How Supplements Ban in Europe Works and Affects Us All

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Misty L. Trepke

http://www..com

 

http://www.thehealthcrusader.com/pgs/article-0104-ban.shtml

 

Huge Supplements Ban Coming To Europe

BLOWING THE WHISTLE ON THE COVER-UP

 

An Interview with John Hammell of International

Advocates For Health Freedom (IAHF)

by Greg Ciola

 

Crusador Newsletter DEC-JAN 2004, (ISSUE 16)

 

In August 2005, everything in Europe is about to change. Over 300

bioavailable nutrient forms present in over 5,000 safe vitamin and

mineral products that include a large number of the safest, most

readily absorbed and most effective, food-derived forms will be

banned from the market. It stems from radical legislation passed in

Europe by member State governments in June 2002 known as the EU Food

Supplements Directive (FSD). The list of banned items includes

natural vitamin forms such as mixed tocopherols (natural vitamin E),

carotenoids and methylcobalamin, all forms of sulphur, boron,

vanadium, silicon and most trace elements, the most readily absorbed

and safest forms of calcium, magnesium, zinc, selenium, chromium and

molybdenum. It will severely limit the doses of vitamins and other

nutrients allowed in products, removing all high-dose

products from the market. It will include future restrictions on

nutrient forms other than vitamins and minerals such as fatty acids,

amino acids, enzymes, probiotics, phytonutrients, etc. It will

dramatically limit future innovation in the dietary supplement

industry, with consequent serious impacts on retail outlets,

complementary practitioners and consumers who choose to take

responsibility for their own health.

 

In addition to denying most Europeans access to safe nutritional

supplements, this draconian EU Directive is going to be used as the

blueprint for establishing international dietary supplement laws at

Codex of which the U.S. has agreed to adopt. If this happens, which

is a very likely scenario in the next year or so, Codex will outlaw

or severely restrict virtually everything millions of us have grown

accustomed to using safely every day. We no longer live in a world

where national borders mean much of anything. We are witnessing the

rapid unification of the world into a new global government with

Europe at the helm. When the World Trade Organization (WTO) was

given teeth to enforce international trade laws in the early 1990s

by establishing an international court known as the Dispute

Settlement Body, all WTO member nations in principle agreed

to harmonize their domestic trade laws to a new set of international

laws so every nation operates by the same set of standards. Most

supplement consumers were unaware at the time that in effect, this

would eventually lead to an incremental attack on all of our food

supplements here in America and around the world. Most supplement

companies have simply gone along with the advice from their

pharmaceutically dominated trade associations and know very little,

if any, about what is taking shape across the Atlantic.

 

The Alliance for Natural Health (ANH), a consumer advocacy group

based in Britain, was recently granted the green light to challenge

the FSD at the last minute; however, very rarely has a EU Directive

ever been overturned and in this case, it would be a historic event

considering the pharmaceutical interests backing its implementation.

Resources are very scarce and desperately needed to keep the lawsuit

going to overturn the Directive before it's too late. They've hired

a top staff of EU lawyers and together with its multidisciplinary

team of experts they are prepared for a legal challenge in a EU

Court. With the EU expanding by ten more nations in early 2004 to a

combined total of twenty-five member nations, and with heavy

pressure to finalize a Codex vitamin standard, we're at a critical

juncture on this issue. If the FSD is not overturned, and with

Europe's ever-expanding power, it's very possible that there

will be enough countries onboard to overrule the U.S. at Codex where

many parts of the FSD will be used when international vitamin laws

are codified. Once a Codex vitamin law is finalized, it will

supercede all U.S. supplement laws. The only way for America to

truly protect its vital interest is to get out of the U.N. and the

WTO entirely, which is something nobody realistically sees

happening. If America is not vigilant to this threat, our supplement

industry will be blindsided and knocked out without even putting up

a valiant fight.

 

In an effort to educate supplement consumers around the world to

this dangerous threat to our health freedoms, CRUSADOR interviewed

John Hammell of IAHF in a no holds barred discussion. Hammell has

been sounding the alarm since 1996 that serious trouble is brewing

for our industry. Unfortunately, John's pleas for help have mostly

fallen on deaf ears as these international agreements continue to

plod forward virtually unopposed and with complicity from high level

U.S. delegates with pharmaceutical ties representing us at Codex.

The time to muster the troops and kill this Directive and block a

very restrictive Codex vitamin standard is now. Otherwise, it will

be too late and America's supplement laws will be harmonized to a

new set of draconian international vitamin laws.

 

John, Let me begin by asking you who IAHF is and how you got started

in this movement?

 

International Advocates For Health Freedom (IAHF)

http://www.iahf.com

is a consulting firm to the dietary supplement industry on

legislative issues. I do lobbying in Washington and all over the

world, public speaking, and grass roots organizing - mostly via my

website and email distribution list which anyone can sign onto at my

website. I write articles, and serve as a catalyst to try to get

people working together to defend their common interest in the face

of this Pharma threat to block our access to natural products. I

first established IAHF in 1996 while I was sitting on an airplane

coming back from a U.N. Codex Alimentarius Commission vitamin

meeting in Germany.

 

 

Can you explain to our readers a little bit more about Codex?

