Apparently my blog, “Miracle in Rome” left some people confused. Let me respond to the comments which some of you have been kind enough to share with us.
On Wednesday, July 6, the joint World Health Organization (WHO) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Consultant’s Report was presented to the 28the CODEX ALIMENTARIUS Commission (CAC). Its 20 recommendations were formally presented for discussion by the CAC at that time. This Consultant’s Report was commissioned in 2002 because of serious concern over CODEX and its work and this was an important opportunity for the CAC to deal with some suggestions for improvement in performance and reduction of bureaucratic overburden.
Out of the 20 recommendations by WHO and FAO, the 18th is what the excitement is all about: it notes that CODEX had no relationship with nutrition and that it needed to determine whether it had one and, if so, what that relationship is.
This is a stinging rebuke to Dr. Rolf Grossklaus, chair of the CODEX Committee on Nutrition and Food for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU), the 1994 decision of that committee to continue to classify nutrients as toxins, its use of toxicology (“Risk Assessment”) to prevent doses of nutrients high enough to have any clinical impact and his stated position that “nutrition has no place in medicine” (reported by Paul Anthony Taylor at the November, 2004 CCNFSDU meeting in Bonn, Germany). Dr. Grossklaus has railroaded the use of Risk Assessment, a branch of toxicology, to make any but clinically ineffective, ultra low doses of a few nutrients on a highly restricted list available. Everything else will be illegal, whether or not a doctor thinks you should have it.
At the same time, it is an equally stinging rebuke for the CODEX Committee on Food Labeling which has prohibited the discussion or mention of any benefits provided by nutrients under any conditions.
Astonishingly, the chairman of the CAC refused to allow discussion of that resolution. Read the hubris of that for a moment: the WHO and FAO had just made their evaluation of CODEX public and the recommendations that come from that evaluation were presented to the CAC for discussion and the CAC could not even have a discussion about whether CODEX should have a relationship to nutrition by his autocratic (but unopposed) decision. Health Freedom advocates should not be very proud of the US’s performance in this body, by the way. Don’t forget that harmonization with international regulations which violate US law (CODEX violates DSHEA) is illegal in the US and the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline will violate DSHEA (assuming that we can protect it from threats like HR 3156, of course).
The World Health representative and her FAO counterpart were not at all amused. Shortly before his autocratic dismissal of Recommendation No. 18,, when the Chairman and members of the CAC were demanding more money from WHO and FAO (who provide CAC’s funding), the CAC Chairman was busy chastising the WHO for not increasing its budget for several years. The WHO representative told CAC that it was not going to get more money “by griping about it here” and that the WHO was not likely to give more money to the CAC at all, in fact. Chief among the reason, she said, in public, to the assembled CAC, was that CODEX ALIMENTARIUS HAD FAILED TO MAKE A CONTRIBUTION TO WORLD HEALTH during its 42 year history!
Think about that from the point of view of a political analyst and you will see the opportunity presented to our side. There is clearly a pro-health side to this system. CODEX isn’t it, of course, but the pro-health forces control the purse strings. It is true that WHO has never been really big on nutrients, but it does recognize that they, along with diet and exercise, play a vital role in health preservation and disease prevention. CODEX, of course, does not.
Things got a whole lot better the next day, though. On Thursday, July 7, at the end of the day, after all of the CAC deliberations had concluded (with precisely zero attention to either the concepts of Recommendation No. 18 or the comments of the WHO representative), the WHO representative, along with those from FAO made it clear that CODEX would redirect its efforts and that it would make a contribution to human health by implementing the WHO Global Strategy on diet, nutrition and exercise either by redefining the purposes of the committees which deal with nutrition (CCFL and CCNFSDU) or, if CAC did not chose to do that, by creating a Task Force on Nutrition. The CAC meeting then came to a stunned close.
Suddenly the ground shifted and nutrition had a strong, protected foothold and two very protective advocates, the WHO and the FAO. That does not mean, of course, that the Bigs (Big Pharma, Big Agra-Biz, Big Chema, Big Biotechna and Big Medica) are going to role over and play dead. Quite the contrary. What it does mean, though, is that we, the health advocates, have people who are listening to our position on health and who have both CAC’s financial reins and the procedural ones.
