Day 7, April 23, 2008
This morning we met with Dr. Col. Denis Mikode, Beninese Codex Contact Point and asked if there was some way that he would be able to go to Codex if the Natural Solutions Foundation paid for his trip. He clearly was moved that we cared so much about the ability of Africa to determine its own future in relationship to Genetically Modified foods but, alas, was not able to get either a Government Mandate for the meeting on such short notice or a Canadian visa. For that, he would have had to go to Ghana for the visa and, if it failed, come home or, if he should succeed, would be able to continue. Of course, there were no airplane tickets for him at that point, etc.
We told him that we would take care of all that but he felt that the only way Benin could be represented was if a miracle occurred. Long story short: no miracle on that one.
Later that day we got ourselves packed and set off for the airport to make the grueling flight from Cotonou to Paris to Newark to Ottawa – all in economy seats. General Stubblebine is well over 6′ tall. Tyson hovers right around 6′. I am merely uncomfortable: they are really, really uncomfortable on these long haul flights.
While we were waiting in the Cotonou airport, Tyson got talking with a fellow whom, when we staggered off the airplane to spend 6.5 hours in the Paris airport at 6 AM, he decided to wait for on the jet way. Tyson introduced us to Jeff, a semi-nomadic Environmental Engineer who had just finished a solo 3 month bike trip through West Africa. JEFF DOES NOT SPEAK FRENCH!
Tyson and Jeff were going to take the train to Paris and asked if General Stubblebine and I wanted to come. Of course I wanted to come! It was a magnificent Spring day and we got out of the subway (“Metro”) directly opposite Notre Dame Cathedral as the bells were chiming and the clear sky provided a backdrop of perfect cerulean. Jeff led us on a stroll down the boulevards and streets until we came to a perfectly charming side walk cafe (with heaters – it was a tad nippy so early in the day) and we had double espressos and the most perfect croissants I have ever tasted.
But the best part of the feast and ramble was Jeff. He is a lovely, earth-sensitive free spirit who, like so many other exceptional people, is very interested in the Panama project. One of his specialties is environmental impact studies! Perhaps, if all goes well, he will be able to do some or all of the environmental impact statement required by the Panamanian Government before we build the actual project!
Then Tyson reluctantly got back on the train to return to the airport and find General Stubblebine buried under our hand luggage, all of which we left with him. About 6 hours after we started out, we were back in Charles de Gaulle airport, ready to take off on the next leg of our trip.
That was not only a delightful break, but some sort of a forward propulsion in the coming-together of the Santa Clara Project (www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org).
Day 8, April 24, 2008
MMMMMMRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR That’s the sound of an airplane engine humming for 7 hours. When we landed in Newark Airport we had been traveling for two days and we were not finished yet! But our good friends Nicholas and Marie drove to the airport, took us to their nearby home, fed us a wonderful homemade dinner and took us back to the airport again JUST in time to make our plane to Ottawa.
We got there, found our bags and bought round trip tickets on the hotel shuttle which took us to the front door of the lovely bed and breakfast we like to stay in here in Ottawa when we attend the CCFL (Codex Committee on Food Labeling) meetings. Then sleep.
Day 9, April 25, 2008
Finding an Apple repair store in a city we do not know without a car to get to the store (my brand new computer was going black for longer and longer and finally I could not turn it on when it was off or off when it was on: time to consult the computer doctors!). Eventually we succeeded, found a place for dinner and crashed.
Day 10, April 26, 2008
Today the pre-CCFL meeting started. The activity today is a workshop deciding, once again, how the World Health Organization’s Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Exercise (GS) was to be implemented by Codex. This strong document (not perfect, it is true, but strong) was presented to the Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC) in 2005 as something which the WOULD implement and the way it was to be implemented was left to the Codex Committee of Food Labeling (CCFL) and the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU) to decide. Strategies were to be presented to the CAC on a strict time line.
The foot dragging and shenanigans to avoid doing this have been mind boggling and I have reported on them since the first time CCNFSDU’s Dr. Grossklaus moved the agenda item on the to the very end of the meeting and made any meaningful discussion impossible (2005). Since then, things have not gotten a whole lot better and the implementation so far comes down to endless argument over which nutrients should be labeled and which should not be and how they should be represented.
Now, labeling in important to consumers and does, in fact, contribute to reformulation of products (“What? You put THAT in something you expect me to eat?”) and in risk assessment and post market surveillance (“Everyone who ate lot number 27449X2 of the product got sick and 42% of them had to be hospitalized.”) and are thus good things.