 

I'd be glad to. The United Nations Codex Alimentarius Commission was

originally created in1963. " Alimentarius " means " food code " in

Latin. The Codex Alimentarius is the most authoritative set of

international food standards ever proposed. It was set up as a joint

program of the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization

(FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO). It was created

ostensibly to generate a harmonized trade standard for governing the

international sale of all food products. The goal was to eliminate

the expense of compliance with a variety of different country

regulations by establishing one universal standard, thus enabling

companies to more efficiently move their products. Germany, the

largest pharmaceutical manufacturing nation on earth, currently

dominates the EU which hosts the Codex Committee on Nutrition and

Foods For Special Dietary Use, and is leading the charge to railroad

our dietary supplement laws into international harmonization.

 

Another Codex goal is to supposedly protect consumers.

Unfortunately, the reverse has proven true. Codex is actually

protecting the profit interests of the multinational corporations at

the expense of the consumer. In fact, the large multinationals are

dominating the U.N. Codex process. Furthermore, it's " one country,

one vote " so even the tiniest country that doesn't manufacture

dietary supplements, has as much decision making input in the voting

process as the much larger countries.

 

 

In essence, Codex was designed to be a stepping-stone to harmonize

all member countries to international law - is that correct?

 

Exactly! But they didn't have any teeth until the advent of the

Uruguay round of GATT (Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), which

created the World Trade Organization (WTO). Until WTO was formed,

GATT did not have any control mechanism to force a country to adopt

an international standard. It was strictly voluntary up to that

point. After the advent of the WTO it became mandatory that these

countries adopt these international standards as their own. And the

only legal option a country had to refuse to adopt a Codex vitamin

standard for its own law was on the basis of safety [sPS Agreement].

The problem for the U.S. is that all alleged violations will be

adjudicated in a new international court outside of the U.S. created

by the World Trade Organization. In my opinion, this court " known as

the Dispute Settlement Body " is nothing more than a " Mickey Mouse "

court. It's a rigged court that doesn't follow our rules of

evidence. It is rigged to uphold the greed-driven interests of

the multinational corporations. The court is made up of people from

different countries and it makes its rulings in secret. The public

doesn't have access to its deliberations. You and I, for example,

can't just walk into a courtroom presided over by the Dispute

Settlement Body of the WTO. We can't watch their proceedings.

Private citizen have no standing to appear before that court no

matter how well qualified they are. In theory, a private citizen

could appear before the court but only if both conflicting parties

agreed to allow it. That has never happened. For the most part the

only people with standing to appear before the court are

representatives of WTO member nations.

 

How did you originally get to be a delegate on the Codex committee?

 

Anybody that wanted to be an observer could simply apply to be on

the U.S. delegtion. All they had to do was go to a meeting the FDA

held in Washington, D.C. prior to the meeting in Germany to be

eligible. I went to that meeting in D.C. and applied to be an

observer on the delegation because I was willing and able to pay my

own way. That's the only reason why the grassroots even had anyone

on that delegation. The powerful multinationals don't like to make

it easy for the public to know what's going on. They hold meetings

that can impact people all over the world far away from where anyone

can see what's happening.

 

How does what's happening with the EU Food Supplements Directive tie

in with Codex?

 

Fair question. The European Union currently has fifteen countries

within it. It's going to expand by ten new countries in 2004 to

include twenty-five countries. All of these countries are members of

the U.N. Codex Alimentarius Commission and they can all send people

to this meeting of the Committee on Nutrition that is in the process

of developing what threatens to be a very draconian vitamin

standard. The problem is that unless we overturn this Food

Supplements Directive in court, all twenty-five of these countries

are going to go into Codex and they'll have the power to force a

really restrictive vitamin standard through at Codex because they'll

all be walking in lock-step with Germany. Germany is the

world's biggest pharmaceutical producing country. They're the

biggest opponent of dietary supplements of any country in the world.

That's why they became the host committee for the Codex Committee on

Nutrition because they have a real vested interest here in

railroading us.

 

So if I understand you correctly, the EU, with Germany's influence,

is going to have the leverage to force Codex to adopt their

stringent standards, which will then become the worldwide standards

for dietary supplements?

 

That's exactly right. The European Union is the blueprint by which

our would-be rulers intend to form a global totalitarian state. What

they're doing with the EU is their first little science project.

They're trying to do similar regional trading blocks all over the

world. In our little hemisphere they're trying to create something

similar to the EU called the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)

through which they're trying to harmonize the laws between Canada,

the U.S., Mexico, and Central and South America. When they held a

summit meeting of the FTAA in Quebec City in 2001, the Royal

Canadian Mounted Police put a ten square kilometer chain link fence

around the area of Quebec City where the summit meeting was to take

place. The intent was to keep demonstrators out because they saw

what had happened in Seattle at the anti WTO demonstrations in 1999

and they were worried that something like that might happen in

Quebec City so they took that as a security measure and also

rimmed their fence with over 2,000 riot gear police. Demonstrators

were able to breach this fence and rip it down and there was a clash

between police and demonstrators where a lot of tear gas and hard

plastic bullets filled the air. One demonstrator got hit in the

trachea and he'll never be able to talk again. So we are at war.

People need to wake up and pull their heads out of the sand and

recognize what's going on in the world.

 

Can you tell us about some of the covert tactics being used to set

our industry up for harmonization?

 

First of all I should explain that there's an entity called the

Dietary Supplement Working Group of the Trans Atlantic Business

Dialogue also known as TABD. Their website is www.tabd.org. TABD is

a U.N. NGO group. NGO means Non Government Organization. What TABD

is doing encompasses many different working groups from many

different industries, not just the dietary supplement industry, that

are having dialogues on both sides of the Atlantic with key trade

officials and they're trying to get the laws harmonized. There's a

dietary supplement working group of TABD which is comprised mostly

of pharmaceutical interests that is attempting to harmonize American

vitamin laws to the European Union. They're not trying to harmonize

the European Union to our laws.

