by Matthias Rath
2001
from
DrRath Website
recovered through
WayBackMachine Website
Italian version
There is an entire industry with an innate economic interest to obstruct,
suppress and discredit any information about the eradication of diseases.
The pharmaceutical industry makes over one trillion dollars from selling
drugs for ongoing diseases. These drugs may relieve symptoms, but they do
not cure.
We have to realize that the mission of this industry is to
make
money from ongoing diseases.
The cure or eradication of a disease leads to
the collapse of a multi-billion dollar market of pharmaceuticals.
-
The natural purpose and driving force of the pharmaceutical industry is to
increase sales of pharmaceutical drugs for ongoing diseases and to find new
diseases to market existing drugs.
-
By this very nature, the pharmaceutical industry has no interest in curing
diseases. The eradication of any disease inevitably destroys a multi-billion
dollar market of prescription drugs as a source of revenues. Therefore,
pharmaceutical drugs are primarily developed to relieve symptoms, but not to
cure.
-
If eradication therapies for diseases are discovered and developed, the
pharmaceutical industry has an inherent interest to suppress, discredit and
obstruct these medical breakthroughs in order to make sure that diseases
continue as the very basis for a lucrative prescription drug market.
-
The economic interest of the pharmaceutical industry itself is the main
reason why no medical breakthrough has been made for the control of the most
common diseases such as cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, heart
failure, Diabetes, cancer, and osteoporosis, and why these diseases continue
like epidemics on a worldwide scale.
-
For the same economic reasons, the pharmaceutical industry has now formed an
international cartel by the code name "Codex Alimentarius" with the aim to
outlaw any health information in connection with vitamins and to limit free
access to natural therapies on a worldwide scale.
-
At the same time, the pharmaceutical companies withhold public information
about the effects and risks of prescription drugs and life-threatening side
effects are omitted or openly denied.
-
In order to assure the status quo of this deceptive scheme, a legion of
pharmaceutical lobbyists is employed to influence legislation, control
regulatory agencies (e. g. FDA), and manipulate medical research and
education. Expensive advertising campaigns and PR agencies are used to
deceive the public.
-
Millions of people and patients around the world are defrauded twice: A
major portion of their income is used up to finance the exploding profits of
the pharmaceutical industry. In return, they are offered a medicine that
does not even cure.
CODEX
-
What is it and How does it affect you end your health?
-
by Paul Anthony Taylor
October 2006
from
DrRathFoundation Website
Italian version
Codex is not an easy subject to get to grips
with. With over 20 committees meeting on an annual basis, and published
reports comprising a total of over 1,400 pages in 2005 alone, most people
are blissfully unaware of the extent to which its activities affect their
health.
Read on to discover the bigger picture behind
the Codex Alimentarius Commission's support for the "business with
disease".
What is Codex?
The World Trade Organization uses Codex Guidelines and Standards
as the benchmark in the adjudication of international trade disputes
involving foods. It's headquarters, above, are located in Geneva,
Switzerland.
The Codex Alimentarius Commission (Codex) is the main global
body that makes proposals to, and is consulted by, the Directors-General of
the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on all
matters pertaining to the implementation of the Joint FAO/WHO Food
Standards Programme.
Established in 1963, the Commission's main
purposes are stated in its Procedural Manual as being:
-
protecting the health of consumers
-
ensuring fair practices in the food
trade
-
promoting coordination of all food
standards work undertaken by international governmental and
non-governmental organizations
Unfortunately however, and as we shall see, its
activities do not protect the health of consumers and the international food
trade is anything but fair.
At the time of writing, the Commission presides over a total of 27 active
subsidiary committees and ad hoc intergovernmental task forces, the main
functions of which revolve around the drafting of standards, guidelines and
other related texts for foods, including food supplements.
Once completed these texts are presented to the
Commission for final approval and adoption as new global standards.
How does Codex affect
you and your health?
Codex standards and guidelines now exist for virtually all foods.