But labeling will not, in my opinion, take care of the serious concerns which caused the GS to come into existence: preventing the non communicable diseases of UNDERNUTRITION.
The Codex strategy of considering all nutrients as toxins which need to be limited – limited! – through the process of Risk Assessment as if nutreints, and not terrifyingly high levels of pesticides or anti-nutrients caused by genetic modification of plants and animals, free radicals caused by irradiation of food and all the other dangers to which Codex blithely exposes us WITHOUT LABELING OF ANY KIND were a danger to human kind!
Outrage in my words? Yes, outrage. While diddling with Nutrient Labels for years on end (important though they be), nutrients are being taken off the shelves in the EU, threatened in Canada through a terrible bill and LIMITED as if they were risks through Codex all over the world. Make no mistake: the US will be next, again, if we do not do something about it before it happens so we are not fighting a rear guard action.
Recall for a moment the disastrous FDA Guidance whose comment period ended on April 30 last year. The FDA proposed to make all nutrients and objects used for health purposes unlabeled drugs and devices. That would mean that healthful foods like cherry juice (the first subject of their attack) could not be used with a health intent or the FDA would classify it as an untested drug.
The FDA provided no website for your comments. They told the Natural Solutions Foundation that snail mail was not tallied. The Receiver of Dockets gave us her personal email and so 588,000 people were able to use our web site to access the only working email address available to tell the FDA to back off in no uncertain terms. Well, only about 198,000 people actually got their message through because our site was constantly being hacked and attacked at that time. Even with “only” 198,000 voices, the roar was deafening: the FDA backed off, at least for the time being.
The WHO/FAO, parent organizations of Codex, makes the point in its document on the cause and prevention of chronic degenerative diseases: they ARE the diseases of UNDER nutrition. The number of people who die from over nutrition is so small as to be equivalent to zero. The number of people who die from under nutrition is in the billions:
Cardiovascular disease including stroke, diabetes and obesity are diseases of under nutrition. They are preventable through nutrition, which includes supplements. They are the major killers of the industrialized and, as it moves toward our disastrous diet of prepared and degraded food, the developing world. (Of course, properly used drugs are the other major killer of those unlucky enough to be able to afford them!)
So what is Codex planning? Nutrient Reference Values, upper limits beyond which nutrition may not go, are being established even as we speak. Just as the solution of Congress in dealing with a totally failed FDA was to throw much more money at it in the last session of Congress with S. 1082. So Codex wants to treat the chronic degenerative preventable diseases of under nutrition by restricting nutrition. Logical? Not at all. But that’s what passes for Codex logic!
So half way through the meeting I was pretty well disgusted and saying to myself that we needed a miracle to deal with Agenda Item 5, labeling of GM Foods, when I turned around and there was our miracle, Antoinette Booyzen, the Delegate from South Africa.
Antoinette is fearless and knows nutrition and Codex very, very well. She fights tirelessly for what is right, regardless of what the politics might be. In fact, for her decade of dedication to optimal health and what is good for people, not profits, the Natural Solutions Foundation awarded Ms. Booyzen with the coveted Linus Pauling Health Freedom heroes Award in 2006.
I knew that we could rely on Ms. Booyzen to use her position as a National Delegate to further the good of the world’s eaters if she could, not the position of the world masters.
Day 10, April 27, 2008
After a good deal of highly pleasurable reunion talk (our emails have been interfered with so being in contact has been very difficult) we started to talk about GM labeling in South Africa and Africa. We talked and talked and talked and the net result was a South African paper demanding, for a variety of reasons, mandatory labeling of all GM foods.
Day 11, April 28, 2008
Today was the first day of the Codex meeting and we sat through the requisite speeches of welcoming telling us what a great bunch of people we were and how important our would would be to the world. Now, you can take that two ways: either the meeting’s lack of action would have a huge impact on the world through degraded food standards, degraded food and degraded health or 2., that if Codex actually did something positive, it would have a huge impact on human health.
However they meant it, the droning banality started in the morning and continued on and on and on and on.
By today, Monday at 1 PM, Antoinette has put her paper on compulsory mandatory labeling in as a Conference Room Document. You can read her document here (http://www.prweb.com/releases/GM_Labeling/Codex/prweb909004.htm):
There was a reception in the evening where we could lobby, if we wanted to, for mandatory GM labeling, which would likely come up tomorrow. We decided to skip it, though, since we were all so tired and we know that the food served there is exactly what we would put in our bodies: in fact, food served at the receptions is a perfect example of why we cannot let Codex run the food world!