The next day, Friday, July 8, was devoted to the CODEX Trust Fund, money set aside to bring the developing world into the CODEX process while Saturday morning, July 9, was a review of the report of the meeting provided by the CODEX Secretariat. Notably, not one word in that report reflected what I have just told you. It was as if it had never happened! But it did happen and, in fact, these events constitute the best news that health and health freedom have had since the passage of DSHEA in 1994!
We now have the opportunity to support the parent organizations in demanding that CODEX “make a contribution to human health” or that it cease its work!
If you have been following our interpretation of CODEX you know that it is far, far worse than just a restriction of nutrients. But CODEX has to make a contribution to human health and we have the opportunity to help it do just that! Up till now, we have been fighting the Bigs alone. Now we have two internationally respected and powerful organizations (which, by the way, control the funding of CODEX) on our side IF we communicate with them correctly. If we shout imprecations at them they will not listen to whatever we say. We need reasonable presentations of strong science, firm and rational logic and data well organized to make the point that CODEX’s anti-health guidelines and standards violate the very tenets upon which health rests for the planet.
Gift? Yes! Miracle? Apparently! Time to stop? Not if we want to preserve both health and health freedom on this planet!
Yours in health, freedom and hope,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
P.S. The trip to Rome was quite costly. If you can, please make a donation to support our expenses. Your donations are our only source of funding.
P.P.S. Dr. Grossklaus showed no signs of a sudden redemption and conversion to health advocacy. Neither did the US delegation, including our CODEX Manager, Dr. Scarbrough. But we had a very interesting conversation with Dr. Scarbrough. I’ve talked about it before, and I’ll talk about it again.
CODEX Daily Update
Rome Italy
July 14, 2005
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Pro-Illness forces are pushing hard to consolidate their gains at CODEX last week when the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline (VMG) was passed without any dissenting voices. Stepping back for a moment, where are we?
1. The Vitamin and Mineral Guideline (VMG) was ratified by CODEX ALIMENTARIUS Commission (CAC) on July 4 (!) in Rome. This means that “Risk Assessment”, a process by which toxins are evaluated and you are protected from them, is the ‘gold standard’ of nutritional evaluation for this body. It also means that developing nations are being urged to adopt this standard and the ones that will follow it as their domestic standards legislating starvation and chronic diseases like cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke and neurodegenerative diseases according to international sources like the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
The WHO and FAO are the parent organizations for CODEX and fund it from their own budgets. Stay tuned on the budget issue: it could turn out to be a great help to us.
2. The European Court of Justice, the European Union’s equivalent of our Supreme Court decided virtually every question in the challenge to the CODEX look-alike European Food Supplements Directive (EFSD) in favor of the EFSD except for a partial shift in the responsibility of the burden of proof onto the shoulders of the regulators in showing that a nutrient is dangerous and the allowance of natural sources for permitted nutrients (but still at ultra low doses). Otherwise, that round went to the pro-illness forces.
3. In preparation for the end of the dossier submission period on July 12, during which manufactures of nutrients could apply for an exemption (a “derogation”) from the EFSD ban (at least until the last day of December, 2009 when all derogations end) 500 dossiers were submitted. The UK supplied some of the costs to manufacturers since the costs were enormous and many small firms could not afford them. During the period when these dossiers are being processed, the product under consideration may not be banned. This will have the effect of softening the August 1 impact of EFSD-controlled dietary supplements. EFSD has been noted by the court, however, to be in the process of enacting similar restrictions for all other types of supplements even though they are only dealing with vitamins and minerals at this point.
3. US CODEX Policy supported the ratification of them dangerous pro-illness measure despite the fact that US law precludes us from harmonizing with international standards which violate US law. The VMG violates two US laws (DSHEA and Title 19, USC 3512) so we cannot harmonize with it legally. Stay tuned on that one since as long as DSHEA is intact this one can turn out to be very useful for us as well.
4. The WHO and FAO commissioned a report to evaluate CODEX. The consultants made 20 recommendations. No. 18 suggested that CODEX decide if it has a relationship with nutrition and, if so, what that relationship is. (in those words, no less!). The Chairman of the CODEX ALIMENTARIUS Commission did not permit discussion of this recommendation despite WHO’s bringing it up. The next day, at the end of the concluding session of the CAC’s deliberations, WHO noted that CAC has not made a contribution to world health [!] and demanded that CAC become involved in the WHO Global Strategy for health which involves diet, nutrition and exercise. WHO stated that CAC would need to change the mandate of the two committees that deal with nutrition (CODEX Committee on Food Labeling and CODEX Committee on Nutrition and Food for Special Dietary Uses) or create a new entity, a Task Force on Nutrition. Stay tuned on this issue since it could be of immense help to us!