 

There are a lot of reasons for this but one of them is that they

just want one set of labeling and one set of rules, not two sets of

rules. One set of rules for the planet regardless of whether or not

this is in the best interest of consumers. In other words, you've

got to realize that the way WTO operates is when their Dispute

Settlement Body makes a ruling, they ignore all the intangibles that

go into the making up of a democratic nation's laws. Every single

ruling that the WTO's Dispute Settlement Body has made has gone

against the environment, against the public health, against consumer

rights, against labor rights, and against human rights. They're

trying to move the seat of power for the whole world to Brussels and

New York where the United Nations is. And then the national

governments of the world nations would be pretty much figureheads.

In other words, we really couldn't look to them any more because

they're being usurped. Power is going away from our immediate areas

and it's being centralized in Brussels. It's getting to a situation

similar to that which the colonists of this country had when we had

the revolution against England. We broke free of England because we

wanted to govern ourselves right here. Right where we live. Not be

governed by people across the ocean. We have a similar situation now

where people over in Brussels want to tell us what to do. Well I'm

sorry, I'm not going to let anybody over in Brussels tell me

anything. Nobody in America should let anybody in Brussels tell them

what to do. We must send donations to ANH for their lawsuit to

overturn the EU Food Supplements Directive because it threatens to

impact us via CODEX.

 

Are there other Directives besides the Food Supplements Directive

that we need to be concerned about?

 

Yes. If a really restrictive Codex vitamin standard is created,

there are two other Directives in Europe waiting in the wings that

are working their way through the European Parliament that also have

to be stopped.

 

What are those Directives and what would their implications be?

 

One is the EU Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products Directive and

the other is the EU Pharmaceuticals Directive. Both are described in

detail at http://www.alliance-natural-health.org The Traditional

Herbal Medicinal Directive attacks herbs and the Pharmaceuticals

Directive attacks anything that has any physiological effect on the

body. In other words, anything that manages to make it through the

other two Directives gets stepped on by the third Directive which is

the heavyweight. The third Directive is the 10,000-pound gorilla. It

trumps everything. It makes water a drug.

 

So even though there's lobbying efforts against the Food Supplements

Directive right now, these other two Directives may be even worse?

 

That#146;s right. But we won't have a chance of stopping them if we

don#146;t first overturn the Food Supplements Directive in court.

 

What#146;s really amazing is that most people in our industry know

very little, if any, about these issues. Ever since the Dietary

Supplement Health & Education Act (DSHEA) passed in 1994 that

governs our industry, they assume our vitamin laws are safe and that

international laws somehow won#146;t impact us.

 

Well they don#146;t understand what's going on. They don't

understand that there have been instances already where we have been

forced to harmonize our laws. See http://www.citizen.org/trade/ See

the book WTO: Whose Trade Organization? By Lori Wallach, JD. Also

see the article U.S. Congress Bows to WTO Mandate - Our National

Sovereignty is Violated by Congressman Ron Paul

http://www.thelibertycommittee.org/uscongressbows.htm. Also see

letter from Congressman Ron Paul and Peter De Fazio to Congressman

Burton pleading for a solid oversight hearing on the Codex vitamin

issue in light of my findings (see page 15). Due to pharmaceutical

pressure the hearing was whitewashed, and we have been set up to

lose in a WTO Trade Dispute by the FDA.

 

Let's say this Directive can't be stopped and a restrictive vitamin

standard is passed at Codex. Who would act as the enforcement arm to

mandate that the U.S. abide by these trade laws - the FDA?

 

The FDA is more than willing to comply with international law and

enforce Codex so in answer to your question, yes, the FDA would

ultimately be used as the enforcement arm. What would happen is if

we went before the WTO court, the only legal means by which we could

defend our domestic law is on a basis of safety. However, the FDA

has been taking steps to ensure we lose a WTO trade dispute and the

way they've been taking those steps is by generating false

definitions of vitamin safety. In other words, under the SPS

agreement, the Sanitary Phyto Sanitary measures agreement, the only

way you can defend your domestic law from harmonization is on the

basis of safety. Well, we'd have no problem doing that if the matter

were under review in a U.S. court where we could bring any expert

witness that we wanted to testify, including private citizens

like Linus Pauling if he were still alive for example - people of

that caliber. But the problem is, no private citizens have standing

to appear before the WTO's Dispute Settlement Body.

 

A major breakthrough occurred recently in Germany at the latest

round of Codex meetings. Industry leaders are hailing this as some

kind of progress but to me, it seems like bargaining with the devil.

It deals with " Safe Upper Limits " of nutritional supplements and

this was allowed to advance at Codex. I'm hearing reports that this

will now put Codex on a fast track to completion which could happen

some time in the next year or so. What can you tell us about this?

 

The Codex meeting where the vitamin agenda item " advanced " just

occurred from November 3-7 in Bonn. IAHF did not attend, having been

permanently banned from attending Codex meetings. Vitamin consumers

worldwide were burned at this year's meeting of the U.N. Codex

Alimentarius Commission's Committee on Nutrition and Foods For

Special Dietary Use where the agenda item on vitamins and minerals,

which had been blocked from moving for 8 years, just advanced from

Step 3 to the pivotal Step 5. Codex Rules allow for implementation

at Step 6 if there is unanimous agreement on an agenda item,

otherwise, it can take as many as 8 steps to win approval.