Stay tuned!
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.Organics4U.org
The Natural Solutions Foundation, the leading Global Health Freedom organization, is proud to present this information to you. We protect your right to know about – and to use – natural ways to maintain and regain your health, no matter where in the world you live. Among your freedoms is the right to clean, unadulterated food free of genetic manipulation, pesticides, heavy metals or other contaminants and access to herbs, supplements, frequency devices and other means as therapies that may benefit or to protect your well-being without drugs and other dangerous interventions, if you choose.
For more information on our global programs, including the International Decade of Nutrition, and our US based ones, please visit us at www.HealthFreedomUSA.org and www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org and join the free email list for the Health Freedom eAlerts to keep you in the loop, informed and active defending your right to make your own decisions about your health and wellbeing!
Our activities are supported 100% by your tax deductible donations. Please give generously (http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=189) to the Natural Solutions Foundation. Thank you for your support.
Feel free to disseminate this information as widely as possible with full attribution.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
The funny thing about Truth is that it has a way of getting out, escaping confinement, growing like a seed sprout towards the sunlight. And, like a sprout, it pokes first one tender shoot up towards the light, and then another, gaining strength and finding its direction from the sunlight it is reaching for. Sometimes, however, the obstacles overhead (for example, concrete paving, tramping jack boots, broad leaf herbicides) are just too much for the tender sprout and it fails while its twins try reaching for the light elsewhere. As long as there is light, there will be some seed that makes it. Unless, of course, the seed has been genetically altered and has contaminated its brothers and cousins and distant relations so that there are no more of its kind.
That, of course, is part of the threat from genetically engineered (called variously “GM” or (“GMO” or “GE” )foods: their modifications wander, not only inside the nucleus of the cell coding for novel effects never before seen (like cancer-producing proteins, for example) but that DNA wanders into the wind through pollen and pollinators changing crops and weeds forever since currently there is no way known to reverse the genetic changes which “volunteer” pollen produces in the same and different species.
Animals (that means birds and bees and wasps and horses and pigs and chickens and you and me and our children) are impacted in ways which we know and ways which we do not know yet. Using the “Precautionary Principle” of Codex, GM foods would all be illegal because they have not been proven to be safe. Indeed, the US, which forbids indicating a food has GM ingredients because they know that consumers would reject it, approves all GM foods once a patent is obtained because then-President George H. W. Bush declared GM foods to be identical to normal foods. Since then, the FDA follows the same principle: a voluntary
Certificate of Equivalence (CE)” may be applied for and obtained by the owners of a patent on a GM food, but it is only a frill. Whether there is, or is not, a CE on file somewhere, GM crops and animals are allowed in the food supply by the US Government without a shred of safety testing on their impact on animals, plants, the environment or humans. Astonishingly, the FDA and other agencies assert, without having examined the data, that these genetically manipulated foods are safe. All independent science with which I am familiar makes it clear that not only are these foods not safe, they are downright dangerous to your health and that of the environment.
Romania, unlike most of the rest of the European Community, had bought into the GM story lock, stock and agricultural barrel. Read the report below to see how things are a’changin!
Then consider that, as we told you in our eye-witness reports from Oslo in February, 2007 and Accra in February, 2008, other countries, including an emerging African coalition, are not so happy with the FDA’s bland friendliness to GM crops and animals. These days, because of this turning tide, the Biotech Industry (think, for example, Monsanto) is often described as “beleaguered”. So may it be! Beleaguered to the point of legal and economic barriers to the manufacture, planting and selling of ANY genetically modified food or food anywhere in the world. Beleaguered to the point of a total ban on pharmaceutical GM crops and animals like the drug producing rice that contaminated much of Louisiana’s rice country for 5 years before Bayer, a major player in GM and GM drugs bothered to inform either the noq-contaminated neighboring rice growers or the end users, the consuemr who got this stuff in their rice bowls.
Beleagured to the point that the drug-producing cows in New Zealand, a once pristine pesticide and GM free island contaminated by 3 years of “accidental” shipement of GM seeds by the US, no longer have a market for their milk and cattle can return to being cattle, not dangerous factories of dangerous drugs.