5. Susan Davis (D-CA) introduced HR 3156 into the US House of Representatives which would give the FDA Secretary the authority to remove any nutrient (excluding Vitamins and Minerals, see CODEX VMG) from the market if there is the slightest risk to taking it even if there has been no harm caused by the nutrient. This bill would also set up an Adverse Event reporting requirement for nutrients but not for drugs, of course. The person who reports the suspected adverse event has the responsibility to investigate it within 15 days so the quality and consistency of any reporting would be highly irregular and questionable and, if suspected of being involved in any risk at all, the FDA can remove the substance from the market with no further process.
In addition, the manufacturers of supplements are required to carry out costly and burdensome post market studies to determine if there is any risk to their products. If there might be, Risk Assessment techniques from the science of toxicology, the substance gets removed from the market without regard to the benefit of the nutrient. So we gut DSHEA, the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act which classifies nutrients and herbs as foods and guarantees that we can select them for ourselves to use as we like. “Hello HR 3156, bye bye DSHEA”. Poof! Just like that.
Note that HR 3156 (which was co sponsored by Waxman of CA and Dingell of MI, by the way) takes care of the matter of our support of the CODEX VMG is illegal: it changes US law so that DSHEA no longer presents a problem. What a good idea if you make drugs. If, however, you value your health and freedom, you need to consider what failing to raise your electronic voice will mean to your future and your family’s.
Please visit our site so that you can send the new letter to Congress to every member of your delegation and take the rest of the 6 Easy Steps if you have not already done so. Then put a link to our site on your emails and your site and ask everyone you contact to take action.
Do you know why DSHEA was passed unanimously in 1994 by assent of Congress? For one reason and one reason only: enough people made it clear with millions of letters to enough Congressmen and women that this was a major issue for them that not one single Congressman or woman dared to stand against that tide of opinion. Not one, despite whatever payoffs from any corporate interest they might have been involved in. Not one member of Congress dared defy the will of the (voting) people.
We are right back there 11 years later. We did it before, we can do it again.
The Natural Solutions Foundation is in the process of organizing our voices through Congressional impact, through the Internet, through radio, through powerful collaborations domestically and internationally. But, in the end, it is our collective voices that will move Congress to protect your health freedom.
I mentioned that the WHO and FAO are very unhappy with the anti-nutrition stance of CODEX.
Part of our strategy is to support this unhappiness and bring the US DSHEA concept to the world bodies and nations for adoption as the international standard. Strong support of DSHEA here in the US will make this task easier. Embedding DSHEA in international policy will, in turn, help protect it here from the next assault on health freedom (and it will come again and again and again, we can almost be sure!) There is simply too much money to be made in drugs to imagine that the pharmaceutical industry will give up this time any more than they gave up when we won in 1994 and DSHEA was passed by unanimous Congressional assent.
So what is good for us (DSHEA) is good for the world and what is good for the world is also very good for us.
Now is the time. Oppose HR 3156 and all of the look alikes which will be coming out of the Congressional wood work. Oh, and you can expect an intensified negative slant in the press about the “dangers” of nutrients, herbs and supplements. Read the article on CODEX disinformation and just change the terms and you’ll have the picture.
Can we win? Absolutely! Can we afford to be smug and self-satisfied? Absolutely not!
Yours in Health and Freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
CODEX Daily Update
July 13, 2005
Rome, Italy
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Health Pearl Harbor signals Domestic War on Health Freedom!
Hear Ye, Hear Ye! Those of you who have declared that the restrictive and anti-health CODEX Vitamin and Mineral Guideline (accepted on July 4, 2005 in Rome by CODEX with US support ) will have no impact on domestic nutrients, the wellness industry, natural medicine and personal health choices are wrong. Dead wrong! That’s “DEAD” as in war. That’s dead as in dead from the increased cancer, diabetes, degenerative neurological conditions (including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and ALS) which would result from the elimination of health choices right here in the good old USA! That’s unnecessary and preventable illness and death which will do only Big Pharma and Big Medica good and will cost you and your family your health and health freedom.
