bold/underline = mine), the same argument exists here and no new definitions or exclusions have been provided in HR 875 – and “reasonable” is a subjective term in theory as well as practice…
(13) FOOD ESTABLISHMENT-
(A) IN GENERAL- The term ‘food establishment’ means a
Slaughterhouse (except those regulated under the Federal Meat
Inspection Act or the Poultry Products Inspection Act), factory,
Warehouse, or facility owned or operated by a person located in
Any State that processes food or a facility that holds, stores,
Or transports food or food ingredients.
Now, every home in the country holds food after buying it from the
Grocery store. Will they be included too?
Hell, no. They’re going to be magnanimous and say that, while they could,
They won’t right now.
Excerpted from the same Interim Rule:
“(Response) FDA has concluded that private individual residences are
Not ”facilities” for purposes of the registration provision of the
Bioterrorism Act. Under the Bioterrorism Act, the term ”facility”
Includes ”any factory, warehouse, or establishment.” Congress did not Specify any definition for these terms.
Under their common meanings,
The terms can include private residences. For example, according to Webster’s II New Riverside University Dictionary (1994), the most
Relevant definition of ”establishment” is ”a business firm, club,
Institution, or residence, including its possessions and employees.”
However, ”[I]n determining whether Congress has specifically addressed
The question at issue, the court should not confine itself to examining
A particular statutory provision in isolation * * *.
It is a fundamental canon of statutory construction that the words of a
Statute must be read in their context and with a view to their place in
The overall statutory scheme.”’ FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco
Corp., 529 U.S. 120, 121 (2000).
Other parts of the registration Provisions in section 415 of the FD&C Act indicate that Congress only Intended businesses to register, and raise a question as to whether Congress intended that private individual residences, even though food Is manufactured/processed, packed, or held at such residences, be Considered facilities.
For instance, a registrant is required to submit”the name and address of each facility at which, and all trade names Under which, the registrant conducts business * * * ” (21 U.S.C.
350d(a)(2)).
Thus it is unclear whether Congress intended all Individual private residences at which food is manufactured/processed, Packed, or held to be included in the term ”facility.” Furthermore, The requirement that a facility submit its ”name” as well as its ”trade names” raises a question as to whether Congress intended ”facility” to include private individual residences since it is Unlikely that a home would have a name or a trade name.
Where the words Of the statute are ambiguous, an agency may make a reasonable Interpretation of the statute. Chevron, USA, Inc. V. NRDC, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 842-843 (1984); Brown & Williamson, supra, at 132.
Consistent with the language of section 415(a)(2) discussed
Previously, the agency concludes that interpreting the term
”facility” to exclude private individual residences is a reasonable
Construction for purposes of registration.
This interpretation, However, does not necessarily preclude a reasonable construction of Other provisions of the FD&C Act to include such residences.”
[I do get that residences are easily included.]
MYTH: H.R. 875 would mean a “goodbye to farmers markets” because the bill would “require such a burdensome complexity of rules, inspections, licensing, fees, and penalties for each farmer who wishes to sell locally – a fruit stand, at a farmers market.” ?
FACT: There is no language in the bill that would result in farmers markets being regulated, penalized any fines, or shut down. Farmers markets would be able to continue to flourish under the bill. In fact, the bill would insist that imported foods meet strict safety standards to ensure that unsafe imported foods are not competing with locally-grown foods.
SECTION 406 CLEARLY STATES ALL FOOD OFFERED FOR SALE WILL BE VIEWED AS BEING IN INTERSTATE COMMERCE AND SUBJECT TOT HE PROVISIONS OF THIS BILL.
C. 406. PRESUMPTION.
In any action to enforce the requirements of the food safety law, the connection with interstate commerce required for jurisdiction shall be presumed to exist
8) CATEGORY 4 FOOD ESTABLISHMENT- The term ‘category 4 food establishment’ means a food establishment that processes all other categories of food products not described in paragraphs (5) through (7).
(9) CATEGORY 5 FOOD ESTABLISHMENT- The term ‘category 5 food establishment’ means a food establishment that stores, holds, or transports food products prior to delivery for retail sale.
14) FOOD PRODUCTION FACILITY- The term ‘food production facility’ means any farm, ranch, orchard, vineyard, aquaculture facility, or confined animal-feeding operation.
[SUE, say it again and again, “this applies to farms and can apply to homes.” It certainly looks to me that families baking cookies for bake sales could easily be included.]
SEC. 206. FOOD PRODUCTION FACILITIES.
(a) Authorities- In carrying out the duties of the Administrator and the purposes of this Act, the Administrator shall have the authority, with respect to food production facilities, to–
(1) visit and inspect food production facilities in the United States and in foreign countries to determine if they are operating in compliance with the requirements of the food safety law;
(2) review food safety records as required to be kept by the Administrator under section 210 and for other food safety purposes;
(3) set good practice standards to protect the public and animal health and promote food safety;
(4) conduct monitoring and surveillance of animals, plants, products, or the environment, as appropriate; and
(5) collect and maintain information relevant to public health and farm practices.
(b) Inspection of Records- A food production facility shall permit the Administrator upon presentation of appropriate credentials and at reasonable times and in a reasonable manner, to have access to and ability to copy all records maintained by or on behalf of such food production establishment in any format (including paper or electronic) and at any location, that are necessary to assist the Administrator–
(1) to determine whether the food is contaminated, adulterated, or otherwise not in compliance with the food safety law; or
(2) to track the food in commerce.