The Natural Solutions Foundation will be at the next Codex meeting dealing with GM foods to participate with, and help lead, the coalition of African pro-health countries from April 26-May 2, 2008 in Ottawa Canada. At the last meting, Africa’s newly emerging coalition (which we have spent the last 3 years supporting and building in Africa and at Codex meetings) led Switzerland, Norway, Russia and Japan, among others, in opposing the US assertion that foods on the market are regarded as safe.
Good for them. Now the next (and much larger) task is for this pro-health coalition is to hold the line on this issue (which is really a set up by the US for tanking any country which keeps our GM foods to the World Trade Organization and socking them with huge trade sanctions until they cave in). We’ll be there to give you daily eye witness reports if you send us there!
Your tax deductible donations are urgently needed. Click here (http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=189) to help assure your voice and your interests will be at Codex and you will hear what actually happens there! Thanks for your support.
Remember, freedom is not free!
Romania reconsiders its welcome of biotech corn
By James Kanter
Published: March 26, 2008
PARIS: Romania, which has been one of the most receptive markets on a skeptical Continent for genetically modified crops, is moving toward a reversal of its stance, in what would be another setback for the beleaguered biotechnology industry in Europe.
Attila Korodi, Romania’s environment minister, said he would ask a committee of experts Thursday to revaluate a gene-altered version of corn, MON810, the only modified crop that has been approved for commercial planting in the European Union.
During an interview, Korodi said not enough studies had been done to gauge the effects of the corn on ecological systems in Romania, including in the Black Sea area.
In addition, he said, banning biotech crops could increase rural prosperity by allowing farmers to take advantage of a growing global demand for organic feed and foodstuffs, which, in addition to being unaltered, are grown without chemical pesticides or fertilizers.
Such products can command higher prices – although experts question whether farming practices in much of Eastern Europe are developed enough for such a specialized market.
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“I think becoming an organic country is a good thing,” Korodi said. “We have to analyze the true costs of growing GMOs,” he added, since the technology was potentially harmful to the environment and had become widely unpopular in Romania.
An actual ban would still be some ways off and could require parliamentary support, he said.
But its consideration, coming a month after France imposed a similar ban on the corn variety, would be another obstacle for the industry in Europe, where there is widespread skepticism about biotech foods. Specifically, it would hurt the U.S. seed company Monsanto, which produces MON810.
Romania, the biggest corn grower in the 27-member EU by hectares under cultivation, represents a vast potential market for Monsanto and other biotechnology companies. MON810 is designed to combat pests and enhance yields.
“We would be very disappointed to see Romania following France even in attempting to ban such a product, which has proved its benefits to farmers in Romania,” said Cristina Cionga, the manager for public and government affairs for Monsanto Romania. “Our products are completely safe for planting and consumption.”
EU authorities approved MON810 for cultivation a decade ago, but since then four EU countries – Austria, Greece, Hungary and, most recently, France – have imposed bans. Poland operates restrictions on the sale and import of gene-altered seeds, and very little cultivation takes place there.
Most of these countries, including France and Hungary, which are the second- and third-biggest corn growers in Europe, justified the bans on the grounds that the crops potentially could harm soils and reduce biodiversity.
Even in countries that do not operate formal bans, there are impediments.
Italy, which grows roughly the same amount of corn as Hungary, has delegated decisions on biotech crops to its regions, many of which operate de facto bans. In Tuscany, for example, the supply of gene-altered produce is prohibited in catering for schools, hospitals, convalescent homes and in local and regional government offices.
Romania planted only about 325 hectares, or 800 acres, of MON810 in 2007 and this year is expected to plant about 10,000 hectares. That still represents just a fraction of the roughly 2 million to 3 million hectares of corn planted each year in Romania.
Even so, Korodi’s strategy would mark a major change for Romania.
Over the past decade, Romania became the largest producer of gene-altered crops in Europe because of large amounts of modified soy, mostly produced by Monsanto and Pioneer, a unit of DuPont. That crop was approved for use by farmers in Romania but not in the EU, and the government had to pledge to stop growing the crop when Romania joined the bloc in 2007.
In the future, Korodi said, farmers – particularly those with small plots in mountainous areas – could prosper from selling smaller quantities of unmodified produce, as it would command higher prices on local and international markets.
“GMOs mean crops are cheaper to produce,” Korodi said. “But if we look at the market price that GMO-free crops earn, and we look at the costs to biodiversity of using GMOs, then non-GMO crops are better,” he said.
Early this month the Hungarian agriculture minister, Joszef Graf, said his country’s seed industry earned 25 percent more by selling seeds that had not been cross-pollinated with altered crops.