“Wait”, you may still be saying, “NNFA (Natural Nutritional Foods Assocation) and the FDA and the US CODEX Office and CRN (Council for Responsible Nutrition) have all told us that CODEX does not apply domestically so we have nothing to worry about!” Well, ladies and gentlemen, if you are still saying that and, worse, you believe it, listen up! Here is the game plan unless you and everyone you know wakes up and takes action: Having passed the pro-illness Vitamin and Mineral Guideline with strong US policy support to do so, the pro-illness forces have begun the onslaught to take away your access to the high potency nutrients which will keep you from developing the highly profitable, and misery-inducing diseases of chronic under-nutrition.
Take a look at the first piece of legislation in the assault HR 3156) and be afraid, very afraid. This astonishingly destructive legislation, introduced by Susan Davis of California and cosponsored by Dingle of Michigan and Waxman of California allows the Secretary of Health and Human Services (which contains the FDA) to remove nutrients from the market place if there is a risk, no matter how tiny, of any harm to anyone even if that risk has never occurred. It allows the Secretary of HHS to remove nutrients if they might have been associated with an adverse event and require the reporting of any possible adverse event associated with a nutrient and its investigation by the reporter. Note, the playing field is nowhere near level, folks: drugs have no adverse event reporting system, NONE. Let me say that again for those of you who might have become so mind boggled by that fact that you skipped over it: DRUGS HAVE NO REQUIRED ADVERSE EVENT REPORTING SYSTEM EVEN IN THE CASE OF DEATH.
So what is being proposed is the opportunity to manipulate make believe data (adverse event reports which may not be connected with the supplement blamed) about make believe problems (toxicity of nutrients which are exceptionally safe and helpful to even the most fragile people) about make believe toxins (nutrients are not toxic: they cannot induce death so the dose at which 50% of the test animals die, the LD 50, cannot be determined. By definition, they are therefore not toxic.) I know, it seems silly to non-toxicologists, but the consequences of this distinction are significant: if you cannot classify a compound as a toxin, then the use of Risk Assessment to determine a safe dose for it makes no sense. Risk Assessment is a technique that toxicologists use to determine what dose of this potentially lethal stuff can be allowed because it causes no discernable impact on people or animals. In other words, if you use Risk Assessment to determine doses of nutrients, there will be no biological effect at that dose, none! And you guarantee under nutrition if it is not adequately supplied by your diet.
Ready for something else really interesting? HR 3165 excludes vitamins and minerals! SO? So the work is already done on them: CODEX approved the pro-illness Vitamin and Mineral Guideline last week which is going to do the heavy lifting there: no need to waste the effort on them here in the US. Does that chill your enthusiasm for the accuracy of the NNFA, CRN, FDA, IADSA position that the actions of CODEX have no domestic impact? If not, you either work for them in their PR departments or you should.
I have a friend who told me that in Australia, as soon as the Trans Tasman Agreement had harmonized with CODEX ALIMENTARIUS long before the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline was passed last week, the protective legislation that Australians relied upon to give them access to their natural health products (like our DSHEA legislation) were quickly and efficiently annihilated. The execution team had been waiting in the wings and, at the signal, swept in before the opposition (the consumers) could begin to get organized. I have previously said that we would need to be alert to the same threat. And here it is! The first wave of the post VMG domestic assault on our rights as Americans to make, market and purchase high potency nutrients is here and its name is HR 3156. It will not be the last: this is a salvo, not the war itself.
Let’s talk about war, shall we, since we are now fighting what I call “The Vitamin Wars”. No one ever won a war on the defensive. Wars are won on the offensive.