 

What's most distressing to me about this situation is that

misleading reports have been sent out by Simon Petman of controlled

opposition group IADSA (International Alliance of Dietary

Supplements Association), by CRN (Council for Responsible

Nutrition), and by others, who would have us all believe that

a " victory " for vitamin consumers was achieved at this year's

meeting because a move to impose RDA potency levels was scrapped in

favor of using less draconian, but equally unscientific " Safe

Upper Levels " as determined by supposedly " scientific " risk

assessment.

 

Unfortunately, all we've just seen unfold was a classic " bait and

switch " ' con game - a perfect illustration of the Hegelian

Dialectic: Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis. That is, FIRST, the

Cartel creates the problem (threat of restricting things to RDA

levels), in order to create a desired public reaction (FEAR), THEN

the Cartel ushers in an alleged " Solution " to this problem by

conning people into getting behind supposed " Safe Upper Levels "

(e.g. 35 mg on niacin). It wasn't legal for Dr. Beth Yetley of the

FDA to put the biased, pharmaceutically funded paper " A Risk

Assessment Model for Establishing Safe Upper Levels for Nutrients "

on the table at Codex in 1998, but she did so anyway knowing that

the Pharma Spin Machine has the power to rig any Congressional

Oversight hearing at which her illegal actions might be exposed.

Although she was told by several members of Congress not to put this

paper on the table at Codex [see their letters at

http://www.iahf.com under " Letters from Congress " ], she did so

anyway, and on March 20, 2001, an Oversight Hearing on Codex where

this crime could have been exposed was whitewashed. I wasn#146;t

allowed to testify, and neither were any of my witnesses including

Richard Malter, PhD, whose scholarly rebuttal to the National

Academy of Sciences " Risk Assessment " paper was published in the

Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, Second Quarter 2000, Volume 15,

Number 2. [see it along with the NAS paper which openly states that

it was funded by pharmaceutical interests at http://www.iahf.com

under NAS Paper and Rebuttal]

 

Paul Taylor, a tireless health freedom fighter from the UK has

provided us with a very well written report from the Codex meeting

which concluded recently in Bonn, Germany. Here's a short excerpt

summary of what he believes to still be a dangerous threat worldwide

to all health freedom advocates.

 

" The growing similarities, and others, between the text of the EU

Food Supplements Directive and the Codex Draft Guidelines for

Vitamin and Mineral Supplements are no coincidence. Basil

Mathioudakis (the EC Observer), who drafted the text of the EU Food

Supplements Directive, will now be representing 25 EU countries at

the next Codex meeting in Bonn in November 2004. Clearly the long-

held fear that the EU will eventually win the vote at Codex over the

vitamin and mineral issue through being able to outvote all of the

other countries could soon become a reality. This therefore raises

the grim possibility that discussions regarding the Codex Draft

Guidelines for Vitamin and Mineral Supplements could even be

concluded at next year#146;s meeting. This eventuality could have

grave implications for the legal challenge to the EU Food

Supplements Directive because if the Codex Guidelines were finalized

before the legal challenge is complete, the UK lawyers would in

essence be arguing for naught.

 

In summary then, Codex is the trump card. Even if the legal

challenge to the Food Supplements Directive is successful, the Codex

proposals could still be implemented globally, effectively

overruling any short-term victory for health freedom in Europe.

Proof of this comes from recent research by the American Holistic

Health Association, which confirms that implementation of the Codex

Guidelines for Vitamin and Mineral Food Supplements is not optional.

See http://www.ahha.org/AHHAcomments2003.htm Clearly then, the next

couple of years are going to be crucial ones for the future of

natural healthcare and freedom of choice. "

 

That's pretty alarming John. In my opinion, instead of trying to

cooperate with Codex, we should be working as an industry to

completely disband from Codex and all these international

organizations and trade agreements. None of these international laws

will benefit us here in the U.S. no matter how hard we try and

massage them to our liking. If I understand the seriousness of what

you're saying, we must, as an industry, get behind the lawsuit that

the Alliance For Natural Health has filed in order to overturn the

whole EU Directive to block what could turn out to be something

terrible for our industry when Codex finalizes its laws?

 

Yes. We have Anderson, the best lawyer in England handling the case.

This guy has made over seventy appearances before the European court

of Justice, which is their equivalent to our Supreme Court. This guy

is the first one to ever successfully have a European Directive

overturned. He studied this case very carefully before agreeing to

take it on because he wants to build on the case law he's already

established to win. He wants to win badly. He wouldn't have agreed

to take on the case if he didn't think he could win. He's an

excellent attorney, one of the best in the world and we've got to go

through with this. It's our only shot.

 

 

What kind of support is the Alliance For Natural Health getting from

citizens throughout Europe and the rest of the world?

 

They're able to get donations over a secure form on their website.

Donations are trickling in but they are still working to get more

resources that are needed.

 

When America's supplement industry was under attack back in the

early 1990s, millions of people rose up and wrote Congress and

demanded that they continue to have free access to dietary

supplements. Are you seeing this kind of protest happening in Europe

as well?

 

The letter writing campaign behind DSHEA was the largest volume of

mail ever received on a single issue by the U.S. Congress in its

history. They received more mail in a campaign to pass DSHEA than

they did for the Vietnam War.

 

I have to imagine that this is going on in Europe as well?

 

We sent enough email to crash the server on the day of the vote on

the EU Food Supplements Directive. This was done via Dr. Matthias

Rath's website. The EU labeled Rath a " terrorist " for facilitating

this email blitz, and he was removed from the EU Parliament Building

by armed guards who would not allow him to speak. The European Union

is a dictatorship controlled by multinational corporate interests.