But Nathalie Moll, a spokeswoman for Europabio, a group representing the biotechnology industry, said seed companies had disputed the minister’s statement.
Klaus Reinsberg, a senior researcher at the Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Central and Eastern Europe, said growing nonbiotech crops was often more expensive, requiring more manual labor to remove weeds and to control pests. But labor costs in Romania remain low compared to other parts of the EU, potentially giving the country a competitive advantage.Even so, Romania would still have to prove it could grow produce to high standards for specialized markets and finicky consumers, and deliver those goods to markets on time.
“Countries like Romania and Ukraine are dreaming of producing organic products and to export them for the profits they can bring,” Reinsberg said. “But organic products can have diseases and fungus.” He also said that a big problem for countries like Romania was a “lack of logistics.”
Despite such hurdles, environmental groups welcomed signs of a change of heart in Romania.
“It marks a seismic change,” said Geert Ritsema, who campaigns against genetic engineering for Greenpeace International in Amsterdam.
Father GODFREY NZAMUJO, O.P., was born in Kano, Nigeria in 1950. He obtained his B.A. in Modern Philosophy and Mathematics, his M.A. in Theology (Creation-Centered/Evolution Option) and his PH.D. in Economic Philosophy. He further obtained a Higher Diploma in Systems Engineering as well as a M.S. in Electrical Engineering at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, California, and a PH.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Service from the University of California at Irvine. He is currently a PH.D. Candidate in Management Science at the International Institute for Advanced Studies.
Father Nzamujo has been the Director of the Songhai Centre, Benin since 1984. He has also been a Research Fellow/Professor at the University of California, Irvine, Associate Pastor, St Nicholas Catholic Church, Laguna Hills, California, and Assist Professor of Engineering at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, California.
His expertise in Engineering includes: electro-optical devices, digital systems-micro-electronics, micro-computer systems, discrete Mathematics and Symbolic Logic and digital image processing.
His expertise in Biological Sciences includes: ecology and microbiology, microbiology and soil fertilization, natural systems and energy pathway in water sub-systems, and mycology and its usefulness in African ecosystems – economic perspectives, Mushroom-laboratory culture and production.
His expertise in Development includes: integrated systems and tropical farming systems- their socio-economic perspectives and institutional economics-social engineering in post colonial Africa. Father Nzamujo expertise in Spirituality include its relevance in psychological and social development
His present research interests include: sustainable agriculture in the tropics and the corresponding institutional framework, renewable energy-biogas and interest in rural energy development, microbiology and soil fertilization-Bacillus Lateresporus and Rhyzobia-moisture, temperature; microbiological environment and nutritive elements in integrated soil fertility management and, energy partway in water bodies-mining nutrient-energy sinks in urban and peri urban waste water bodies.
Father Nzamujo is the recipient of many honors and awards including membership of the U.N. Independent Commission on “Africa and the Challenges for the Third Millenniumâ€, the Africa Prize for Leadership for the Sustainable End of Hunger (co-winner with President Rawlings of Ghana), Jesuit Honors Award and, the Engineering Honors Award (California).
You know we have to travel a lot to represent your interests at international meetings, such a Codex Alimenatrius. When I go to Europe I eat with a feeling of moderate confidence that my food, unless imported from the US, will be free of Genetically Modified (GM) ingredients. Moderate confidence, I say, because, as a meat eater I know that although food intended directly for people is, for the most part GM free, animals raised in the EU for human consumption can be fed GM feeds. The foreign DNA, and the artificially introduced antibiotic resistance which is used as a marker for GM techniques in the laboratory, are transmitted to the animal and then to you, the eater.
Vegetarians what are ready to take smug satisfaction from that fact, however, should consider that the EU authorities are adding new species of approved GM crops on a nearly daily basis. That means that the confidence with which you eat food in Europe should decline almost on a daily basis.
Now there is another kick to the consumer’s safety and confidence in Europe. “Probably safe” apparently is safe enough, at least for the EU regulators. Cloned food, now judged to be “probably safe”, is being approved in the US along with cloned meat. It is true, of course, that Dolly the cloned sheep died young and the health of other cloned animals is questionable over time. Dolly not only contracted a “common livestock disease” (What? Her immune system was not strong and effective in protecting her from it even with the superb care she must surely have been receiving?) and her cells showed signs of premature aging! What about your cells when you invite Dolly to dinner – and eat her? The cloned DNA was not actually identical in terms of keeping the animals alive and well over time. Well, to my mind, just as the foreign and unstable DNA in GM foods gets woven into your DNA and may provide one of the worst health disasters in human history, so cloned DNA may add to the debacle. Of course, according to the AP, the EU’s 47 page report, released this week, stated that “there was “only limited data available” on animal cloning” and it did urge consultation with scientists and consumer groups which have in the past objected to allowing such products onto the market.”
