Codex Chairman Seeks to Thwart Pro Health

[Guest guest]

Hi everyone...

 

If you do not know about Codex and the serious implications for your

health, and the health of your loved ones, please take the time to

learn about this important global movement to restrict access to

nutrition.

 

Misty L. Trepke

http://www..com

 

[electroherbalism] Codex Chairman Seeks to Thwart Pro Health

 

" Codex' restrictive " Vitamin and Mineral Guideline " treats nutrients

as toxins to be regulated on the basis of " risk analysis " without

regard for benefit. Incredibly, a US dominated* WHO Workshop on the

Application of Risk Assessment to Nutrients expanded the concept from

Vitamins and Minerals to all nutrients and offered further guidance

which defines an adverse event related to any nutrient as " any change

in a bio marker " . This means that any nutrient which produces any

change, no matter how beneficial, will be a prohibited substance for

international trade. At the same time, nations are being advised to

adopt the alleged " science based " Codex Guidelines as their own

domestic legislation in a process called " harmonization " . Based on

poor science, many of these Guidelines guarantee poor nutritional

status and preventable ill health for billions of people, starting

with the most nutritionally vulnerable. "

 

" Clinically ineffective level of nutrients which are treated as if

they are toxins, highly profitable but dangerously high levels of

pesticides and antibiotics, mandatory contamination of the global

food supply by procedures such as irradiation and treatment of food

animals (including dairy cattle) with growth/sex hormones,

Genetically Modified foods, significant weakening of Organic Food

standards and other decisions taken by Codex over the years are of

grave concern to consumers and health advocates... "

 

" diseases identified by the WHO as the chronic degenerative diseases

of under nutrition: cancers, cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes

and obesity which, in fact, are responsible for 59% of the world's

disease burden now and are expected to increase that percentage

sharply as Codex provisions are implemented world-wide. "

 

This in a nutshell sums up the CODEX deliberations and the following

shows the typical politics at play and is a good primer to most who

are struggling to get a handle on this.

 

Chris Gupta

http://tinyurl.com/n5eq5

 

*<http://healthy.net/scr/news.asp?Id=8434>Codex: FDA " Vetoes " Optimal

Nutrition for Health

 

See also:

<http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/chris/2005/01/24/life_under_codex.ht

m>LIFE

UNDER CODEX (a bit dated but still provides a good summary)

---

 

July 5, 2006

 

Codex Chairman Seeks to Thwart Natural Solutions Foundation Pro

Health Codex Initiative

 

Natural Solutions Foundation must be doing something right because

the Chairman of the Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC or " Codex " )

took direct action last week to stop the Foundation's pro-health

initiative next week's Geneva Codex meeting.

 

Geneva (PRWEB) July 5, 2006 -- In an unprecedented move, CAC's

Chairman Moshe sent a letter to the head of a national department in

an African country to prevent the Natural Solutions Foundation from

offering official sponsorship to a pro-health scientist so that he

could attend Codex as part of that country's delegation. The Natural

Solutions Foundation's pro-health multi-national strategy is

apparently a significant threat to the underlying corporate agenda(s)

of CAC. The national delegate, who has previously represented his

country at numerous Codex meetings, was prevented from attending this

year's meeting by the direct intervention of the power structure of

CAC this week when the CAC Chair wrote a sharp letter opposing his

attendance at the meeting. The delegate's country complied with the

Chair's demand so the delegate was prevented from attending as part

of the National Solutions Foundation international pro-health

consortium participating in the CAC deliberations scheduled to take

place here in Geneva next week (July 3-7, 2006). Political

strategists and Natural Solutions Foundation analysts interpret this

move on the part of the CAC as confirming the centrality of the

pro-illness agenda of CAC.