The members of the European Parliament really don't have any power.

The European Parliament is just window dressing. The only people

that really have power are the European Commission. They're not even

elected, they're appointed.

 

Who is putting these people in power?

 

The drug companies and other multinational corporate interests that

dominate the European Commission who really make the laws. The

European Parliament is just a facade to appease the people to make

them think that they have a democratic government, but it's really a

joke. It's the most corrupt, treacherously dictatorial regime on the

face of the earth - bar none.I hesitate to make the comparison

because of the negative connotations but what's happening in Europe

sounds to me like the revival of the Nazi Empire, only this time

they are seeking to suck the whole world into this web, including

the United States.

 

It's interesting that you say that because there's a guy named

Phillip Day who would totally agree with you. Phillip Day is an

Englishman who wrote a book called Ten Minutes To Midnight that I

mentioned in my article Ripping Up The Railroad Tracks To Auschwitz,

which can be found on my website at www.iahf.com [see Emergency

Alert]. On the cover of Day's book it shows Big Ben, the famous

clock in London, with the British flag super imposed on the clock

face with ten minutes of the flag remaining as the clock ticks

towards midnight. This book is about the imminent destruction of

England as a nation as it gets plunged into darkness and gets

subsumed by the Nazi entity called the European Union. In the book

he documents the Nazi origins of the European Union and he documents

how after losing WWII the Nazi's set the stage for regaining power

in Europe. They in fact set the stage for the creation of the

European Union and all this is thoroughly discussed in his book.

After I reviewed Day's book I find it to be unimpeachable. There's

no controversy about the fact that the European Union is a Nazi

entity. Hitler's rise to power was fueled by I.G. Farben. They ran

the concentration camps and fueled his war machine. They were under-

written by American corporate interests and after the war through

Project Paperclip many of Germany's top Nazi's were brought here to

America for work. So WWII never ended, that's just an illusion.

 

We've been witnessing in our lifetime, especially in the last ten or

so years, this global beast really taking root with such things as

NAFTA, GATT, WTO, FTAA, IMF, World Bank, World Court, and other

international organizations and trade agreements coming to fruition.

 

You have to look at the Hegelian Dialectic and what it really means.

The Hegelian Dialectic is thesis plus antithesis, which eventually

leads to synthesis. What this refers to is Problem - Reaction -

Solution where you have these would be rulers trying to form a

global totalitarian state. The way they're doing it is that they're

tricking us in the way that they want us to move where first they'll

create a problem in order to trigger a desired public reaction, such

as fear, and then they propose the alleged solution which they've

already thought out in advance that moves the gullible sheep towards

the cliff. They've consistently used this careful bate and switch

tactic for centuries. They've been behind all the world's wars where

they've controlled both sides and they control the outcome. And it's

desirous for them to trigger wars. They started the first world war

to try to get us into the League of Nations. Congress didn't go for

that because they realized the League of Nations was

unconstitutional. So the globalists set the stage for a second world

war by not doing anything to re-build post war Germany in the

aftermath.

 

They set the stage for Hitler's rise to power in order to trigger a

second world war because they needed a second world war to get us

into this League of Nations, which by then was re-named the United

Nations. They needed a pretext to get us into that. They used

similar bate and switch tactics to get us into the WTO as well.

Neither one can be trusted.

 

Since the war in Iraq began some of our elected officials are saying

the U.S. should get out of the U.N. With all of these international

trade agreements in place do you honestly see that ever happening?

 

No. It would be nice if we could. Congressman Ron Paul has a Bill

right now that would get us out of the U.N., HR 1146 The American

Sovereignty Restoration Act, but that doesn't have any appreciable

movement at this time [15 cosponsors- all members of the Liberty

Caucus http://www.thelibertycommittee.org]. He's at least trying. He

tried to get House Joint Resolution 90 through a few years ago that

could have removed us from the WTO. He had only roughly forty or so

supporters for that. There at least is a movement to a degree to get

us out of these world bodies, which we should do because it's to

nobody's advantage to get us into a situation like exists in the

European Union. I've talked to people in England and other countries

over there who are totally disillusioned and feel they have no

ability to shape their destiny because Brussels is so hard to get

to. The only country from which people can relatively afford to get

to Brussels is from France but from anywhere else in Europe it's

as expensive as it is to fly from London to New York. The fact that

England has not joined the economic union yet shows that there's

still some hope for rebellion. As long as England has the pound at

least they have some autonomy. The moment they go in for monetary

union and embrace the Euro that's when they're done for completely.

They#146;re almost done for now, that's why Phillip's book is titled

Ten Minutes To Midnight.

 

That's why I think the EU Food Supplements Directive and what's

happening with Codex is so critically important. If Europe can ram

rod this draconian legislation down all the EU member nations it's

only a matter of time before this ripple effect hits here in

America. Without free access to dietary supplements our health will

be entirely in the hands of the globalists.

 

 

You have to understand what Big Brother's goal is here. Big Brother

wants to cull our numbers. Big Brother doesn't want us living over

the age of sixty-five. He wants us to keel over on our sixty-fifth

birthday. They don't want us to get on these entitlement programs

like Medicare and Medicaid because these things are bankrupt and

they don't have the money to keep them going. They're also worried

about world population. It's not to their advantage if we're

healthy. They don't make business with health they make business

with disease. An example of that is back in the 1950s when they

stopped farmers from using manure for fertilizer and they got them

all using chemical fertilizers and they broke the sulfur cycle. They

did that on purpose knowing that it would trigger a huge rise in

cancer and other degenerative diseases that would enable them to

sell a lot more pharmaceutical drugs. That's just one example.