Right now, the European Court of Justice has declared that Vitamins and Minerals (and other nutrients, too, in a short time) will be limited to those on a “Positive List” unless they are approved as to dose and source through a process initiated by the submission of an astonishingly expensive dossier or file on that nutrient from that particular source at that particular dose. In the UK, the government has created a pot of money to help defray the cost of these dossier submissions. Because they had to be submitted by July 12 of this year (the same day, coincidentally, that the ECJ ruled in favor of the European Food Supplements Directive and against health freedom in the EU), by yesterday nearly 500 dossiers had been submitted for consideration. Until they are approved or rejected, they may still be sold in the EU. That means that for some time, at least, those items will be available and the August 1 disaster has been softened, if not averted. Good news, right? Well, sort of, if you like defensive postures. The other items, not the subject of dossiers, will be pulled on August 1. And the dossier items? Well, if they succeed in winning a so-called “derogation” or exception, they will be sold until … December 31, 2009! At that point, all such derogations become irrelevant and we are back to the pro-illness situation where only the risk-assessed, ultra low level nutrients are permitted anyway.
Clearly, this defensive struggle must be fought, but it cannot be won.
The way you win a war is by going on the offensive and staying there. Those of you who have been reading my blogs and the Natural Solutions Foundation site and listening to our live radio show, FREE U.S./FREE US!, Wednesdays at 7-8 PM eastern time know that we are an action-oriented organization. There is a reason for being action-oriented: that’s how you win wars. In a war, if you apply the Principles of War and follow them you have a high likelihood of winning. The first Principle of War is OBJECTIVE: Protect, defend and expand Health Freedom in the United States and globally. The second Principle of War is OFFENSIVE. Find it, occupy it and stay there.
When you go to the Six Easy Steps on our site today, you will find a new letter to Congress (if you have already carried out the Six Easy Steps, then you can go straight to the new letter). The new letter outlines the dangers of the health assault in HR 3156 and the other bills like it to come and tells Congress that there is a committed and determined army of health freedom advocates who will do whatever democracy allows them to do, including removing members of Congress from office who do not protect their rights. Send it to your Congressional Delegation. Follow all of the other steps, too, and send the site to everyone you know.
Don’t forget the donation step. We have no other way of supporting this fight besides your support. We are fighting this together and your donations are our lifeblood. We appreciate the small donation and the large one equally. But consider this: what will it mean to you and your family, your business and your well-being if we falter? Why not make a pledge to the Natural Solutions Foundation for a monthly level of support which you can sustain and which you feel matches the importance of this fight.
We are at war. There is no way to win a war except to gain the offensive position and exploit it. In the coming days we will be doing that together.
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
P.S. You can use the easy and quick “Email to Friend” buttons on the HealthFreedomUSA.org web site to tell all your friends.
Daily CODEX Update
Rome, Italy
July 11, 2005
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Disseminating incorrect information is as old as human communication. Agencies and individuals do it for reasons they know and reasons they do not know. Sometimes we can distinguish between misinformation (incorrect but not meant to mislead) and disinformation (incorrect and intended to mislead). CODEX is rife with both and, as is often the case, sometimes it is hard to be sure which is which. But there is one CODEX area where the distinction, while interesting, is not even relevant: the information focusing on FTAA/CAFTA as the CODEX problem is wrong, just plain dead wrong.
Don’t get me wrong: I believe that CAFTA and FTAA are really, really bad for the US and the other countries being globalized. They are good for the multinational corporations and there will be a piñata of goodies showering on the people who help them gain control of global markets and global means of production if CAFTA and FTAA pass while the rest of us will suffer badly for a very long time. I would like FTAA and CAFTA to disappear and never present their ugly, greedy selves to us again since I believe they will harm both humans and the environment in dreadful ways. I am equally opposed to the national ID card passed by Congress recently (“Real ID”) because I believe it is bad for America and bad for liberty. But just as CODEX is not the Real ID card, so CODEX is neither CAFTA nor FTAA and stopping any or all of the three dead in their tracks, while a really good idea, will have no impact whatsoever on CODEX, none whatsoever. CAFTA/FTAA are nothing more than symptoms of globalization. Trying to stop CODEX by blocking them is like trying to remove a hornet’s nest by treating the hornet sting victim with medication to ease their pain. It reduces the pain for the moment, but leaves the problem free to develop unchecked.
FTAA and CAFTA are really bad ideas for US interests. But all the recent focus in them as related to the CODEX issue because they contain CODEX language is either an error in the understanding of the real nature of the CODEX problem or, worse yet, intentional disinformation to drain off energy and political force from opposition to CODEX ALIMENTARIUS. FTAA and CAFTA are totally irrelevant to the CODEX issue. I will repeat that for those of you who have been having your ears filled with the opposite position. If FTAA and CAFTA disappear tomorrow (which they should, to my thinking), we still have a major problem until CODEX is solved. CODEX is the problem and will be until CODEX’s devastatingly anti-health, pro-illness policies, positions and strategies are controlled and changed. I believe we can both control and change them and will write about that later in this blog, but this is a really important issue which must be addressed head on.