 

Codex, the world's food standard setting body, is a special project

of the World Health Organization (WHO) and Food and Agriculture

Organization (FAO) convened at the request of the United Nations in

1962. Codex is strongly influenced by multinational corporations

whose profit structure depend on large scale agriculture ( " Agribiz " ),

pesticides and other industrial chemicals in the food supply,

veterinary drugs and growth stimulants ( " Big Chema " ), biotechnology

( " Big Biotechna " ) or wide spread illness ( " Big Pharma " and " Big

Medica " ). Leading health advocacy organizations like the Natural

Solutions Foundation see Codex policies as relying heavily on corrupt

" corporate " science. Codex policy appears to be strongly opposed to,

rather than supportive of, optimal health.

 

In his highly irregular move, CAC Chairman Moshe directly intervened

to block the participation of a strongly pro-health scientist with

extensive Codex experience in this year's annual CAC meeting. The

scientist, whose Natural Solutions Foundation-sponsored participation

had been approved by the head of his national agency, is a well-known

and outspoken voice for health, optimum nutrition and environmental

concerns. At stake this year is a dramatic change of direction for

CAC: the implementation of the World Health Organization Global

Strategy for Diet, Physical Activity and Health (GSDPAH) which was

demanded of CAC by both of its parent organizations at the close of

the 2005 CAC meeting (Rome, 2005).

 

Of major significance is a the development of a strong multi-national

pro-health lobby at CAC which can support 11 strongly pro-health

principles for GSDPAH implementation introduced during discussion of

the topic at the Codex Committee on Food Labeling by South Africa

(May 1-5, 2006, Ottawa). If adopted and employed by CAC at its

meeting this year, South Africa's 11 principles can accomplish what

individual pro-health voices within CAC have not been able to during

more than years: bringing optimal health forward as a Codex goal.

 

The Natural Solutions Foundation strongly supports the adoption of

the South African principles for the implementation of the GSDPAH by

CAC. Since they focus on

 

*Optimal health (explicitly opposed by the United States as a goal

for CAC (CCFL, May 1, Ottawa, 2006))

 

*Access to nutritional supplements to enhance health

 

*Definition of dietary supplements as important tools for optimal

health, not toxins

 

*Elimination of commercial trans fats

 

*Banning of junk food advertising which targets children under 18

(also explicitly opposed by the United States(CCFL, May 1, Ottawa,

2006)) and other strong public health measures, these principles are

of great importance to consumers. At the same time, they pose a

significant threat to those corporate interests which profit from

contamination of the food supply and from widespread preventable, but

highly profitable, illness. The GSDPAH was adopted by the World

Health Assembly in 2004 and, as such, is morally incumbent upon every

member nation of the World Health Organization (which includes most

of the members of Codex).

 

The subject of the GSDPAH was introduced at the CAC last July (Rome,

2005) after several attempts by WHO and FAO to focus CAC on what Dr.

Kirsten Leitner of WHO identified as CAC's failure to " make a

contribution to human health in the [then 42 years of its existence "

were rebuffed by last year's CAC Chair, Dr. A. Slorach.

 

Dr. Leitner's statement [subsequently edited from the publicly

available video and audio record of the July 4-9, 2005 CAC Rome

meeting was followed by several other attempts to direct CAC's

attention to health promotion. On the last day of the meeting, WHO

and FAO jointly directed CAC to implement the GSDPAH. CAC was

directed to determine the nature of that implementation through

discussions on how that should take place by two Codex Committees

during the year leading up to the Geneva, 2006 CAC meeting this week

(July 3-7, 2006).

 

Although the Codex Committee of Nutrition and Foods for Special

Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU, Bonn, November 21-25, 2005) failed to move the

discussion forward because inadequate time was allotted for the

discussion, the Codex Committee on Food Labeling (CCFL, Ottawa, 2006)

did make progress with the introduction of South Africa's 11

principles.