Anything preventative they're against. Anything that will make you

sick or will keep you sick, or keep you going into their hospitals

to see their doctors to get drugs is what they want. It's as simple

as that. They don't want you living a long time. Another aspect of

this, which is even more sinister - food control equals people

control. If they can control the world's food supply, which is what

they're trying to do through Codex, they have us in the palm of

their hands. That's what they're after - control.

 

Some people reading this interview may think that everything

you#146;re saying here is too far fetched and that there's no way

any of these things could happen - there's no way we, as Americans,

would tolerate this. However, an interesting scenario is unfolding

with genetically modified foods. The U.S. is the number one producer

of genetically modified foods and Europe has not openly embraced our

exports or these foods being planted. They've got a moratorium in

place where they can't grow and farm biotech crops until all these

safety studies are done, yet the United States is threatening to do

to Europe what Europe in turn would potentially seek to do to us on

the vitamins. We're threatening to take this trade dispute to the

WTO and say that they're restricting free trade in an effort to

force Europe to accept GMOs.

 

It is ironic isn't it?

 

Most people in America still have no idea that roughly 70% of the

foods in the grocery store are now genetically modified. Yet we're

trying to shove GM foods down Europe's throat and the rest of the

world's throat through the same tactics Europe would use against us.

 

The sad part about it is the Dispute Settlement Body of the WTO will

probably force Europe to accept genetically engineered foods the way

they'll more than likely force us to harmonize our dietary

supplement laws. I didn't finish commenting on this earlier. Under

the Sanitary Phyto Sanitary measures agreement, the only means by

which a country has to protect their domestic law, the FDA has been

creating false safety standards for supplements through safety

monographs that they've had developed under the National Academy of

Sciences where they generated bogus safety monographs for the most

commonly used supplements. And they're continuing to do these bogus

safety investigation monographs on products like saw palmetto, DHEA,

melatonin, shark cartilage, chaparral and chromium picolinate. What

are they doing a safety monograph on Saw Palmetto extract for? This

is a waste of our tax dollars. We don't need to be wasting valuable

tax dollars on totally safe supplements. Saw Palmetto is far

less expensive and far more effective for the prevention and

treatment of benign prostate hypertrophy than the drug Proscar, but

FDA is on a witch-hunt to remove Saw Palmetto from the market under

false pretenses in order to protect the profits of Merck, makers of

Proscar. The same motive holds true for all other supplements under

FDA " review. "

 

That's pretty astounding considering the fact that there are over

100,000 people in America dying each year from pharmaceutical drug

side effects, yet I bet we can't even count on our hands the number

of people that are dying from dietary supplements.

 

Exactly. We've got the equivalent of a 747 crashing and burning

every calendar day for a year from iatrogenic side effects from

properly prescribed pharmaceutical drugs. This is documented in the

Journal of the American Medical Association, which has identified

properly prescribed prescription drugs as the third leading cause of

death. When Dr. Barbara Starfield wrote the article in JAMA July 26,

2000 she stated that the Iatrogenic causes of death in U.S.

hospitals averaged 225,000 per year. This means mistakes by nurses,

Doctors and hospital systems. Of that figure, 106,000 deaths per

year were from non-error use of prescribed medications. This was a

decade long study. The label " third largest cause of death " was for

the entire system. The non-error use of prescription drugs was

roughly half that amount. It still means that over 1 million

people were poisoned to death in the decade of the 90s by the Pharma

cartel. At the same time, there was not one death from Niacin,

Chromium Picolinate, L-Arginine, L-Carnitine, Vitamin C or any other

nutrient sold and taken by human beings. Not one nutrient had a

prescribed limit. There were no warnings of severe side effects on

any that I have purchased. The health benefits were noticeable

instantly in the increased vibrancy of the human condition and

vitality. So whom are they kidding? You have less of a chance dying

from a dietary supplement than you do from a bee sting or being hit

by lightning. The hypocrisy is mind blowing. The double standard is

mind blowing. And the biggest problem we have is the Pharma

tentacles that reach into our vitamin trade associations and the

fact that the members of these trade associations allow that to

happen.

 

Why don't you touch on that briefly - what can you tell us about

these industry trade associations?

 

Well, NNFA (National Nutritional Foods Association) has a conflict

of interest disclosure bylaw, article 14.3, in their bylaws. They

have a code of ethics that can be seen on their website at

www.nnfa.org and they#146;re not enforcing these. On paper, any new

company considering joining NNFA would read their code of ethics and

bylaws and be led to believe that the trade association is truly

behind them and that they-re truly protecting their interest, but

they-re not. Not when they let pharmaceutical companies join. Not

when they let employees like Randy Dennin of Pfizer hold key

committee chairmanships on committees like IADSA (International

Alliance of Dietary Supplements Association). IADSA is an

umbrella group of the world#146;s vitamin trade associations. It has

NGO status at the U.N. to represent the supplement industry at Codex

meetings. Unfortunately, IADSA is setting our industry up to go over

the cliff.