Whilst the adoption by countries of the various standards and guidelines
developed by Codex is theoretically optional, the creation of the World
Trade Organization (WTO) on 1 January 1995 essentially changed
their international status, in that they are now increasingly used by the
WTO as the benchmark in the adjudication of international trade disputes
involving foods.
As such, the potential threat of becoming
involved in - and losing - such a dispute now effectively makes the adoption
of Codex guidelines and standards mandatory, in that it leaves WTO member
countries little or no option but to comply with them.
Given therefore that
a total of 149 countries are currently members of the WTO, and also that
Codex standards or guidelines now exist for virtually every food one can
name, this effectively means that the activities of Codex now directly
affect the vast majority of people on the planet.
In addition to dealing with ordinary foods, however, Codex also sets
standards and guidelines for, amongst other things: vitamin and mineral food
supplements; health claims; organic foods; genetically modified foods; food
labeling; advertising; food additives and pesticide residues.
Significantly, therefore, and as we shall see
below, in all of these areas the evidence is now inescapable that Codex is
increasingly putting economic interests - and particularly those of the
pharmaceutical and chemical industries - before human health.
Codex Guidelines for
Vitamin and Mineral Food Supplements
The Guidelines for Vitamin and Mineral Food Supplements were adopted by the
Codex Alimentarius Commission as a new global standard at its meeting
in Rome, Italy, in July 2005.
The Guidelines for Vitamin and Mineral Food Supplements were adopted by the
Codex Alimentarius Commission as a new global standard at its meeting
in Rome, Italy, in July 2005.
Drafted using the European Union's restrictive
Food Supplements Directive as a blueprint, the Guidelines mandate the
setting of restrictive upper limits on the dosages of vitamins and minerals,
and the prohibiting of claims that vitamin and mineral supplements are
suitable for use in the prevention, alleviation, treatment or cure of
disease.
As a result, and bearing in mind the growing
mountain of evidence demonstrating the impressive health improvements that
can be achieved via the use of nutritional supplements, it can be seen that
far from protecting the health of consumers, the global enforcement of these
guidelines would ensure that the sale of curative, preventative, and
therapeutic health products remains the exclusive province of the
pharmaceutical industry.
Health claims
The Codex General Guidelines on Claims protects the patent on the
pharmaceutical industry's control of our healthcare systems.
There are already several Codex texts in existence that place restrictions
upon the health benefits that can be attributed to food products, and
perhaps the most significant of these is the Codex General Guidelines on
Claims.
Adopted in 1979, and revised in 1991, these guidelines are in
some senses the very root of the Codex problem - in terms of placing severe
restrictions upon natural forms of healthcare - in that they effectively
seek to ensure that the only products that can make claims relating to the
prevention, alleviation, treatment, and cure of disease are pharmaceutical
drugs.
Specifically, and amongst other things, the
Codex General Guidelines on Claims prohibit all claims implying that a
balanced diet or ordinary foods cannot supply adequate amounts of all
nutrients, and all claims that food products are suitable for use in the
prevention, alleviation, treatment or cure of diseases.
As such, it can be seen that they essentially
protect the patent on the pharmaceutical industry's control of our
healthcare systems.
Organic foods
Organic foods have been receiving increased attention from Codex in recent
years, and it is now increasingly clear that the Codex Committee on Food
Labeling is attempting to water down global organic standards to permit
the use of substances such as:
-
sulphur dioxide, which can cause
allergic reactions in some people
-
sodium nitrite and sodium nitrate, which
are potentially carcinogenic, and have been implicated in
hyperactivity in children
-
carrageenan, for which there is evidence
that it is associated with the formation of ulcers in the intestines
and cancerous tumors in the gut
Worse still, however, the Codex Alimentarius
Commission recently gave the go-ahead for work to begin on the inclusion
of ethylene in the Codex Guidelines for the Production, Processing,
Labeling and Marketing of Organically Produced Foods.