 

In support of these strongly pro-health principles, the

<http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/>Natural Solutions Foundation, has

conducted an international mission and visited high level decision

makers and consumer advocates in Africa and elsewhere. Foundation

President Major General Albert N. Stubblebine III (US Army, Ret.) and

Medical Director Rima E. Laibow, MD have spent many weeks meeting

with decision makers at the top levels of government in many

countries to explain the importance of supporting the South African

position as a means of shifting CAC's function and mandate away from

corporate benefits and preventable diseases of under nutrition toward

consumer health and freedom of health choices. During these visits,

the legal options available to each country to protect its people

from health threats supported by CAC (e.g., dangerously high

pesticide levels, treating nutrients as toxins, mandated

under-nutrition, dangerous growth stimulants, mandatory antibiotic

and hormone use as well as other dangerous veterinary drug residues,

etc.) while protecting the country itself from crushing World Trade

Organization (WTO) trade sanctions if that country takes a stance

divergent from CAC's on these issues has been a topic of vigorous and

productive discussion. Natural Solutions Foundation documents and

information has been enthusiastically received by legislators,

Ministers of Health, National Consumer Advocates and others in the

countries where the most nutritionally vulnerable people in the world

live. Their nutritional vulnerability makes them especially

vulnerable to the diseases identified by the WHO as the chronic

degenerative diseases of under nutrition: cancers, cardiovascular

disease, stroke, diabetes and obesity which, in fact, are responsible

for 59% of the world's disease burden now and are expected to

increase that percentage sharply as Codex provisions are implemented

world-wide.

 

Natural Solutions Foundation's international activities have helped

to create a growing and increasingly vocal multi-national

constituency for health rather than corporate interests within Codex:

it has been successfully mobilizing an international pro-health

coalition of countries whose policies are not yet set by the

multinational corporations whose agenda it believes is being served

by Codex to the severe detriment of the health and health freedom of

the global population. One of the tools the foundation uses is

delegate sponsorship at Codex.

 

Sponsorship of delegates is permitted within the CAC context and is

common among corporations. Sponsored delegates represent their

countries but are heavily influenced by the positions of their

sponsors. Nestle, a major baby food and formula producer, for

example, frequently sponsors delegates to the influential Committee

on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU). Using a

" sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander " philosophy, the Natural

Solutions Foundation offers sponsorship to delegates from countries

whose national policies are pro-health but whose resources for

participation in CAC are limited. Such sponsorship allows national

delegations to attend and focus on strong support for health and

opposition to health-hostile corporate agendas based

upon<http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/chris/2004/12/15/an_open_challen

ge_to_the_ridiculous_dietary_allowance_rda.htm>

junk science.

 

Natural Solutions Foundation, dedicated to the twin concepts that

good health rests on a solid foundation of access to a clean,

unadulterated food supply including high potency nutrients and that

it is the right of every consumer to choose natural health options if

they desire, has pursued several strategies to promote world health

and end world hunger in the US and elsewhere. These include a legal

challenge to US Codex policy concerning dietary supplements

(<http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/action/step3.shtml>the Codex

Citizen's Petition), an informational DVD

(<http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/aboutcodex/dvd.shtml>Nutricide: the

DVD), a <http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/resources/books.shtml>Codex

eBook, documenting the protective strategy any country can take

against Codex errors as applied to the destructive and restrictive

Vitamin and Mineral Guideline and multiple international missions to

meet with national decision-makers in the world's most nutritionally

vulnerable countries to urge careful consideration of health policies

which are protective, unlike most of those urged by the supposedly

" science based " Codex guidelines and standards.

 

For example, Codex' restrictive " Vitamin and Mineral Guideline "

treats nutrients as toxins to be regulated on the basis of " risk

analysis " without regard for benefit. Incredibly, a US dominated WHO

Workshop on the Application of Risk Assessment to Nutrients expanded

the concept from Vitamins and Minerals to all nutrients and offered

further guidance which defines an adverse event related to any

nutrient as " any change in a bio marker " . This means that any

nutrient which produces any change, no matter how beneficial, will be

a prohibited substance for international trade. At the same time,

nations are being advised to adopt the alleged " science based " Codex

Guidelines as their own domestic legislation in a process called

" harmonization " . Based on poor science, many of these Guidelines

guarantee poor nutritional status and preventable ill health for

billions of people, starting with the most nutritionally vulnerable.