Some people in the CODEX arena are now focusing on FTAA and CAFTA and saying that it is a waste of time to focus in CODEX because FTAA and CAFTA contain CODEX language in their text. These forces are either using mis- or dis- information by misleading people to think that because these trade agreements contain CODEX language they somehow are a significant part of the Codex problem. Simple logic makes it clear that they are derivative problems, not the problem itself. They are symptoms of the problem, not its cause and not the problem itself.
They contain CODEX language because they are international agreements which must conform to the requirements and agreements of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Since the US is a party to the WTO and so are all of the nations which would participate in FTAA and CAFTA, OF COURSE they contain language which is consistent with CODEX and all of the other agreements. The Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement is a part of the WTO agreements and so is the Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement. Every international agreement we enter into will contain language which reflects them. But the trade agreements can only implement what the original agreements require or permit. Why would anyone putting together a WTO-based agreement not put language in which makes the agreement consistent with them and therefore legal in each country and permissible in the WTO?
Here is the real story: If FTAA and CAFTA comply with CODEX language and CODEX has been changed from its pro-illness, pro-corporate greed contents there is no CODEX-related problem. If they are defeated and CODEX is still pro-illness and pro-greed, then we still have the CODEX problem just as we did before all that energy was drained off from the CODEX battle by mis – or dis—information.
Why anyone would focus on FTAA and CAFTA as if they were the problem and not the symptom is beyond me if they are genuinely concerned with solving the problem unless they have been mislead. If they are focusing on it to divert political attention and effort, we are dealing with disinformation and that’s pretty ugly.
In any event, whatever the reason, focusing on FTAA and CAFTA instead of CODEX is absolutely as wrong-headed as the “reasoning” by which conventional medicine reaches its conclusions. In fact, it is allopathic reasoning: focusing on the symptom and confusing its suppression with the cure of the disease itself!
Allopathic medicine focuses on symptoms, not causes. Allopathic medicine, while useful in many situations (such as trauma), reasons that by using toxic and dangerous means to suppress the symptoms of a disease, it has dealt with the problem in a satisfying and meaningful way. Diverting energy to FTAA and CAFTA that should go toward defeating CODEX may be well intentioned (or not, of course) but is naive and inefficient. Dealing with them as if they are the same thing takes energy vitally needed at this crucial juncture and dissipates it on another fight. CODEX itself is the root of the problem. CODEX language in FTAA/CAFTA is a symptom, nothing more.
But then, I am a physician who treats the underlying causes of a condition, not its symptoms. People very often get well when we work together even where conventional medicine (and less profound “alternative” approaches) has failed them. Conventional medicine reasons, for example, “You are a perfectly healthy woman, Mrs. Jones, except that you have breast cancer. Let’s make it go away and everything will be fine.” while Advanced Medicine (which is what I practice) says, “Your basic condition is immune compromise. Your immune system has been overwhelmed and the result is breast cancer, Mrs. Jones. Our task is to support your immune system so it can deal with the problem and make sure that any underlying causes are corrected. When that happens, you will be fine.”
So, there are those making the argument that if we make FTAA and CAFTA go away, we will be just fine. But if we don’t attend to the basic CODEX cancer, we will not be fine, because once ratified, CODEX is part of our world unless we can eliminate it in other ways. And now, because of the events that took place in two surprise moves by the WHO and FOA at CODEX last week, we can protect health freedom from CODEX!
There is no doubt in my mind that until this last week, the pro-health war we set out to win against the pro-illness, industrial forces who control CODEX (I call them, the “Bigs”) was an enormous undertaking which would require a series of mistakes on the part of the Bigs and strokes of good luck or divine intervention on our side (depending on how you look at things) for us to win and secure our fundamental rights to eternal health freedom.