Ethylene is used to artificially induce fruits
and vegetables to ripen whilst they are in transit, and as such its approval
for use on organic foods would represent a disturbing step towards
WTO-enforced acceptance of the same dubious and unnatural agricultural
practices that non-organic foods are already subject to.
Why does Codex want to water down organic standards in this way?
On a basic
level it is simply because organic foods fetch higher prices than ordinary,
non-organic, foods, and that as such the large non-organic food producers
see an easy opportunity to break into the market for organic foods and make
larger profits.
On a deeper level, however, organic foods promote better
health than non-organic foods, by virtue of the fact that they contain
higher levels of micronutrients.
In addition, of course, organic foods don't
contain pesticides, residues of veterinary drugs or genetically-modified
organisms either.
Bearing in mind therefore that good health is not in the
interests of the "business with disease", this ultimately makes the
increasing demand for organic foods a threat to the pharmaceutical and
chemical industries; not only because organic foods promote good health,
however, but also because they result in a lower demand for pesticides,
veterinary drugs and
GM foods - and thus in lower profits.
Moreover, and unlike genetically-modified seeds, organic seeds cannot be
patented.
As such, given that some of the major players in
the pharmaceutical and chemical industry, such as Bayer and BASF,
are also major players in the biotech industry, it can easily be seen that
the rising popularity of non-patentable organic foods is in fact a serious
and growing threat to the profits of the pharmaceutical industry's "business
with disease".
Genetically-modified
foods
The increasing popularity of food supplement, natural health practices and
organic food is a serious threat to the pharmaceutical industry's business
with disease.
The Codex Alimentarius Commission adopted its first guidelines and
principles for genetically-modified (GM) foods in 2003.
These
texts subsequently became instrumental in the United States, Canada and
Argentina launching, and winning, a trade dispute at the WTO against the
European Union (EU), where it was argued that the EU had been applying a
moratorium on the approval and importation of foods containing GM material.
Further guidelines and standards for GM foods are now in the process of
being drafted by Codex.
The eventual adoption of these texts will further
contribute to making the approval, and importation, of GM foods that comply
with them mandatory for all WTO member countries. Crucially, therefore, the
United States, Canada and Argentina are also pushing for there to be no
requirement for manufacturers or exporters of GM foods to disclose the
presence of genetically modified organisms on their product labeling.
This is exactly what the big GM food
manufacturers want, of course, as they have long realized that growing
numbers of people are opposed to GM food products, and moreover that they
will not be able to change public opinion about these products anytime soon.
Unlike the seeds for regular foods, the seeds for GM foods can be patented.
This, essentially, is the real key to why biotech companies are so desperate
for these foods to be forced onto world markets, as the potential long-term
profits are so colossal as to compare quite favorably with the market in
pharmaceutical drugs.
Given therefore that some of the major players in the
pharmaceutical industry, such as Bayer and BASF, are also major players in
the biotech industry, it can be seen that the pharmaceutical industry is
once again positioning itself as a key beneficiary at Codex.
As such
- so far as the pharmaceutical industry is concerned - the only
products that are worth producing are those that are patentable. Because of
this, the rise in the popularity of food supplements, natural health
practices and even organic food represents a serious threat to the
pharmaceutical industry.
The financial interest groups behind the Codex Alimentarius Commission know this only too well, of course, and as
such are now engaged in a desperate struggle to maintain their monopoly upon
the healthcare industry and expand into GM food production.
Food labeling
A specific Codex committee to deal with food labeling issues, the
Codex
Committee on Food Labeling (CCFL), has been in existence since
1965.
The issue of food labeling is particularly crucial to the further
spreading of life-saving natural health information, as restrictions upon
the written content of food labels contribute, along with those on
advertising, to preventing nutritional supplement manufacturers from
informing people of the proven benefits of dietary supplementation.
Crucially, therefore, CCFL has refused to
acknowledge the role of optimum nutrition in the prevention, alleviation,
treatment and cure of disease, and, as such, rather than protecting the
health of consumers, can be seen to be acting in the interests of the
pharmaceutical industry's "business with disease".