(c) Regulations- Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Administrator, in consultation with the Secretary of Agriculture and representatives of State departments of agriculture, shall promulgate regulations to establish science-based minimum standards for the safe production of food by food production facilities. Such regulations shall–
(1) consider all relevant hazards, including those occurring naturally, and those that may be unintentionally or intentionally introduced;
(2) require each food production facility to have a written food safety plan that describes the likely hazards and preventive controls implemented to address those hazards;
(3) include, with respect to growing, harvesting, sorting, and storage operations, minimum standards related to fertilizer use, nutrients, hygiene, packaging, temperature controls, animal encroachment, and water;
THEY NEVER MENTION SEEDS BUT THIS IS PRECISELY HOW THEY WILL CRIMINALIZE SEED BANKING AND ALL HOLDINGS OF SEEDS.
[Notice they mention harvesting, sorting and storage operations, then watch below.
To follow how this will be done, you must understand that:
1. there is a small list inside the FDA called “sources of seed contamination”
2. in which they have now defined “seed” as food,
3. so seeds can be controlled under “food safety.”
Those seeds (so far) include:
seeds eaten raw such as flax, poppy sesame, etc.;
sprouting seeds such as wheat, beans, alfalfa, most greens, etc.;
seeds pressed into oils such as corn, sunflower, canola, etc.;
seeds used as animal feed such as soy ….
That is most seeds. Seeds are essential to life and thus to freedom.
The “sources of seed contamination” include six little items:
agricultural water
manure (but NOT chemical pesticides or fertilizers)
harvesting, transporting and seed cleaning equipment
seed storage facilities
What you must realize is that seed cleaning equipment is THE single most critical piece of equipment for sustainable agriculture. It is how we save organic seed. It is the machinery used after plants “go to seed” to separate out (sort) the seeds from the plant material so the farmer can collect (harvest) and then save (put in storage) seed for the next year at little cost. With his own seed, the farmer stays free of patented, genetically engineered, corporately privatized seeds.
You must also understand that Monsanto is getting rid of the people who do the seed cleaning and many other means of our having access to seed .
This year, 2009, seed cleaning equipment is now illegal in some parts of the country which tips us off to both the intent to control seeds in this way and to how they could do things under this bill.
How can they make such vital equipment illegal? Quietly, and by saying it contaminates food.
“Contaminate” is their favorite word since the public fears the deadly contamination that industry itself – not farmers – has caused. Scare the public and thus push for “food safety standards” to be set.
And to eliminate seed cleaning equipment, they haven now set the standards so seed cleaning (the simple separation of seed from plant) will now require a million to a million and a half dollar building and/or equipment … per line of seed.
So, a farmer who has been seed cleaning flax for 40 years with a hand made seed cleaner can’t sell flax on the market anymore, though there are NO instances of anyone ever having gotten sick from seed cleaning equipment. A farmer who has been cleaning wheat, corn and soy each year with the same perfectly fine equipment would now need three to four and half million dollars for three pieces of equipment to continue.
(The FDA isn’t so bar-setting when it comes to other things like melamine in baby formula, though it is proven to sicken and kill infants), initially denying the melamine was in our baby formula and then quickly inventing a “foods safety” standard to okay it.)
Organic farmers are not aware of this happening, perhaps because the left is being treated with kid gloves until HR 875 and related bills are/were passed. Meanwhile, the FDA and USDA have been tromping on traditional (many of them farming organically, by the way) farmers for years. The organic community is disconnected from them so hasn’t been aware of what is happening to them. Indie farmers have a history of no one listening to them, which is too bad because it is they who are the ones bringing the warning that these bills are deadly. The organic community, measuring against its own seeming safety, hasn’t heard or understood.
NOTICE, THOUGH, THAT BECAUSE A SINGLE “FOODS SAFETY” BAR HAS BEEN RAISED, IN TIME ON ONE WILL BE ABLE TO GET ORGANIC SEEDS IN ANY NUMBER BECAUSE IT WILL BE ILLEGAL FOR ALL FARMERS TO SELL THEM TO ANYONE.
Now, look at the last item on the list – seed storage facilities.
They would be careful not to ban them all outright given the extreme reaction they would get. But now the method is more clear. “Food safety” is the weapon and public fear is the driver and they only need to set the bar at the level that is impossible to meet.
Farmers, gardeners, seed saving exchanges, seed companies, scientific seed projects, and seed banks, all require “seed storage facilities.” All are working overtime to protect biodiversity that is rapidly disappearing because of … genetic engineering.
Set the standard for “food safety” and certification high enough that no one can afford it and punish anyone who tries to save seed in a multitude of ways that have worked fine for thousands of years, and PRESTO, YOU HAVE JUST CRIMINALIZED SEED BANKING.
The penalties, I will assume, will be tremendous, the better to protect us from nothing dangerous whatever, but to make monopoly over seed more absolute. One is left with control over farmers, and end to seed exchanges, to organic seed companies, to university programs developing nice normal hybrids.
When you know that Monsanto with the help of the US government plundered ancient and rare seed banks in Iraq that held seeds with a genetic heritage (a biohistory belonging to all of us) going back 1000s of years and then made it a crime for farmers there to collect or use their own normal and non-patented seeds off their own land, you see how extreme the intent to control is.
Now, perhaps it is possible to see how the identical thing is being done here, only it comes in a heavily, heavily disguised way – through “food safety” that isn’t at all – and in only one tiny little paragraph within a very large bill.
The Iraqis are now abjectly dependent on Monsanto and the US for survival itself and will have to pay whatever prices are set for food. They cannot just grow their own and be free. So, no matter what form of government they may have, they are now slaves because the control over them is that extreme. Kissinger was right – control food and you control people.
This trick of setting bars above any ability to be in the game, is similar to how blacks had been treated. Click here. This trick of setting bars above any ability to be in the game while imposing fines that destroy people who fail to meet that standard, is sadistic. Then, taking the land as confiscatory payment, is theft by government become totalitarian and colonizing its own people.