In the US, however, where there is just as little data available, the FDA has exercised no such caution. In fact, it has rushed headlong into the approval process for milk and meat and stipulates that because IT, the FDA, says that there is no danger (or at least no danger KNOWN – yet) both meat and milk will be permitted in our markets and our mouths. And when we find that cloned meat and milk are dangerous? Well, think Vioxx.
The headlong rush to make the Biotech industry happy [remember, a Monsanto employee was seated as a member of the US Delegation at last year’s Codex Working Group on Labeling Foods Derived from BioTechnology (that’s GM foods when you take away the fancy language) in Oslo] is a perfect example of why the FDA, controlled solely and totally, as far as anyone observing it can see, by the industries it supposedly regulated, MUST be divested of its food regulatory authority. Not only is the FDA clearly incapable of resisting the pressures – and payments – of Big Pharma, Big Biotech, Big Agribiz and all the other Bigs, it receives a significant portion of its operating budget from drug company “User Fees” and now wants to receive similar “User Fees” from the Food, Chemical and Biotech industries! This is a killer system. The consumer is the victim. As a consumer, an eater (and not a useless one, I would assert!), I find this industry-centric, consumer-contemptuous approach appalling.
Join the Natural Solutions Foundation, www.HealthFreedomUSA.org, www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org, in supporting protective standards for consumers, not the multinational corporations! Sign up today for our Health Freedom eAlerts and become part of the global community speaking for health freedom! Your data is safe with us. You have my promise.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
EU Report Says Cloned Food Probably Safe
There were no consumer advocates or independent scientists on that delegation, of course. IN a few weeks General Stubblebine and I will be attending this year’s iteration of that meeting in Ghana. It will be interesting to see who is sitting on the US Delegation this time!
Published: 1/11/08, 6:46 PM EDT
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) – Meat and milk from cloned animals is probably safe for humans, the European Union’s food safety agency said in a preliminary report released Friday. The report, by the European Food Safety Authority, seems likely to fuel new debate over whether the EU should allow cloned animals to enter the food chain.
The 47-page draft cautioned, however, that there was “only limited data available” on animal cloning. It urged consultation with scientists and consumer groups, which have in the past objected to allowing such products onto the market.
The EU’s Food Safety Authority, which is based in Italy, was directed by the EU’s executive office in Brussels last year to investigate what risks were involved in making projects for human consumption from cloned animals.
The 27-nation union currently has no laws regulating animal cloning and food. The European Commission is trying to decide whether legislation is needed, said Nina Papadoulaki, spokeswoman for EU Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou.
“Based on current knowledge, there is no expectation that clones or their progeny would introduce any new food safety risks compared with conventionally bred animals,” the preliminary report said.
Papadoulaki said the commission hoped the report would help EU officials determine whether there is public support for allowing cloned food onto supermarket shelves.
She said the commission would seek further advice from an ethics group specializing in science and new technologies, which includes 15 scientists, philosophers, theologians and lawyers.
That group is scheduled to issue its own report on the “ethical aspects of animal cloning for food supply” on Jan. 16.
Some countries outside the EU are moving to permit cloned animals to enter the food chain.
The United States is expected to allow food from cloned animals onto the market sometime this year. A poll conducted in 2006 found, however, that 64 percent of Americans were uncomfortable with animal cloning.
The issue is also under review in Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Canada.
Scientists across Europe have for years investigated different animal cloning techniques. The most famous example was the cloning of Dolly the sheep in Britain. Dolly was euthanized in 2003 after she contracted a common livestock disease and her cells showed signs of premature aging.
Italian scientists cloned a racehorse in 2005, hoping to pass on genetic lines of champion thoroughbreds.
Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed
November 26, 2007
Here is a look a the projects underway right now or being initiated in the near future by the Natural Solutions Foundation.
1. eDeclaration of Planetary Health and Freedom Rights
Giving due reference to the UN Declaration of Rights, The World Health Organization Declaration of Health Rights and the WHO Global strategy for Diet, Physical Activity and Health, the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki, the Wilmont Declaration and common law principles such as the The Herbalist’s Charter of Henry VIII, this document sets forth basic health and freedom principles for humanity to serve as a guide for national policy, organizational focus and NGO activity.