Advertising
Arguments as to how or whether Codex should deal with advertising issues
have been going on since at least 1972.
These arguments continued at the May 2006 CCFL meeting in Ottawa, where they
centered around whether or not work on a definition for advertising should
be initiated, and if it should, where (i.e. within which Codex text) such a
definition should be placed.
After considerable discussion regarding this
issue CCFL decided that work on a definition for advertising should indeed
be initiated.
From a natural health perspective, however, the definition proposed is far
from satisfactory:
"Advertising: any representation to the
public, by any means other than a label, that is intended or is likely
to influence and shape attitude, beliefs and behaviors in order to
promote directly or indirectly the sale of the food."
The wording of this proposed definition raises
several key questions.
For example, as well as its potential to result in the prohibition of
advertising legitimate, published, peer-reviewed scientific research papers,
might it also inhibit non-profit natural health advocacy organizations from
influencing and shaping attitude, beliefs and behaviors regarding the sale
of nutritional supplements?
Similarly, could any restrictions on advertising that are based upon this
definition be said to contravene the right to freedom of opinion and
expression and/or the freedom to hold opinions without interference and to
seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and
regardless of frontiers (both of which are enshrined in Article 19 of the
United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights)?
Regardless however, given that the pharmaceutical industry's "business with
disease" depends for its survival upon the restriction of any and all means
by which consumers can obtain natural health information, potential
restrictions on advertising are clearly now a key issue at Codex.
Food additives
Codex has a specific committee that deals with the safety of food additives,
one of the main functions of which is to establish their maximum permitted
levels. In all, the
Codex Food Additive Index currently lists a total of
around 300 individual additives - both synthetic and natural - that it
permits to be used in foods.
However, whilst it may be the case that some artificial additives are
essentially safe when consumed in small amounts and in isolation from one
another, the reality is that no substantive consideration has been given by
Codex to the fact that such chemicals are consumed not in isolation, but in
tandem with each other.
As such, and to the benefit of their manufacturers,
the cumulative long-term effect that the consumption of multiple patented
chemicals and artificial additives has on the health of consumers is largely
being ignored.
Diseases caused or aggravated by the long-term consumption of pesticides
increase the potential market for pharmaceutical drugs.
Revealingly, therefore, many artificial additives are being manufactured by
some of the same pharmaceutical and chemical companies that would like to
ban vitamin supplements and force GM foods onto our dinner plates.
And, as is similarly the case with
pharmaceutical drugs and GM seeds, the main reason why many of these
substances exist is because they can be patented - and patents equal higher
profits.
Pesticides
The Codex Committee on Pesticide Residues was formed in 1966, and is
responsible for setting the maximum limits for pesticide residues in
specific food items or in groups of food.
Once again, however, the safety or otherwise of
each individual pesticide is generally examined in isolation, and the
long-term effect that their collective presence might have upon the body is
mostly ignored.
Given therefore that many of these dangerous
chemicals are manufactured by pharmaceutical and chemical companies, it is
not difficult to imagine that their widespread usage may be seen by these
industries as having a dual financial benefit, in that they potentially
increase the size of the market for - and hence the profits to be made from
- the patented drugs used as treatments for any diseases that their
long-term consumption might cause.
Conclusion
Codex is not just about nutritional supplements. In fact, it is the primary
political battlefield where the war is being waged about who will regulate
and control the global food supply from farm to fork.
This 'war' is being
waged by an increasingly tangled web of global authorities, big business and
financial interests, and, as such, trade and profit are its prime goals - not human health.
Current indications suggest that the long-term financial winners in the
battle to gain control over the world's food supply are likely to be the
pharmaceutical and chemical industries; especially so given that the
adoption of still further Codex guidelines for foods derived from
biotechnology now seems almost inevitable. As a result, our freedom of
choice, our future health and the environment itself are all now clearly at
risk.
Good nutrition and optimum health threaten the pharmaceutical industry's
"business with disease" because they reduce the size of the marketplace for
synthetic drugs.