There are other items of the list which surely will be controlled as well. In toto, that little list is the deconstruction of farming itself and given the inclusion of manure, especially of organic farming.]
(4) include, with respect to animals raised for food, minimum standards related to the animal’s health, feed, and environment which bear on the safety of food for human consumption;
(5) provide a reasonable period of time for compliance, taking into account the needs of small businesses for additional time to comply;
(6) provide for coordination of education and enforcement activities by State and local officials, as designated by the Governors of the respective States; and
(7) include a description of the variance process under subsection (d) and the types of permissible variances which the Administrator may grant under such process.
(d) Variances- States and foreign countries that export produce intended for consumption in the United States may request from the Administrator variances from the requirements of the regulations under subsection (c). A request shall–
(1) be in writing;
(2) describe the reasons the variance is necessary;
(3) describe the procedures, processes, and practices that will be followed under the variance to ensure produce is not adulterated; and
(4) contain any other information required by the Administrator.
(e) Approval or Disapproval of Variances- If the Administrator determines after review of a request under subsection (d) that the requested variance provides equivalent protections to those promulgated under subsection (c), the Administrator may approve the request. The Administrator shall deny a request if it is–
(1) not sufficiently detailed to permit a determination;
(2) fails to cite sufficient grounds for allowing a variance; or
(3) does not provide reasonable assurances that the produce will not be adulterated.
(f) Enforcement- The Administrator may coordinate with the agency or department designated by the Governor of each State to perform activities to ensure compliance with this section.
(g) Imported Produce- Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Administrator shall promulgate regulations to ensure that raw agricultural commodities and minimally processed produce imported into the United States can meet standards for food safety, inspection, labeling, and consumer protection that are at least equal to standards applicable to such commodities and produce produced in the United States.
Administrator shall have authority to grant exclusions to foreign producers.
[While it may be obvious to us that this is onerous beyond any capability of coping with it, it needs to be said and described in some detail what it would actually mean for farmers or for us. Here in story form is a taste of it, so anyone could feel the insanity of it:
SEC. 201. ADMINISTRATION OF NATIONAL PROGRAM.
(a) In General- The Administrator shall–
(1) develop, administer, and annually update a national food safety program (referred to in this section as the ‘program’) to protect public health; and
(2) ensure that persons who produce, process, or distribute food meet their responsibility to prevent or minimize food safety hazards related to their products.
[This is where I think it would be very helpful if you explained how astoundingly onerous that long list is and what its impact would be on any farmer who previously only needed to load up his goods and bringing them to a farmers market – though that in itself is a time consuming, physically effortful job that often begins pre-dawn on those mornings and ends late in the day, all of it separate from growing the food and boxing it up to bring.
A small farm is not an industry with staff to fill out paperwork, handle licensing, manage all the industrial bureaucracy that is being loaded on here, but is most often a couple who is also taking care of a family in addition to growing crops and raising animals. These are precisely the people who we need most as part of our food system and how will clearly be crushed by the grossly inappropriate application of such rules to small farms.]
· MYTH: H.R. 875 would result in the “death of organic farming.”
FACT: There is no language in the bill that would stop organic farming. The National Organic Program (NOP) is under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The Food Safety Modernization Act only addresses food safety issues under the jurisdiction of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
[Of course, they are not going to come straight out and say it. But breaking this down to what is actually involved, you find that:]
The administrator is charged with developing minimum standards, not maximum limits on feed, fertilizers, nutrients etc- right here goes organics.
Secondly, this act creates a new agency, and the FDA becomes the Federal Drug and Device Agency. It combines offices currently under FDA and Commerce Department (National Marine Fisheries).
Third, FSA is to cooperate with the USDA in “promulgating rules and orders” which will have the bearing and impact of law.
To refer back to the previous “Myth”
[The one about foreign food having to meet our standard, right?]
– Alaska, Hawaii, US territories and foreign countries may apply for variances, so… NO… Imported foods do NOT necessarily have to meet the same standards. In fact, many countries have had to lower their standards due to WTO rules and trade agreements, and Australia had to further lower their regulatory standards when they instituted the NLIS program (their version of NAIS). There is no reason to think we would not have to do the same.
Walk Index
Second Walk… The End of Organic Farming
[NOW, COMES THE RESPONSE TO WHETHER THE BILLS WILL MEAN THE END OF ORGANIC FARMING.]
I’m going to format this differently to accentuate your points, Sue. This section should be a major education for people in how things have been working. This is in response to the myth that the bills will not affect organic farming, right?]
Animal health has traditionally meant medication and hormones, petroleum-based fly sprays and all sorts of other goodies.
Feed can be anything (GMO SOY OR CORN, ANYONE?),
environment can mean PESTICIDES, HERBICIDES USED ON PASTURES (IF pasturing is deemed “healthy” – internationally this is NOT so for poultry, in fact in many countries there is NO outdoor poultry anymore – by law).
Nutrients are not necessarily whole food based, many are produced SYNTHETICally, and again, PETROLEUM BASED …
Animal encroachment prevention can be anything from a scarecrow or plastic owl to POISON BATES AND BULLETS. Not one of these things is specified, yet there is no place for real public opinion in the decision making process provided. I will grant that there is usually a public comment period for federal register entries, for whatever that has been worth in the past.
[Meaning, it has been worth little to nothing. And obviously, the public is left having to respond ad infinitum to one issue after another. Someone compared the numbers of things being thrown at us to try to stop, to carpet bombing so you can’t comment on everything, even if it helped which is clearly often doesn’t.]
SEC. 206. FOOD PRODUCTION FACILITIES.