2. Protection Against Compulsory Vaccination and Drugging
a. A State By State Compulsory Drugging and Vaccination Exemption Handbook (in eBook and hard copy format) will be available to guide people wishing to apply for exemptions for themselves and other people
b. A Personalized Legal and Medical Consultation Program providing necessary information, guidance and documetation will be available for those whishing to have personalized help in securing exemptions to vaccination and drugging at the State levels.
c. a No Forced Drugging Forum will be created to allow people to share information and ideas to prevent forced drugging and vaccination
3. Legislator’s Health and Freedom eHandbook
In conjunction with the internationally significant Codex Two Step Process developed by our Codex Working Group and building on the existing legislative language which the natural Solutions foundation, in conjunction with advisors from other health and freedom organizations, the Natural Solutions Foundation proposes the creation of a Legislative Handbook to guide Federal and State legislators in reforming and “reframing” the legislative landscape to support health and freedom choices for consumers, purveyors and practitioners. Just as the Natural Solutions Foundation Codex Book (“Codex two Step Process”) () provides an example of the application of the legislative and regulatory framework which nations can use to protect their people and food supply from the errors embodies in Codex, so this handbook would provide a framework from which legislators can work. Other handbooks are in the planning stage.
4. New Media Communication Strategies for Effective Penetration of Information and Options
Tapping into the new internet expertise and creativity available to us, we have developed a program to capitalize on the working principles of the internet to shift from old media communications to new media ones at, as Bill Gates would say, “…the speed of thought…” Simply putting the equivalent of a page of printed matter up on the internet is no longer sufficient for effective communication. These new strategies, which the Natural Solutions Foundation is currently implementing (but which we propose for sharing with other members of the health and freedom community) include:
a. Participatory New Media Health Freedom Symposium where creatives and organizations which need their creativity can come together to create a synergistically productive outcome unforeseen by either segment before the meeting.
b. Social Networking to attract and hold the attention of the internet user community world-wide. Through video, “FaceBook” – like virtual communities, YouTube postings and other “New Media” options, the Natural Solutions Foundation is radically changing its place on the internet and becoming a world leader in Health Freedom New Communications with the highest internet traffic ratings of any health freedom site or organization.
c. Documentary film making can be part of either the old media or the new. We have chosen, with the collaboration Ecological Options Network to make it part of the new media through an innovative programmatic multimedia strategy. Instead of commissioning a full length DVD on Health Freedom and the Codex Agenda, we have instead evolved a program of stand-alone segments in a Health Freedom Library dealing with each of the current “hot button’ issues relevant to health freedom. This will allow the health freedom movement and the wellness industry to have information rapidly and accurately become available allowing us to build our circle of influence’s awareness and energy, generate funds, spur debate and educate decision makers on these issues. After completion of the rapidly generated health Freedom Library modules, the final interactive documentary/eresource will be produced as a permanent part of the new media.
5. Development of the Natural Solutions foundation’s virtual web store, www.Organics4U.org.
Because we see the potential so clearly to simultaneously support the Wellness Industry and the health Freedom Advocates and practitioners who depend on its products through the use of the virtual store that we have created, we would like to develop-p an affiliate program allowing all health freedom organizations who are members of the working coalition to participate and help fund their activities while showing their strong support for clean, unadulterated health products and services. A Supporter’s Emporium is currently being developed to allow other goods and services to become available to the growing member base of the health freedom movement.
6. Defending against CODEX: International Health Freedom Advocacy Coalition of Health Friendly Countries and NGOs
The Natural Solutions Foundation has developed an unparalleled network of health friendly developing countries through their on-the-ground advocacy at Codex and in the home countries of the members of this emerging power center. We have developed exceptional access to health decision makers (e.g., Dr. Laibow addressing 43 Health Ministers in Mombasa, Kenya on HIV and Avian Flue prevention strategies and other related issues as well as Codex implications for their people’s health and longevity). These nations actively seek our participation in their decision making process.