However, food that is free of pesticide residues,
artificial additives and other contaminants can, by definition, only come
about as a result of a lower global usage, or ideally the entire
elimination, of these chemicals. This, of course, would not be in the
financial interests of the pharmaceutical and chemical companies that
manufacture such substances, as it would clearly result in lower profits,
better health for entire populations, and a consequent reduction in the use
of synthetic drugs.
In conclusion therefore, whilst it may have been somewhat "out of the
limelight" recently, the Codex Alimentarius Commission's support for
the "business with disease" has continued unabated, and the wide scope of
its activities makes it a significant danger to the future health of all
humanity.
Do we want to see a world where our access to safe, nutritious foods and
effective dietary supplements is restricted and controlled by pharmaceutical
and chemical interests?
If not then we must act now, before it's too
late.
Further Information
CODEX ALIMENTARIUS
- The Control and Denial of
Science -
by Paul Anthony Taylor
2007
from
DrRathFoundation Website
recovered through
WayBackMachine Website
Italian version
We don't want to change. Every
change is a menace to stability. That's another reason why we're
so chary of applying new inventions.
Every discovery in pure
science is potentially subversive; even science must sometimes
be treated as a possible enemy.
Aldous Huxley
Brave New World
The 29th session of the Codex Committee on
Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses was held in Bad
Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, Germany, from 12 to 16
November
2007.
A subsidiary body of the FAO/WHO-sponsored Codex Alimentarius Commission, the activities of this Committee are
increasingly perceived by natural health advocates as one of the biggest
global threats to the future availability of therapeutic vitamin supplements
and other micronutrient-based natural health therapies.
The Dr. Rath Health Foundation's External
Relations Director, Paul Anthony Taylor, attended the meeting as
a delegate of the National Health Federation, the only consumer-orientated
pro-natural health organization in the world to have official observer
status at Codex meetings.
Paul's eye-witness report, below, describes how
Codex continues to deny the health benefits of vitamins, micronutrients and
nutrition in the battle against today's most common diseases and explains
how its key beneficiaries are the large multinational food, biotech and
pharmaceutical corporations.
The blatant dismissal of
consumers' concerns regarding genetically modified foods
The Codex Committee on
Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses,
meeting in Bad
Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, Germany, November 2007.
There can surely be little doubt that consumers
are overwhelmingly opposed to eating genetically modified foods.
Time and
again, surveys and polls in countries throughout the world have proven this
beyond any reasonable doubt. Nevertheless, the fact that genetically
modified seeds can be patented - because, unlike regular seeds, they are
created in laboratories and do not exist in nature - continues to make them
a highly attractive investment proposition to the biotech and pharmaceutical
companies that produce them.
Patents on genetically modified seeds, and the
multi-billion dollar potential profits and market control that may result
from them, are acting as powerful incentives for these manufacturers to find
ways of forcing such foods onto consumers' dinner plates, regardless of the
possible dangers to human health.
Notably, therefore, this year's meeting of the Committee was attended by Dr.
H. Yoshikura, the Chairman of the Codex Intergovernmental Task
Force on Foods Derived from Biotechnology, a group that has already
produced several global guidelines on genetically modified foods.
The Task Force's creation of these guidelines
subsequently became instrumental in the United States, Canada and Argentina
launching, and winning, a trade dispute at the World Trade Organization
against the European Union (EU), where they successfully
argued that the EU had been applying a moratorium on the approval and
importation of foods containing genetically modified material and that this
was contrary to WTO rules.
Yoshikura had been invited to attend this Codex meeting because the Task
Force has recently been working on an annex to a global guideline for foods
that have been genetically modified to (supposedly) provide nutritional or
health benefits. Because the text of this annex contains references to
concepts related to nutrition, the Committee was invited to review the draft
annex and to provide comments on it.
Aside from making a few minor comments, however, the Committee decided to
endorse the text of the annex without making any changes to it whatsoever.