The “Bigs” (that is, Big Pharma, Big AgraBiz, Big Chema, Big Biotechna and Big Medica) were set to win big via CODEX. Here is where they were headed:
It’s a long and deadly list but it was perfectly OK with the CODEX ALIMENTARIUS Commission (CAC) up until health freedom stood up and took control of the proceedings in the form of the very unhappy FAO and WHO representatives who spoke on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons last week and tilted the terrain in favor of health (people and planet), not corporate greed.
I have written in these Daily Blog Updates about what happened when the Under Secretary of Food Safety for the World Health Organization (WHO) noted with disgust that CODEX had made no contribution to health in its more than 40 years of existence (which was ignored in autocratic fashion by the Chairman of CAC).
I have also told you how the joint WHO/FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) Consultant’s Report and its 20 formal recommendations were briefly discussed on Wednesday afternoon and how the CAC Chairman refused to allow discussion of Recommendation No. 18 (which noted that CAC needed to determine whether it does or does not have a relationship with nutrition and what that relationship should be if it does have one). Think about that: the parents (WHO and FAO) tell the child, CAC, that it has a pretty poor report card and the CAC “disses” Mom and Dad and goes on about its business thinking there will be no consequences.
Wrong!
I have also kept you up to date about how WHO and FAO chose to respond by ordering the CAC to implement their health-oriented “Global Strategy” and demanded that CAC make a contribution to global health either by reformatting the 2 committees which have a logical connection to nutrition (including the one chaired by the anti-nutrition Dr. Rolf Grossklaus) or creating a new structure, a Task Force on Nutrition.
Could our side want much more of an opportunity handed to it on a silver organizational platter?
Here is our task, now that we have been given this gift: We need to become the go-to people who help the folks who make our international policy become heroes by providing them with the best possible scientific and clinical documentation of the importance of pro-health options (including the nutritional and environmental literature and clinical arts) so that they can support CODEX policies which make positive health impacts.
We are already working with other organizations to pool our resources and our abilities to do just that nationally and internationally. FTAA? CAFTA? Symptoms, not diseases, results, not causes.
Mis information or dis information (or something else), the Natural Solutions Foundation advises every person who values the market economy to oppose FTAA and CAFTA. But make sure to preserve your energy, focus, attention and involvement for dealing with a current and immediate threat called CODEX. With your input and action, CODEX now can be changed from a global disaster to a global opportunity to bring American values like the DSHEA style classification of nutrients and herbs as foods allowing people to make their own health choices and other pro-health positions to the world. Focus on FTAA and CAFTA and our failure is assured since they are hemispheric while CODEX is global. The WHO and FAO are not setting policy for FTAA or CAFTA but they are setting health-focused requirements for CODEX which will determine the provisions of CODEX in FTAA and CAFTA.
Go to the Six Easy Steps and let Congress know that you value our health freedoms and want CODEX to support health and US law. Take the other steps, too, and tell everyone you know how important to winning this battle it is for them to join in now! Put a link to our site on your emails and site and spread the word (you can use our marketing material)!
Listen to our internet Radio Show, FREE U.S./FREE US! live from Rome this Wednesday, July 13, 2005 on www.FICAA.com at 7-8 PM Eastern. And stay tuned for tomorrow’s blog update.
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
P.S. Please support the Natural Solutions Foundation with your donations.
If you think that the significant gift handed to us by the World Health Organization means that we can relax and forget about the problem of health and health freedom, that’s not so. In fact, by the time that the CODEX Secretariat had produced the draft document of this week’s work for CAC approval today, the resistance to that gift was apparent. We have a great deal of work to do to win this one but we CAN win it. It will take time, effort, strategic sophistication and money but the victory we are striving for which will assure health freedom globally is achievable, thanks to the World Health Organization.
Read the summary of how we got to the report and then I will share with you the first counter strike of the CODEX ALIMENTARIUS Commission (CAC) so you will be able to work with me to counter the counter measure (and all the counter moves which surely follow).
Don’t forget, the forces that are very happy to support and profit from illness are neither stupid nor weak: we really need to press forward on this WHO initiative.
Here is the story so far:
The CODEX ALIMENTARIUS Commission (CAC) finished its 28th Commission meeting with the development of an extraordinary opportunity for us, the advocates of health and health choice. Our liklihood of success was magnified many fold by the intervention of the WHO in conjunction with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) when they stated their dissatisfaction with the failure of the CODEX process and CAC to make any significant contribution to human health over the 42 years of its existence. Although it has made contributions to the regulation of food, CODEX’s contribution to human health is a very different matter.
