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