 

I was at a hospitality suite dinner at the NNFA vitamin trade show

in Las Vegas in 1999 and at this dinner IADSA was introduced to

members of NNFA that were at that trade show. People were shown a

slide show that showed a map of the world and it was very

simplistic. It showed the U.S. marked in green indicating the proper

degree of access to supplements on account of DSHEA and it showed

countries like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, England, Ireland,

Holland and Sweden marked as striped indicating less than ideal

access but still better than a lot of other countries. Then the

whole rest of the world was red indicating poor access. Major work

needs to be done to harmonize these countries to our supplement laws

based on DSHEA. People were led to believe that IADSA was our

savior and that they were there to protect us by representing us at

Codex meetings. They were led to believe that IADSA#146;s goal was

to harmonize the world to DSHEA. Now the reality of IADSA is the

exact opposite.

 

IADSA is doing the diametric opposite to what NNFA members have

been conned into believing it's doing. I built the website that

exposes this. The address was http://iadsa-exposed.tripod.com but it

was mysteriously removed from cyberspace just prior to the Expo East

vitamin trade show in Washington in early September, presumably by

Dennin. The information has been reposted at

http://www.iahf.com/iadsa Dennin was emailed

directly about this [http://www.iahf.com see " Letters to Dennin " ]

but predictably, he did not reply. He has consistently refused to

debate me publicly knowing he cannot beat me in a public debate.

Gary Null challenged him to debate me, and he refused.

 

On the IADSA exposed website I have giff files of letters going back

and forth between the board of directors of NNFA New Zealand and

IADSA. What is going on here is that Australia has very stringent

pharmaceuticalized supplement regulations that are among the worst

in the world. That's where they recently had this recall that

resulted in over 1600 dietary supplements being removed from the

shelves under false pretenses without a single product assay to

prove contamination. And this was accompanied by a media circus

demonizing the whole supplement industry. Not a single one of those

products should have been removed from the shelf. There was not a

shred of evidence to prove that any of them were dangerous. This

whole thing is a farce.

 

Neighboring New Zealand on the other hand has very liberal food

based supplement regulations very similar to ours. There is massive

harmonization pressure on New Zealand from Australia to try to force

them to harmonize to their laws. I say all this to say that if IADSA

were for real, they would have done everything in their power to

assist New Zealand in repelling the Australian invasion. Then the

other thing that happened was IADSA#146;s lobbyist, Simon Pettman,

in Brussels, refused to send out a press release defending Kava Kava

when it came under heavy attack in the media. Ron Law from New

Zealand's NNFA, a country where you can get Kava, said: " Please,

please, I'll furnish you with a risk assessment but do a press

release under IADSA's auspices. " Simon Pettman wouldn't

do it and the reason he wouldn't do it is that he's not only

lobbying for IADSA, but he#146;s lobbying for other organizations

which include Merck, a company that wanted Kava banned in the first

place.

 

So we have these massive conflicts of interest. Ron Law of NNFA New

Zealand wrote an e-mail to Randy Dennin complaining about Pettman

raising the issue of conflict of interest. Dennin responded to Ron

Law accusing him of making wildly unsubstantiated accusations. Then

the board of NNFA New Zealand wrote a very straightforward letter to

the board of IADSA enumerating their grievances. Rather than invite

them to come to a meeting to discuss them in a formal way, IADSA

simply expelled them. They threw them out. That proves what they're

all about. That proves that they can't be trusted and they're trying

to take this whole industry down. And what I've been saying to NNFA

is: " Why do you tolerate this. Why don't you enforce your own bylaws

and throw Dennin out and tell IADSA you don't represent us. Why

don't you get behind the Alliance For Natural Health? They're

actually trying to do what we were told IADSA was all about. "

 

What do you feel is the best way people in the U.S. can work to stop

what's happening because it appears to me that the only way to stop

this onslaught is to wake up the sleeping populous that depend upon

their supplements and to band with the British and fight back with

everything we have?

 

What we need to do is the following. We need to get donations to the

Alliance For Natural Health via their website

http://www.alliance-natural-health.org not only to get the Food

Supplements Directive overturned in court, but to provide the

funding for a proper lobbying campaign in Brussels against the other

two Directives which have to be killed. I don't think anybody can

trust the U.S. trade Representatives Office or the Department of

Commerce. But the proof will be in the pudding. I don#146;t trust

their responses to my letters at all. What we have to do is contact

them en masse, which is something the public should do. Not only

should they let their Congressmen and Senators know that we want

Europe to Harmonize to DSHEA, but they also need to tell the U.S.

Department of Commerce and the U.S. Trade Representatives Office as

well.

 

Where's this all going John? Do you really think people will wake

up and take action or are they too concerned about trivial things

such as sports and entertainment while our whole nation is being

sold out?

 

You know something - it hasn't gotten as bad here as it's getting in

England. I've been over to England and I've seen what those poor

people have to contend with, with the European Union. If they start

going whole hog on pushing the FTAA on us here in our hemisphere,

all I can say is good luck. Good luck FTAA. You want to get an idea

of what I#146;m talking about, look at the photographs on the web of

the demonstrations that occurred in Seattle in '99 against the WTO

and in Quebec City in 2001 against the summit meeting of the FTAA.

All hell broke loose and there was an actual war where thousands of

demonstrators squared off against these heavily fortified police.

Riots are happening because oppression is happening. Riots are

happening because people's rights are being trampled into the dirt.

Riots are happening because there is no more democracy. All we have

is a totalitarian state. Riots are happening because people are

being ignored. All of the intangibles that go into the making

of a democratic nation's laws are being trashed by the World Trade

Organization, which is running rough shod over people's rights

through secret entities that we have no access to like the Dispute

Settlement Body of the WTO. They hold their courts in secret. We

can't get in there and see what goes on in that courtroom. It's a

sick joke.