In response to this, and noting that not one single country had spoken out
to defend the interests of consumers regarding this issue, the National
Health Federation made the following statement:
Dr. Rolf Grossklaus,
the Chairman of the Codex
Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses,
claims that consumers do
not realize the 'benefits of genetically modified foods'
and that they will in
time change their minds about them.
"Mr Chairman, the NHF would like to put on
the record that while the issue of risk assessment of foods derived from
biotechnology is being discussed, 95% of European consumers and millions
of consumers from other parts of the world have continued to indicate
their rejection of such foods.
We would like to know therefore how the
Task Force aims to balance the need to undertake exposure studies on
representative human populations when so many people reject these foods
outright?"
In other words, the Federation was asking how
the Task Force was planning to carry out human safety studies of genetically
modified foods when so few people are prepared to eat them.
The Committee's Chairman, Dr.
Rolf Grossklaus, gave a breathtakingly
dismissive response to this question and, unwilling to admit that
comprehensive human exposure studies would not be carried out before these
foods are marketed, he stated that these aspects could not be discussed at
this meeting.
Astonishingly, however, he then went on to claim that
consumers do not realize the benefits that these foods provide and that he
believes consumers will in time change their minds about them.
Later, at the end of the week, during the meeting to adopt the Committee's
official report, I requested, on behalf of the National Health Federation,
that the report should make mention of the Federation's statement regarding
this matter. Dr. Grossklaus refused to allow this however, arguing that the
issue was not discussed and that including mention of all issues that were
not discussed would make the report too long.
All in all, therefore, this was arguably the most blatant example of the
concerns of consumers being dismissed in a Codex meeting that I have ever
witnessed.
Recommendations on the
scientific basis of health claims - designed for the large multinationals
Another key issue discussed at this year's meeting was a text dealing with
Recommendations on the Scientific Basis of Health Claims.
Mr Gert Lindemann,
State Secretary of the
Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection, Germany,
addressing the committee at
the opening of the meeting.
In recent years, the Committee has given very
little time and no substantial debate to this agenda item at its meetings.
However, although a more in-depth discussion did take place at this year's
meeting, the general thrust of the debate made it clear that, without a
drastic change in direction, the key beneficiaries from these
Recommendations will be the large multinational food, biotech and
pharmaceutical corporations, who will most easily be able to afford the
substantial financial costs of jumping through the various scientific and
regulatory hoops that the Committee is erecting.
As a result, therefore, it seems likely that we will increasingly see
breakfast cereals, genetically modified foods and
pharmaceutically-manufactured RDA vitamin products carrying health claims,
for example, whilst supplements produced by small, innovative vitamin
manufacturers - assuming that they are not regulated out of existence - will
probably not do so.
That said, however, and despite the longer debate time for this agenda item
at this year's meeting, only minimal progress was made and several key
questions - including defining the necessary level of scientific evidence
for the substantiation of health claims - remain outstanding.
If the
Committee were to insist on human studies and clinical trials, for example,
even some common health claims for foods such as fruits and vegetables would
have to be banned on the grounds that they were based on observational
studies and epidemiological research, which would clearly be an absurd state
of affairs.
With the discussions essentially having reached an impasse, therefore, the
Committee agreed that the text should be returned to Step 2 of the 8-Step
Codex approvals process, to be rewritten by the delegation of France in
light of the discussions that had taken place.
As a result, the Recommendations on Health
Claims now seem unlikely to be approved and finalized by the Codex
Alimentarius Commission until July 2010, at the earliest.
Nutritional risk analysis - making up the rules as they go along
A further topic that has been given very little discussion time at recent
meetings of this Codex Committee is that of nutritional risk analysis.
As
regular Codex-watchers will already be aware, this issue has enormous
relevance to the future development of the restrictive Codex Guidelines for
Vitamin and Mineral Food Supplements, as the Guidelines state that the upper
safe levels of vitamins and minerals in supplements will be established by
scientific risk assessment.