By studying the legal and procedural levels of Codex and the World

Trade Organization, the Natural Solutions Foundation and its allies

have devised a strategy for national correction of health-hostile

actions taken by Codex and revision of health-hostile Guidelines by

individual nations, including the

<http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/resources/books.shtml>Vitamin and

Mineral Guideline.

 

The Natural Solutions Foundation, in cooperation with it allies in

the Health Freedom movement (e.g., the Citizen's Codex Working Group)

believes that most of the Codex actions are supportive of corporate

well-being, but highly threatening to consumer health and choice. To

protect health and health freedom, the Natural Solutions Foundation

therefore pursues grass roots development, leadership education and

strategic support of countries and groups wishing to support consumer

health and health freedom.

 

# # #

 

======================

 

July 5, 2006

 

World Food Standard Setting Body Fails to Give Diet Its Due

 

Codex Aliementarius Commission at its 29th Session in Geneva failed

to move the vitally important, consumer protective " Global Strategy

on Diet, Physical Activity and Health " (GS) from last item on agenda.

Following the precedent of the nutrition hostile Codex Committee on

Nutrition and Food for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU, Bonn, Germany)

last November, where discussion of how to implement GS was moved from

item 2 to item 11 on the agenda so that no time remained for

discussion, Codex, the world food standards body (which treats

nutrients as if they were toxins)placed this consumer-friendly

discussion last. None of the 180+ members chose to protect consumer's

health by insuring adequate time for discussion of how to protect

their well-being by implementing the GS. Codex meetings end promptly

on schedule, a fact relied upon by Dr. Rolf Grossklaus, the CCNFSDU

Chair who recently stated that " nutrition has no place in medicine

(CCNFSDU, 2003).

 

Geneva, Switzerland (PRWEB) July 5, 2006 -- The world's food

standards setting body is divided by a deepening conflict over the

importance of protecting consumer's health and health freedoms vs.

the importance of trade considerations and multinational corporate

health. Although the disconnect between these agendas has been

brewing since the founding of the Codex Alimentarius Commission as a

Special Project of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food

and Agriculture Organization (FAO) at the request of the United

Nations. During its last session (July 4-9, 2005, Rome, Italy) the

WHO and FAO chastised Codex for " failing to make a significant

contribution to human health (Dr. Kirsten Leitner of WHO), suggested

that Codex " determine whether it has a relationship to nutrition and,

if so, what that relationship is [sic. " and, finally, find ways to

implement the WHO GS. The Codex Committee on Nutrition and Food for

Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU) and Codex Committee on Food Labeling

(CCFL) were mandated to provide full discussion during their meeting

before the current Codex Commission meeting currently taking place.

 

Continuing Codex' 43 year history of focusing on trade support to the

detriment of consumer protection, the 29th Session of the Codex

Alimentarius Commission adopted an agenda which virtually guarantees

that there will not be time to find ways to implement a

health-friendly World Health Organization Global Strategy on Diet,

Physical Activity and Health since it has been placed as the last

item on its agenda. The same tactic circumvented the mandated

discussion of this consumer-protective WHO GS and allowed it to

escape meaningful discussion at one of the two Codex committees, the

Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses

(CCNFSDU) tasked with determining how Codex can implement

consumer-friendly activities. CCNFSDU moved this important item from

Agenda item #2 to #11 (last item) and allotted only 13 minutes to its

discussion. Surprisingly, the German Secretariat of that committee

forgot to pass out a joint letter on the topic by WHO and FAO, Codex

parent organizations. After the letter was handed out (7 minutes),

the 6 remaining minutes we divided into 3 minutes of discussion and 3

minutes of a slide show inviting attendees to view the pleasant

surroundings of the 2006 CCNFSDU to be held the following year in

Chaing Mai, Thailand. Three minutes were thereby allotted for this

discussion. By guaranteeing inadequate time for discussion of the

implementation of the health-friendly WHO GS, the CAC meeting in

Geneva has just postponed, perhaps indefinitely, sweeping changes in

its activities to include health as a meaningful focus in addition to

the already well established trade considerations which drive Codex

actions and decisions.