And that difference was strongly noted on Thursday by WHO Under Secretary for Food Safety, Karen Leitner, when she made the observation to the entire CAC body that CODEX had not done very much to promote health. The CAC Chairman, Dr. Stuart Alexander Slorach of Sweden, had just finished ignoring recommendation number 18 of the joint FAO and WHO Consultant Report (which noted that CODEX “should determine whether it had a relationship to nutrition and, if so, what that relationship is”). Although Dr. Slorach had allowed some discussion of other recommendations of the Consultant’s Report, he barred Recommendation No. 18 from consideration by the CAC.
Dr. Leitner then spoke sternly, sharply and scathingly of the fact that little contribution to human health had been made by CODEX yet they continued to ask for more money from both FAO and WHO for their continued work!
The Chairman curtly thanked her and rapidly moved along to the important business of adjourning the meeting for the day. It is my perception, based on my observations of the content and nature of the interactions, including body language, facial expression and verbal and non-verbal cues (including my brief discussion with Dr. Leitner immediately after her statement of dissatisfaction) that this was NOT a wise move on the part of the Chairman since funding for CODEX comes from WHO and FAO and they had just been publicly and rudely “blown off ” by CAC.
The next day, Thursday, at the very end of the deliberations of CAC for the year (except for the approval of the draft report today, Saturday), WHO laid their displeasure on the heads of the CAC and stated that
things would be different in the future.
CODEX will implement the WHO Global Strategy for world health through diet, physical exercise and nutrition and CODEX will develop a “relationship with nutrition” as demanded by WHO. How will CODEX do that? By redefining the “Terms of Reference” (i.e., the mandate) of the two committees which can deal with nutrition, the previously anti-nutritional claims and information CODEX Committee on Food Labelling and the highly “anti-prevention, anti treatment-or-cure-of-any-disease-or-condition and let-us-treat-nutrients-as-toxins” of the CODEX Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses, chaired by Dr. Rolf Grossklaus.
Here is the counter move by CAC: in the draft report presented for approval by the CAC this morning, Saturday, June 10, NO MENTION WHATSOEVER of Dr. Leitner’s comments appeared in the draft. Furthermore, not one single nation picked up on it although every other word in the document was scrutinized with a microscopically fine tooth comb.
Not a word. Now I ask you, do you think that the WHO and FAO are going to be particularly pleased with this development? I think they wont be.
Here is what I propose: I asked yesterday for volunteers to help compile an outstanding bibliography to present to the US government employees who deal with CODEX policy and the WHO secretariat itself to illustrate exactly what the relationship of CODEX to nutrition needs to be to advance human health and precisely what recommendations and regulations CODEX, as a food standard setting body, should undertake.
I propose that we also establish a watchdog task force to keep track of legal maneuvering, which will surely take place in the US to weaken and distort our access to nutrients as food through congressional action in amendments and bills which might be sneaked in while we are not watching carefully. Every single person in every single circle of influence of each reader of this blog needs to contact the Congressional Delegation to inform them that we WILL be watching and supporting anything they do to protect our health freedoms and that we WILL take effective political action to oppose them in their primaries and general elections if they do not support those freedoms. Send a quick Congressional letter via our web site (Congressional letter) or write your own. Call and ask to speak to the Health Aide and direct them to this special web page for Congress representatives so that they can learn about CODEX. I assure you that most Congressional Offices have never heard of CODEX before HealthFreedomUSA.org came along. Many have heard of it now so there is awareness of CODEX – now we need to make sure that they don’t forget how serious the issue is. So keep those letters going.
While we have been in Rome at the CAC, we have had a chance to make excellent connections both with US groups and international officials who were totally unaware of the implications of Risk Assessment (the wrong science used by CODEX) of nutrients for the people of their countries and we will follow up on these connections.
Do we have an opportunity to protect our health freedom and that of the world? YES! Can we lose it through inaction or apathy? Yes again.
Let’s protect our health freedom and deliver that precious gift to the rest of the world as well!
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
P.S. Support HealthFreedomUSA.org with your donations. Your donations help pay for all the work we are doing on behalf of your health freedom.