(a) AUTHORITIES.—In carrying out the duties of the Administrator and the purposes of this Act, the Administrator shall have the authority, with respect to food production facilities, to
(1) visit and inspect food production facilities in the United States and in foreign countries to determine if they are operating in compliance with the requirements of the food safety law;
(2) review food safety records as required to be kept by the Administrator under section 210 and for other food safety purposes;
(3) SET GOOD PRACTICE STANDARDS to protect the public and animal health and promote food safety;
[This is where words that sound so friendly and innocuous and even good are code words for international rules set by the WTO that actually define industrial requirements which do not fit real farming in the least, much less organic farming, would be applied.
[This is where insane, anti-nature, anti-farming rules like “animals and crops can’t exist on the same farm” come into play. Where wild animals aren’t ever supposed to be near crops so the government has been poisoning deer and frogs. The list of such manufacturing rules for farming is long, and each very much “efficiency manager comes and wrecks the farm.”]
(4) conduct monitoring and surveillance of animals, plants, products, or the environment, as appropriate; and
[Please, those of you who find the idea of NSA-spying intolerable, look carefully at those words. Now, imagine it were your farm, your home on that farm, and realize that the USDA and FDA have been run by and the new agency will be run by Monsanto, Cargill, Tysons, ADM. Their interest in helping consumers have safer food is nil The bills are meant to eliminate farmers as is now rapidly occurring in the EU with identical (“harmonized”) bills, now law there.
(5) collect and maintain information relevant to public health and farm practices.
[There needs to be a pause here to consider the implications of each of those on someone’s home – their family’s farm. This is quite different from applying them to industrial sites where no one lives, and beyond that, these powers are so broad and vague, they are dangerous if only in that.
Those things listed open the door to total control, warrantless entry and perpetual surveillance. Notice how innocuous they have made it appear, even beneficial – always about public health. Yet, the insincerity of this is boggling – the USDA and Big Ag have worked to prevent inspections to the point where farmers have had to actully sue to get them done , even after offering to pay for them.]
(b) INSPECTION OF RECORDS.—A food production facility shall permit the Administrator upon presentation of appropriate credentials and at reasonable times and in a reasonable manner
[Who defines “reasonable”? Does a farmer have to go to court each time there is an “unreasonable” manner and time? How wide open do we push the door to Big Ag-corrupted government control over farmers – the people creating the only safe food?
Look carefully and realize the USDA right now is countenancing state ag departments conducting terrorizing raids on non-corporate farms across the country. Imagine it were your home and USDA agents banging on your door to demand paper work and if you don’t have it, facing fines that would bankrupt you in a moment and lose you your land and home.]
, to have access to and ability to copy all records maintained by or on behalf of such food production establishment in any format (including paper or electronic) and at any location, that are necessary to assist the Administrator—
[Imagine again.]
(1) to determine whether the food is contaminated, adulterated, or otherwise not in compliance with the food safety law; or
[Be aware that in Pennsylvania where there has been an aggressive effort to destroy fresh milk dairy farmers, the tests by the states repeatedly do not match those of independent testers but the harm to farmers from such false tests and reporting of them is done and can’t be undone. Be aware that the USDA has a record of creating test results damaging to small farmers while it refuses to inspect even when farmers ask to pay.]
(2) to track the food in commerce.
[This could mean farmers bringing food to markets with USDA agents surveilling.]
(c) REGULATIONS.—Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Administrator, in consultation with the Secretary of Agriculture and representatives of State departments of agriculture, shall promulgate regulations to establish science-based minimum standards for the safe production of food by food production facilities. Such regulations shall—
[Everything in this bill is being left to be filled in however the “Food Safety Tsar” – “the Administrator” decides? Right now, to give people pause and to wake them up a bit to how this is not a wise idea but in fact absurd, it appears that person could be Michael Taylor, a Monsanto lawyer infamous for approving rBGH – the first genetically engineered product ever approved – over the objections of doctors, scientists who said the numbers were being rigged, and the public.
How can anyone leave a bill so utterly vague in the hands of anyone to decide later what it all means? Do we not make laws here with specific meaning anymore? Or do we simply let totalitarian rules be applied by industry against non-industrial entities like farms and homes in any way they wish and with immense police power behind what they, for their own interests, decide?]
(1) consider all relevant hazards, including those occurring naturally, and those that may be unintentionally or intentionally introduced;
[GOODBY RAW MILK.]
(2) require each food production facility to have a written food safety plan that describes the likely hazards and preventive controls implemented to address those hazards;
(3) include, with respect to growing, harvesting, sorting, and storage operations, minimum standards related to fertilizer use, NUTRIENTS, HYGIENE, PACKAGING, TEMPERATURE CONTROLS, ANIMAL ENCROACHMENT, AND WATER;
[GOODBYE ORGANIC FARMING.]
(4) include, with respect to animals raised for food, MINIMUM STANDARDS related to the animal’s HEALTH, FEED AND ENVIRONMENT which bear on the safety of food for human consumption;
[GOODBYE ORGANIC FARMING AND GRASS FED ANIMALS.]
(5) provide a reasonable period of time for compliance, taking into account the needs of small businesses for additional time to comply;
[Oh, heavens, this looks like padding to throw in the word “reasonable” again but it has no explicit meaning whatever and so no safety for a soul.]
(6) provide for coordination of education and enforcement activities by State and local officials, as designated by the Governors of the respective States; and
[This appears to be where Homeland Security works with the USDA for such things as “depopulation of animals” – for which 6 meetings are already scheduled in June and into which livestock owners are not allowed though foreigners are.