Whilst the pro-pharmaceutical lobby - most especially including the
anti-supplement extremists within the European Commission - are desperately
trying to reassure everybody that the use of risk assessment will ensure
that upper safe levels for vitamins and minerals will be calculated
scientifically, the reality is that most current methodologies for assessing
the supposed "risk" of consuming nutritional supplements are anything but
scientific, and are actually deeply flawed.
Interestingly, therefore, during this year's discussions, the representative
from the World Health Organization (WHO) indicated that WHO
and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
should be the primary if not only source of scientific advice to the
Committee, arguing that international expert groups might not provide
independent and unbiased scientific advice.
Setting aside the issue as to whether WHO and
FAO themselves can be considered to be independent and unbiased, as the
discussions progressed it became increasingly clear that the vast majority
of the Committee was not remotely interested in obtaining independent and
unbiased scientific advice in this area.
Basil Mathioudakis,
the European
Commission's senior representative at the meeting.
Anti-supplement extremists
within the European Commission are disingenuously claiming that
the upper safe levels for
vitamins and minerals in food supplements will be calculated scientifically.
For example, at one point during the
discussions, the National Health Federation specifically requested that a
key section of the text should refer to "independent sources of scientific
advice" on risk assessment.
Significantly, however, Basil Mathioudakis,
of the European Commission, stated that he was opposed to the use of the
word "independent" in the text and, as a result, it was not included.
In a further key intervention, the National Health Federation wanted
language inserted to recognize the nutrient depletion in soils and foods
that has taken place over the past fifty years or so. Upon hearing this,
however, the Chairman, Dr. Grossklaus, responded by saying that the
institute he works for, the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment,
has made a statement on this issue to the effect that there is no scientific
evidence to support this claim.
In typical fashion, he then attempted to
move straight on and did not give the Committee so much as a moment's
opportunity for comment.
The National Health Federation then made an additional intervention, asking
that its comments be noted in the report and, ideally, considered by the
Committee so that the record could be accurate and complete. Dr. Grossklaus
declined to allow this however, saying that since the Federation is a
non-governmental organization, and that no Member State supported its
position, its comments could not go into the report.
Just as he has done in previous years, therefore, Dr. Grossklaus was once
again making up the rules as he went along. This is particularly well
illustrated by the fact that paragraph 131 of the Committee's official
report for this meeting makes mention of another National Health Federation
intervention and that this was not supported by any Member State either.
At the close of these discussions, the Committee decided that it had made
significant progress and that it should recommend to the Codex
Alimentarius Commission that the text (the Proposed Draft Nutritional
Risk Analysis Principles and Guidelines for Application to the Work of the
Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses) be advanced to
Step 5.
As such, only relatively minor changes will now
be possible at next year's meeting of the Committee, and it could now
potentially be approved and finalized by the Codex Alimentarius
Commission in July 2009.
Proposals for nutrient
reference values - out of touch with the latest science
Viewed in light of the latest and most up-to-date research in the area of
nutrition, it seems safe to predict that the Committee's current approach to
the setting of nutrient reference values for labeling purposes may well be
judged by future nutritional historians as being almost farcically
anachronistic.
For example, the science of genetics has already taught us that we are all
genetically unique and we now have convincing evidence that factors such as
age, sex, contraceptive use, race, dress code, geographical location,
regular blood donation, medicinal drug use, genetic mutations or biochemical
individuality can affect a person's nutrient needs and/or status, sometimes
dramatically so.
However, rather than protecting the health of consumers, which is after all
one of the stated purposes of Codex, the Committee is proposing instead to
simply set one single reference value for each vitamin and mineral, and to
apply these to the entire world population from the age of three years and
upwards. Then, after work on this is complete, a further set of vitamin and
mineral reference values, to apply to children aged between six months and
three years, would be developed.
As such, it would seem that the Committee's intention is essentially to
provide a ringing endorsement of the existing outdated and scientifically
invalid recommended daily allowance concept.