For example, a large and important developing nation sought our legal and medical review of its new supplement regulations and we were able to significantly influence the proposed very low upper limits to alter them to much more liberal ones). The Natural Solutions Foundation has been invited by the entire West African bloc to conduct a series of training and policy meetings in Africa prior to codex meetings to assist that bloc in developing their positions and their choreographed responses to Codex items at the forthcoming meetings. In fact, such a meeting was scheduled which included the Presidents and Ministers of health of all 16 west African nations just prior to the last Codex Alimentarius Commission meeting (July, 2007). Funding was promised but failed to materialize so the meeting was never held. The trust and faith which the emerging pro health collation of developing nations’ places in us was exemplified when, because of scientific information provided by the Natural Solutions foundation to our friendly countries, fluoride was prevented from being approved as an additive in infant formula for healthy babies. This decision was taken through our advocacy, over the vigorous objection of the United States, the EU, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, thus demonstrating the power of the model. and
While many issues pertain most strongly to the developing nations, there is an urgent need for leadership domestically as well as internationally on issues like vaccination, especially compulsory vaccination; other forms of compulsory drugging and limitation of factual information about the health benefits of food and traditional, natural and advanced therapies. The Natural Solutions Foundation has played a pivotal role in alerting and activating consumers and decision makers to these issues.
It is important to note that the Natural Solutions foundation’s continuing presence at Codex has allowed the Health Freedom voice to have a clear window on the interrelationship between adverse policies brought forward in Codex and the implementation of those same adverse policies through domestic regulation and legislation.
7. Creative Legislator Education (incorrectly sometimes called “lobbying”) and Litigation programs to preserve, protect, defend and restore Health and Freedom domestically and internationally.
With sufficient financial support from industry and interested donors, we believe that the legal recourses open to us are of significant potential in establishing case law to solidify health Freedom domestically and internationally.
a. The Natural Solutions Foundation has retained an experienced legislative consultant, Charles Frohman. Ideally, this activity, which currently employs the Trustees of the Foundation for 4 days a month in Washington DC . The relationships being developed have allowed us to engage in productive dialogues on a number of issues with Members of Congress.
b. We have supported the co-sponsorship of legislation to prevent parents from being forced to vaccinate or medicate their children (the importance and timeliness of which was tragically demonstrated on November 17 when 1600 parents were threatened with jail and fines if they failed to vaccinate, or in some cases, re-vaccinate, their children when either the school had lost their records or the parents did not wish to have them vaccinated.
c. The Natural Solutions Foundation has taken the lead in calling for hearings on the process of divesting the FDA of its food regulatory responsibility and numerous legislators are now seeking our input for legislative language for bills of interest to them.
8. Health Freedom Score Card
Working on the conviction that Health Freedom must be a topic of vigorous debate in the Presidential election discussion, the trustees of the natural Solutions Foundation were delighted to comply with the request they received from a Presidential Campaign to draft the Candidate’s Health Freedom Plank. Through a Health Freedom Score Card, which asks 19 tough questions of the Candidates regarding their public health freedom policies we have brought the issue into greater prominence through nearly 100,000 emails and faxes to the Presidential Candidates.
Authorized by the First Amendments, Citizens Petitions are a legal mechanism to challenge government policies. We have initiated a Citizens Petition to force the FAD to abandon its declared harmonization policy with Codex restrictions on nutrient values. About 125,000 Americans have joined the Citizens Petition through signed documents.
Additional Citizens Petitions are in the planning stage.
10. International Decade of Nutrition: Hope for the Word through dynamic empowerment and the dissemination of natural solutions to the ancient twin scourges of mankind: hunger and disease.
Part of the solution to the health freedom threats lies in the Natural Solutions Foundation dynamic and far-reaching “International Decade of Nutrition”. Because we understand that there is enough information already available to solve the world’s hunger problems and to eliminate most of the diseases of under-nutrition and water-born, parasite and other organism-based diseases, the Natural Solutions foundation has inaugurated a program to
a. Reclaim sustainable organic farming and disseminate the necessary advanced and under-utilized, low-tech, high impact technologies to allow farmers to gain the economic advantage to resist Agribiz and stay in their communities and on their farms while growing food without pesticides and other chemicals
b. Apply already existing, but little known technologies to eliminate parasitic and other organism-based diseases without the use of dangerous and expensive pharmaceuticals, pesticides, fungicides and other toxic chemicals through the use of inexpensive, effective and easily managed options
c. Widespread dissemination of information which empowers and reinforces the autonomy of populations currently disenfranchised from access to traditional, natural and advanced therapies.
Conclusion: the time has never been more opportune for strategically significant alliance by serious and successful groups in the health Freedom movement to exploit the opportunities developed by the Natural Solutions Foundation (supported by astute and sophisticated donors who understand the gravity of the threat and the potency of the opportunity which we bring to the planetary community and the domestic one as well).