These “depopulation” plans look like what is happening in Asia where animal disease caused by industry (and worth a fortune to the pharmaceutical industry ) are then used by industry to wipe out its competition in heritage breeds of animals on small farms and to substitute genetically engineered animals that are patented by industry and thus owned by industry.
(7) include a description of the variance process under subsection (d) and the types of permissible variances which the Administrator may grant under such process.
(d) VARIANCES.—
.
[This is where the “fact” that foreign countries must meet our food safety requirements collapses by simply reading the bill.]
MYTH: The bill would implement a national animal ID system.?
FACT: There is no language in the bill that would implement a national animal ID system. Animal identification issues are under the jurisdiction of the USDA. The Food Safety Modernization Act addresses issues under the jurisdiction of the FDA.
This bill mandates NAIS BY claiming that it is already law,
then contradicts itself by citing COOL, which specifically prohibits mandatory tracking.
It justifies NAIS by claiming that the AHPA gives authority – but this is a bill (and supposedly a program) concerning interstate commerce (though any item of food for sale is “presumed” to be in interstate commerce, whether it is in reality or not.) and AHPA does not regulate interstate commerce.
How many contradictions in a single section do we need before red flags go up?
[YES, AND PUT UP RED FLAGS FOR WHOLE BILLS IF THIS CENTRAL PART IS SO CORRUPTLY BEING PUSHED.]
Below in CAPITALS [fonts altered – Dr. Rima] , Sue answers the absurd claim that NAIS is not mandatory. FWW has gotten this and many other items wrong. That would be fine if the whole organic movement and all our farms and freedom were not riding on our seeing these very real threats and stopping those bills completely – not compromising on them but demanding their complete withdrawal.]
(a) IN GENERAL – THE ADMINISTRATOR, IN ORDER TO PROTECT THE PUBLIC HEALTH, SHALL ESTABLISH A NATIONAL TRACEABILITY SYSTEM THAT ENABLES THE ADMINISTRATOR TO RETRIEVE THE HISTORY, USE AND LOCATION OF AN ARTICLE OF FOOD THROUGH ALL STAGES OF ITSPRODUCTION, PROCESSIN, AND DISTRIBUTION.
(b) APPLICABILITY – TRACEABILITY REQUIREMENTS UNDER THIS SECTION SHALL APPLY TO FOOD FROM FOOD PRODUCTION FACILITIES, FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS, AND FOREIGN FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS.
(c) REQUIREMENTS-
(1) STANDARDS- THE ADMINISTRATOR SHALL ESTABLISH STANDARDS FOR THE TYPE OF INFORMATION, FORMAT, AND TIMEFRAME FOR FOOD PRODUCTION FACILTITIES AND FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS TO SUBMIT RECORDS TO AID THE ADMINISTRATOR IN EFFECTIVELY RETRIEVING THE HISTORY, USE AND LOCATION OF AN ITEM OF FOOD.
(2) RULE OF CONSTRUCTION- Nothing in this section shall be construed as requiring the Administrator to prescribe a specific technology for the maintenance of records or labeling of food to carry out the requirements of this section.
(3) AVAILABILITY OF RECORDS FOR INSPECTION- Any records that are required by the Administrator under this section shall be available for inspection by the Administrator upon oral or written request.
(4) DEMONSTRATION OF ABILITY- The Administrator, during any inspection, may require a food establishment to demonstrate its ability to trace an item of food and submit the information in the format and time frame required under paragraph (1).
(d) Relationship to Other Requirements-
(1) CONSISTENCY WITH EXISTING STATUTES AND REGULATIONS- To the extent possible, the Administrator should establish the national traceability system under this section to be consistent with existing statutes and regulations that require recordkeeping or labeling for identifying the origin or history of food or food animals.
[Does this mean consistent with international laws under the WTO? Is this a means of locking everything together into Smart Grid or NAFTA or CAFTA or GATT and even, the worst of all,
?]
(2) EXISTING LAWS- For purposes of this subsection, the Administrator should review the following:
(A) Country of origin labeling requirements of subtitle D of the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1946 (7 U.S.C. 1638 et seq.).
(B) The Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act of 1930 (7 U.S.C. 499a-t).
(C) Country of origin labeling requirements of section 304 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (19 U.S.C. 1340).
(D) The National Animal Identification System as authorized by the Animal Health Protection Act of 2002 (7 U.S.C. 8301 et seq.).
EC. 210. TRACEBACK REQUIREMENTS.
MYTH: The bill is supported by the large agribusiness industry.?
FACT: No large agribusiness companies have expressed support for this bill.
This bill is being supported by several Members of Congress who have strong progressive records on issues involving farmers markets, organic farming, and locally-grown foods.
[Who almost certainly have not read the bills or can’t interpret how it will work to destroy farmers, organic food, seed banking, and all of us.]
Also, H.R. 875 is the only food safety legislation that has been supported by all the major consumer and food safety groups, including:
[Perhaps others know details on each organization and why they might be supporting a bill that is so threatening to real food safety and to the survival of our farms and organic farming.]
?– Center for Foodborne Illness Research & Prevention
?– Center for Science in the Public Interest
?– Consumer Federation of America
The Consumer Federation of America (CFA) is a long-standing consumer organization based in Washington, DC. However, it has accepted funding from the ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION to “develop an optimum regulatory regime” for genetically engineered food.
?– Consumers Union?– Food & Water Watch
[Food and Water Watch just put out a description of the bill in which it is apparent they do not understand what is in it and what it will do. With that as their starting point, they support it.]
?– The Pew Charitable Trusts
[They are also connected to the ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION, and involved with them in mandatory vaccinations programs around the world and issues of reducing population.]