 

You're exactly right. It's a shame what's happening. I can never set

foot inside the U.N. Codex Alimentarius Commission Committee on

nutrition again. I have been permanently banned from setting foot

inside that meeting ever again by the German government because I

videotaped the first half hour of the Codex meeting in 1998 until

the German chair of the meeting noticed that I was taping and forced

me to turn my camera off. I have an edited section of that footage

showing them forcing me to turn my camera off. I have that on my

website at www.iahf.com. That's why I got thrown off the delegation.

I'm not allowed back on the panel because of my whistle blowing

efforts.

 

Well John, we could go on for hours about all the intricate details

of the events taking place. I know we just scratched the surface

with this interview. However, I think you've certainly given our

readers plenty of good, eye opening information so they have a

greater understanding of the situation. I want to thank you for your

time and keep up the excellent work you're doing. I look forward to

doing a follow up interview with you down the road as more events

unfold.

 

CREDITS:

John Hammell will be turning International Advocates for Health

Freedom into a Membership Organization in the near future. For

updates you can sign on to the IAHF email distribution list at

http://www.iahf.com For questions about this article, contact IAHF

via jham or via 1-800-333-2553. In an effort to awaken a

sleeping public, IAHF is in a process of putting together a power

point presentation, and a video to facilitate public speaking and

education. IAHF has a monitor operating directly in Washington DC,

and has contacts around the world. Donations to IAHF can be made via

IAHF 556 Boundary Bay Rd. Point Roberts, WA 98281 USA.

 

Congress of the United States. House of Representatives.

 

Mr. Chairman, we appreciate the opportunity to submit comments

regarding the need to protect consumers from intrusive regulations

which interfere with the availability of dietary supplements.

Today's hearing is just the latest example of the leadership you

have shown on this important issue.

 

Over the past decade the American people have made it clear that

they do not want the federal government to interfere with their

access to dietary supplements. In 1994, Congress responded to the

American people's desire for greater access to the truth about the

benefits of dietary supplements by passing the Dietary Supplements

and Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA), which liberalized the

rules regarding the regulation of dietary supplements. Congressional

offices received a record number of comments in favor of DSHEA.

 

Despite DSHEA, officials of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

continued to attempt to enforce regulation aimed at keeping the

American public in the dark about the benefits of dietary

supplements. However, in the case of Pearson v. Shalala, 154 F.3d

650 (DC Cir. 1999), reh'g denied en banc, 172 F. 3d 72 (DC Cir.

1999), the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit Court

reaffirmed consumers' first amendment rights to learn about how

using dietary supplements can improve their health without

unnecessary interference from the FDA. The FDA has been forced to

revise its regulations in order to comply with Pearson. However,

members of Congress have had to intervene with the FDA on several

occasions to ensure that they followed the court's order. Clearly

Congress must continue to monitor the FDA#146;s action in this area.

 

The freedom of consumers to use, or even obtain truthful information

about dietary supplements could also be threatened by the United

States participation in the Codex Alimentarius Commission (Codex).

Codex is part of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United

Nations and the World Health Organization Food Standard Program

operating under the authority of the Sanitary Phytosanitary

Agreement and the Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement.

 

Codex is the vehicle through which the World Trade Organization

(WTO) is working to " harmonize " (e.g. conform) food and safety

regulations of WTO member countries. Codex is currently creating a

guideline on the proper regulation for dietary supplements with the

participation of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). We are

concerned that the end result of this process will force the United

States to adopt the same strict regulations of dietary supplements

common in European countries such as not dispensing a bottle of

dietary supplements without a pharmacists permission. By

participating in this process, the FDA is ignoring the will of

Congress as expressed in DSHEA and in the FDA Modernization Act of

1997, which expressly forbid the FDA from participating in the

harmonization process, as well as the will of the American people.

 

While Codex has no direct authority to force Americans to adopt

stringent regulations of dietary supplements, we are concerned that

the United States may be forced to adopt Codex standards as a result

of the United States' status as a member of the WTO. According to an

August 199 report of the Congressional Research Service, " As a

member of the WTO, the United States does commit to act in

accordance with the rules of the multilateral body. It [the U.S.] is

legally obligated to ensure national laws do not conflict with WTO

rules. " Thus, Congress may have a legal obligation to again change

American laws and regulations to conform with WTO rules!

 

If Congress were to refuse to " harmonize " US laws according to

strict Codex/WTO guidelines, a WTO " dispute resolution panel " could

find that the United States is engaging in unfair trade because of

our failure to " harmonize " our regulations with the rest of the

world. In any such trade dispute, the scales are tipped in favor of

countries using Codex standards because of WTO rules presuming that

a nation who has adopted Codex has not erected an unfair trade

barrier. Therefore, in a dispute with a country that has adopted the

Codex standards it is highly probable that America would lose and be

subject to heavy sanctions unless Congress harmonized our laws with

the other WTO countries. Harmonization may be beneficial for the

large corporations and international bureaucrats that control the

WTO but it would be a disaster for American consumers of dietary

supplements!

 

In conclusion, we once again thank Chairman Burton for holding this

hearing and for all his efforts to protect the freedom of American

dietary supplements customers and for the opportunity to express our

concerns regarding the threat to American consumers posed by the WTO

and the Codex Alimentarius process. We also express our hope that

Congress will act to protect the freedom of American consumers from

over regulation of dietary supplements whether imposed by the FDA or

through the back door by an international organization such as the

WTO.