Notably, therefore, although the
National Health Federation attempted to
intervene in this monumentally myopic error, by proposing the establishment
of an additional reference value for each vitamin and mineral, to represent
the population group with the greatest need for it, the Chairman overruled
it, but without giving any valid scientific reason.
Clearly then, whilst the Committee's proposals on nutrient reference values
are still admittedly at an early stage, anyone hoping for an outcome that
reflects the latest science or that promotes optimum nutrition would
currently be well advised not to hold their breath.
Still waiting for the
'Stunning Victory' at Codex? You're not alone…
Natural health advocates with good memories may recall the so-called
Natural
Solutions Foundation, in its report on a meeting of the Codex Committee on
Food Labeling that took place in May 2006, claiming that the outcome of
discussions regarding the proposed role of Codex in the implementation of
the World Health Organization's Global Strategy On Diet, Physical Activity
and Health were a "Stunning Victory" for health freedom.
Well, this certainly wasn't true then and it still isn't now, especially if
the outcome of discussions at this meeting were anything to go by. Eighteen
months after the claimed "Stunning Victory", whilst Codex is still talking
about the Global Strategy, there's no sign of any significant action.
For example, although the Chairwoman of the Codex Committee on Food
Labeling, Dr. Anne MacKenzie, gave a PowerPoint presentation on
the subject of the Global Strategy, asking what mechanisms were available
for inter-committee communication and cooperation, and proposing to seek
guidance from WHO and FAO, her valiant contribution was relegated to a
relatively minor position in the Committee's agenda, under "Other Business
and Future Work."
After the somewhat unfocussed and confusing discussion that followed, during
which even a representative of the Codex Secretariat, Dr. Jeronimas
Maskeliunas, admitted to being "completely confused" as to what the
Committee was talking about, it was eventually agreed that a Working Group
should meet to discuss the Global Strategy immediately prior to next year's
meeting of the Committee and, after its discussions, that it should report
back to the Committee.
Yet more talk, in other words, and still no sign of
any action.
At this current juncture, therefore, Codex discussions regarding the
World Health Organization's Global Strategy On Diet, Physical Activity and
Health would appear to be light years away from turning into any sort of
victory, let alone a stunning one.
Conclusion
Like the World Controllers in Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World',
the Codex Alimentarius Commission doesn't want to change.
From its
perspective, change - in the form of a new global healthcare system based on
scientific breakthroughs in the areas of vitamin research and cellular
health - is a menace to the financial stability of the pharmaceutical
industry. As a result, groundbreaking discoveries in nutritional
therapeutics are increasingly seen as subversive and treated as an enemy to
the 'business with disease'.
However, the lies and deceit that are necessary to maintain this situation
are not sustainable in the long term. Whether Codex likes it or not, change
will eventually come and, when it does, consumers will overwhelmingly demand
that those who had knowingly tried to prevent their access to therapeutic
vitamin supplements and other natural therapies should be called to account
for their actions.
In the meantime, however, whilst cardiovascular disease, cancer, AIDS and
other common diseases will undoubtedly be largely unknown to future
generations, it is our responsibility to ensure that this comes about sooner
rather than later.
The treatment of diseases with patented synthetic chemical drugs, when safer
and more effective natural treatments are already available, borders on
insanity and should no longer be tolerated in any civilized society worthy
of the name.
As such, the sooner the
pharmaceutical industry's 'business with disease' is confined to the dustbins of medical
history, where it belongs, the better for all mankind.
Video
The Codex Alimentarius is a threat to the
freedom of people to choose natural healing and alternative medicine and
nutrition. Ratified by the World Health Organization, and going into Law in
the United States in 2009, the threat to health freedom has never been
greater.
This is the first part of a series of talks by Dr.
Rima Laibow MD,
available on DVD from the Natural Solutions Foundation, an non-profit
organization dedicated to educating people about how to stop Codex Alimentarius from taking away our right to freely choose nutritional health.
Nutricide
Criminalizing Natural Health, Vitamins, and
Herbs
see "Herbal
Medicines Banned in Europe as EU Directive Comes Into Force"