?– Safe Tables Our Priority ?– Trust for America’s Health
[There is no list here of groups opposing this bill, which include the people whose lives are most at risk from it and who know its dangers the best and who should have been the first people consulted. Instead, they have been shut out and when they have tried to report extreme dangers, they have ignored, dismissed, marginalized. Perhaps the other organizations listed here are as unfamiliar with the bill’s contents and ramifications as FWW.]
If you consider that not only is Rosa DeLauro married to Stanley Greenberg, who boasts Monsanto as one of his clients, but also that she receives the largest donations from agribusiness PAC’s of just about anyone in Congress, does industry NEED to come out and say they support this particular bill? If cash to the sponsor doesn’t count, and if formal positions supporting various specific aspects of the bill do not count, then what does? Would there not be massive public backlash against it if industry DID take a formal stand on every bill they want to see passed?
By the same token, I’ve not seen a single industrial ag company come out and oppose this bill, either. They have all been conspicuously silent. I seem to remember that they threw up quite a fuss over COOL, and caused enforcement to fall behind by more than 7 years… Not to mention the garbage with loopholes we’ve had to deal with since enforcement began. (What good does a “Canada, US, Mexico” label do for anybody? Especially with BSE in Canada and TB coming in daily from Mexico?) Where’s the hoot and holler over this?
MYTH: The bill will pass the Congress next week without amendments or debate.?
FACT: Food safety legislation has yet to be considered by any Congressional committee.?
I can’t speak to the time frame. [Note from NSF: our sources “on the Hill” told us they believed these bills had been “fast tracked” to be passed during President Obama’s “First 100 Days”]
[It came from those who first discovered the bills were there, inserted only one week after Vilsack had said the USDA wasn’t even considering centralizing the FDA and USDA at this time, so people saw how similar the bills were, knew who fast other things were being shoved through Congress without even reading those bills, and estimated how fast this could happen.
Perhaps with people alerted now, these bogus “food safety” bills can be stopped by the organic community once it realizes they will utterly destroy it.]
However, since I did have the luxury of listening to the farce taking place on the floor of the House of Representatives on March 11 concerning HR1105 (which FUNDS NAIS among its hundreds of other projects) while awaiting the Livestock, Dairy and Poultry subcommittee hearing on NAIS – I have no doubt that this bill will move quickly now that 1105 has passed and since it has so many co-sponsors.
Especially since the Representatives were honest enough to admit that though the Senators claimed everybill in the Omnibus Act had been heard and passed in the previous session, when in actuality, some 100 of the 170 bills in the package had NOT.
But this is my personal opinion.
The “ominous Omnibus Act” as several Representatives called it, went from introduction to the President in less than 13 working days.
I really have to question just who’s side those groups are really on that are in support of this bill…..
And finally,
Walk Index
Third Walk… Meaning of the Bills
WHAT THE NEW “FOOD SAFETY” BILLS MEAN TO YOU
by Gail Combs
Our food safety system was trashed in 1995 by Sec of Ag Ann Veneman (Board member of Monsanto). She appointed Dan Amstutz (VP of Cargill) who wrote the World Trade Organization Agreement on Agriculture (WTO AoA). Unlike GATT, WTO has major clout from trade sanctions and control of 90% of the international trade. http://www.publiceyeonscience.ch/images/the_wto_and_the_politics_of_gmo.doc
“Aims to ensure that governments do not use quarantine and food safety requirements as Unjustified trade barriers.. It provides Member countries with a right to implement traceability {NAIS} as an SPS measure.” WTO
In other words the WTO did away with “quarantine and food safety requirements” that gave us “the safest food in the world” and is graciously going to allow Farmers to track AND COUNT the world’s livestock for them instead. Now HR 875 and an FDA release indicate All food will be tracked and all food producers will have Food inspections and the threat of fines up to $1,000,000 a day will eliminate all the independent farms that have acted as a check on Corporate AG.
The FDA wants
to implement a more effective trace-back process, using technologies to rapidly and precisely track the origin and destination of contaminated foods, feed and ingredients
Nanotech in Food can make it happen “California’s Oxonica makes Nanobarcodes from nano-particles that contain silver and gold stripes varying in width, length and amount, such that billions of combinations can be created to tag individual products. The barcodes have been primarily used to assure brand and authenticity in pharmaceuticals, but applications could be forthcoming in tracing food batches”.
In regard to pets:
HR 875 uses “animals” and then “animals raised for food” and there are no exclusions. The Animal Welfare Act had exclusions for livestock, pets and people raising three or less litters of puppies a year. Therefore pets are not excluded.
“set good practice standards to protect the public and animal health and promote food safety”
“conduct monitoring and surveillance of animals, plants, products, or the environment, as appropriate”
“with respect to animals raised for food, minimum standards related to the animal’s health, feed, and environment which bear on the safety of food for human consumption;
In regard to gardens:
The Feds Already have plans for controlling food “FROM FARM TO FORK” including home preparation since September of 1995 (WTO ratified in 1995)
HR 875
“require each food production facility to have a written food safety plan that describes the likely hazards and preventive controls implemented to address those hazards;”
“include, with respect to growing, harvesting, sorting, and storage operations, minimum standards related to fertilizer use, nutrients, hygiene, packaging, temperature controls, animal encroachment, and water”
“include, with respect to animals raised for food, minimum standards related to the animal’s health, feed, and environment which bear on the safety of food for human consumption;”
“set good practice standards to protect the public and animal health and promote food safety”
“..facility owned or operated by a person located in any State that processes food or a facility that holds, stores, or transports food or food ingredients.”
Notice it does not say a person SELLING food, it says a person holds, stores, or transports food or food ingredients. The bill specifically states it covers commerce with in state but again there is no exclusion for food raised for home use. The fact you are growing veggies for your and friends and not selling them does not exclude you.
“in any action to enforce the requirements of the food safety law, the connection with interstate commerce required for jurisdiction SHALL BE PRESUMED TO EXIST.”
Under Ag Sec. Veneman …
in September, 1995, the USDA’s Food Safety & Inspection Service presented a 600-page document “Farm-To-Table” intended to control of every step in the food chain from production to home preparation.
This is a real life example of what has already occurred and what people may have in store:
Today a state Ag inspector and two county officials show up and scare the bee-jesus out of me. First they accuse me of selling products and milk, then explain that even “giving milk products away” is illegal in California. Now everything is pasteurized, but it is illegal to share milk products in any form! They explained it was even ILLEGAL to give it to my own children if they did not live under my roof! I can’t even take a lasagna dish to my grown sons home without risk of being fined, arrested and or jailed! This is OUTRAGEOUS!!!!…..” Donna Tue Aug 12, 2008 http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/Americans_Against_NAIS/message/26452
More stories on Feds raiding farms and co-ops
Walk Index
Last Walk… Conclusion
The related package of “food safety” bills are totalitarian. There are no two ways about it.
They allow government warrantless intrusion into and extreme, detailed, surveilled control over every aspect of farmers’ land and home, straight-jacketing them into a bureaucratic nightmare which precludes their even functioning as farmers. And yet for real food safety and for food security, it is exactly farmers we need.
We need the real food they produce and the farmland they spare and protect from industrialization and the heritage animals and seeds they raise and their knowledge about nature and animals, and we need the way of life they represent. Free. How interesting that to have real and clean and wholesome food, it requires that farmers have freedom.
These bills which claim to be about “food safety” but are proven in the EU already to be about the destruction of farmers, are so frighteningly broad, they allow the government to take over our lives, too. They allow the government to use rules written by multinational corporations within the WTO, to control whether we can garden or how, whether we chip our pets, even what happens inside our homes in our kitchens.
These controls all all for mandating things that make money for corporations just as we are all trying to get off the corporate grid of power, fuel, food, … Now it is easy to appreciate people’ resistance to mandated vaccines (and they keep adding more kinds).
There is point at which we must say stop. Our lives are our own, our property is our own, our decisions on what to eat and how to heal ourselves are our own. We must protect our own freedom and now it is apparent how intimately tied it is those who have been providing for us for ever – our farmers.
HR 875, SR 425, HR 814, HR 759 and all related bills must be withdrawn immediately and then trashed.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/A-solemn-walk-through-HR-8-by-Linn-Cohen-Cole-090314-67.html
Index ———————————-
Further information linking Codex Alimentarius (the World Food Code) and the (sic) Food (sic) Safety bills, see:
A Natural Solutions Foundation White Paper
Regarding U.S. Codex Office and Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) for
Adoption of Codex Committee Policies by the U.S. Codex Delegation and FSIS
in Harmony with the Dietary Substances Health and Education Act (DSHEA),
19 USC 3512 (the Anti-Harmonization Statute) and other Statutory and Case Law
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
This detailed posting gives yet another example of why the FDA must be divested of its food authority before its mismanagement causes even more harm. The Federal Govt’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding GMO (genetically modified organisms) creates conditions for a mega-disaster of unknown severity.
For more on Divesting the FDA:
http://drrimatruthreports.com/?p=1601
Dr. Laibow
———————–
Plant Based Vaccines Under Development World Wide
Once genetic material migrates from a modified plant or animal into other plants, animals, insect, or what have you, that migration is permanent except for one thing: the DNA is not stable so it literally “jumps around” causing novel proteins to be expressed.
Novel proteins, or proteins which have never existed before during the course of all life on this planet, have novel impacts. Read that as “infertility”, “sterility”, “cancers”, “auto-immune diseases”, “Joint and connective tissue diseases”, “neurological diseases”, “fetal death”, “failure to thrive”, “infant mortality”, etc. Babies in utero are particularly susceptible to the impact of these “novel proteins”, but no one is immune.
Worse, the genes have no stable place to reside in the DNA of whatever cell they are working in this week so they move from place to place to place inside the nucleus of the cell, causing the resident genes to change their functions and produce yet more novel proteins.
Now ask yourself what happens if vaccine-producing plants (or industrial-product producing plants – the issue is identical) mingle their pollen with the plants that produce your food and the food of the animals of this planet. The USDA has reduced the already close-to-non-existent controls on industrial plant growth next to, and contaminating, food plants. For example, for 5 years Bayer’s Crop Science vaccine rice was growing next to, and contaminating, food rice in Louisiana. Bayer knew about it (perhaps the USDA did, too – we do not have that information) and said nothing.
When the contamination was discovered, Bayer was not fined or sanctioned by the US Government and the contaminated rice was simply sold to the US Military for its troops in Iraq (!!!). US Military labs detected the contamination and the rice was then sold to sub Saharan African countries like Ghana. There, in every rice market that was tested, the contaminated rice was found. Poor people, buying their daily food, were eating poisoned rice, courtesy of the Biotech Industry, Bayer Crop Science (from Beyer, the same corporation that knowingly sold HIV contaminated blood fractions in Europe when they could not sell them in the US) and the US Government. But if you are buying food, especially prepared food, in the US, you are in exactly the same position: poisoned “food”, lacking any notification or labeling of that poisonous status, is being sold to you as if it were wholesome and fit for human consumption because of the total failure of the US Government to protect your health or the integrity of the food supply from commercial – and worse – interests.
The Natural Solutions Foundation has created the International Decade of Nutrition, www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org, to reclaim the production of food. The US Government is on the other side: industry interests and conflicts of interest make the US Government, according to all assessments, including the US Congress’ most recent report on the subject, totally unable to resist industry pressure and totally unwilling to clean house in order to become a health promoting system. Indeed, FDA scientists have openly appealed to President Obama for help in allowing them to do their job: being science to the regulation of safety.
Reformation after reformation, new agency after new agency, staff shuffle after staff shuffle have failed to weaken industry and strengthen either science or sense in the government regulation of food. ENOUGH! Our lives and our children’s lives are at stake. The Natural Solutions Foundation is once again leading the way by identifying the problem and providing the natural solutions: the system is broken beyond repair. No amount of patchwork will repair it. It is time for the failed US Government to relinquish its failed mission of food safety and regulation to the smaller governmental units which are closer to the will of the people: State governments.
Remembering that NO science of safety is PERMITTED for genetically modified “foods” in the US, remembering that patents on GMOs are based on outdated and invalid scientific premises, remember that the US Supreme Court was packed beforehand in order to grant patent rights to Monsanto, and remembering that well over 80% of the US population would prefer not to eat GMO “food” although more than 90% of the American food stock is contaminated with GMO “food”, the following article should arouse a strong response.
The stunning disregard for science and safety shown by the US Government at the behest of the food-related industries is almost too large to take in at one gulp. Biotech “foods”, approved by the FDA, USDA and Codex, as they are, represent a major threat to health, indeed, to life on this planet.
None of the agencies tasked with responsiblity for food safety and food regulation in the United States are either capable or willing to provide meaningful safety or health-based regulation. After deadly decades, it has become clear that they cannot be reformed and that
1. The USDA must be dissolved
2. The FDA must have its food regulatory responsibility removed from it as environmental protection, consumer safety and narcotics and dangerous drug responsibility was removed from it to create separate government agencies
3. Another federal agency will not protect food and the health of the American people since conflict of interest and corruption run too deep.
4. Regulatory responsibility for food must be turned over to the States, consistent with their Constitutional mandates and rights so that the impact of the people, from whom regulatory authority comes, is far closer to the exercise of regulatory authority.
The Natural Solutions Foundation invites you to join us in the 2009 Health Freedom Campaign to Divest the US Government of its Food Regulatory Responsibilities in order to return assurance of food safety and health protection to the States and, hence, to the People. For more information on the Campaign to Divest the US Government of Food Regulation, click here (http://drrimatruthreports.com/?p=1601).
Please write to divestgovernment_food@gmail.com to indicate your interest in this special, life-saving campaign. We are planning a webinar on the topic and would like to keep you informed. Your email information will not be shared with anyone else and will be kept confidential by the Natural Solutions Foundation, www.HealthFreedomUSA.org. Please indicate “Divest” in the subject line and we will notify you when the webinar will take place.
Campaigns like this are costly. All donations to the Natural Solutions Foundation are tax deductible and an astonishing 100% of all donations goes directly to the work of the Natural Solutions Foundation since all overhead is donated and the Trustees take no salaries. Click here (http://drrimatruthreports.com/?page_id=189) to give generously to help us help you by mounting an effective campaign to divest the US Government of its food regulatory authority and returning it to the People so that we can prevent the gross disregard for our well being, and the nightmarish destruction of our food and our health which the US regulatory structure allows.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
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Worldwide team set to develop plant-based livestock vaccines
Written by Lautaro Vargas
Wednesday, 28 January 2009
DEVASTATING: A ruptured oral vesicle in a cow with foot and mouth disease
DEVASTATING: A ruptured oral vesicle in a cow with foot and mouth disease
Norwich based scientists are heading up an international collaboration that aims to develop plant-based vaccines for some of the most devastating diseases to afflict the world’s livestock.
Avian flu, foot and mouth disease and blue tongue are just some of the diseases targeted under the EU-funded project, led by Prof George Lomonossoff of the John Innes Centre (JIC) in Norfolk and backed by further participation from teams in Russia and South Africa.
Using a new system that lowers the time required to conduct the experiments from months to weeks, plants will be stimulated into producing specific proteins, which can subsequently be assessed for their value as vaccines.
It is the time taken for production of these proteins that has been accelerated, which means that large-scale screening for candidate vaccines is now within reach.
The partners say they have now shown that plant-based vaccines production and assessment is possible, and safe.
Professor Konstantin Skryabin, coordinator of the Russian laboratories for the PLAPROVA (Plant Produced Vaccines) project, said the development of new techniques for expression of vaccine proteins in plants is a very important topic for Russia.
He said: “Russian scientists have already obtained promising results and international collaboration in this field will contribute to the success of plant-based systems.”
PLAPROVA will utilise transient expression techniques to temporarily stimulate plants into over-producing proteins, which can subsequently be assessed for their value as vaccines.
Though plants have been used to produce pharmaceuticals in this way before, technical constraints have prevented their value from being fully realised.
The group say a few candidates with proven vaccine ability have been produced and, although these proteins are effective at preventing disease, they have limited commercial use as they are in competition with existing conventional products. They have, however, shown that plant-based vaccines production and assessment is possible and safe.
Initially, the consortium will concentrate on diseases of importance to farming in both the EU and Russia, which includes avian influenza, blue tongue, foot and mouth disease and porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome.
Proteins identified through this screening programme will be developed for large-scale production and ultimately low-cost production of effective vaccines.
Overall project coordinator Prof Lomonossoff, said: “The consortium brings together the leading laboratories from the EU, Russia and South Africa working to produce useful proteins from plants, and this international cooperation is central to the success of the project in battling diseases that affect us all.”
http://www.businessweekly.co.uk/2009012832902/research/worldwide-team-set-to-develop-plant-based-livestock-vaccines.html