 

<http://www.codexalimentarius.net/web/index_en.jsp>Codex official

website, notes " The Codex Alimentarius Commission was created in 1963

by FAO and WHO to develop food standards, guidelines and related

texts such as codes of practice under the Joint FAO/WHO Food

Standards Programme. The main purposes of this Programme are

protecting health of the consumers and ensuring fair trade practices

in the food trade, and promoting coordination of all food standards

work undertaken by international governmental and non-governmental

organizations. " Despite this articulation of the importance of

consumer health, in practice Codex has taken decisions which serve

the beneficiaries of the USD $400 Billion global annual food trade.

According to health and health freedom advocates and watchdogs like

the Natural Solutions Foundation, international consumer health and

health freedom are severely undermined by the strongly pro-trade, and

non pro-health, actions of Codex Alimentarius through the actions of

the global food standards body in the face of an increasingly

globalized food supply.

 

Clinically ineffective level of nutrients which are treated as if

they are toxins, highly profitable but dangerously high levels of

pesticides and antibiotics, mandatory contamination of the global

food supply by procedures such as irradiation and treatment of food

animals (including dairy cattle) with growth/sex hormones,

Genetically Modified foods, significant weakening of Organic Food

standards and other decisions taken by Codex over the years are of

grave concern to consumers and health advocates like the

internationally active Natural Solutions Foundation, world-wide.

Until last year's Codex meeting, these concerns were largely unvoiced

by countries because consumer voices were so poorly represented

compared to corporate ones. Corporations routinely use their

significant resources at Codex to sponsor delegates from developing

nations, lobby lucratively for their agendas inside governments and

agencies and form and fund Non Governmental Organizations designed to

further their positions. Corporate success has been outstanding

during the past 43 years.

 

With the mandated consideration of implementation of the GS by Codex

parent organizations WHO and FAO at last year's Codex Commission

meeting, a potentially audible voice for consumer concerns was

generated. This voice depended upon the outcome of the deliberations

of 1. A WHO electronic forum open to Codex member countries followed

by 2. Deliberations on the GS implementation by CCNFSDU (November,

2005, Bonn, Germany) and CCFL (May, 2006, Ottawa, Canada) since these

two committees were deemed to be the most suitable venues for

nutrition-focused discussion and 3. Deliberations of the issue at the

current Codex Alimentarius Commission meeting this week.

 

Giving voice to consumer interests,

<http://www.who.int/nutrition/comment_southafrica.pdf>South Africa

proposed 11 pro-health stragegies for this implementation, and

reiterated them at the CCFL meeting, inserting them into the final

report of that committee for Codex deliberation this week. This

deliberation is now restricted to whatever time is left at the end of

other deliberations of the Codex Commission on July. Whether the

voice of the global consumer will be audible remains to be seen.

 

Dr. Claude Mosha, this year's Codex Alimentarius Commission Chairman,

personally moved to silence that voice with a letter he took the

unprecedented step of writing to prevent a highly vocal national

delegate from attending this important Codex meeting under the

sponsorship of the Natural Solutions Foundation (see

" <http://tinyurl.com/ns2f5>Codex Chairman Seeks to Thwart Natural

Solutions Foundation Pro Health Codex Initiative " , July 5 PR Web

press release.) This action appears to have been undertaken in order

to prevent vigorous discussion regarding the GS, assuming that any

time is actually alloted to the GS by Codex.

 

# # #

 

======================

 

--

 

<mikechristieMike Christie

 

The Laws of Ecology: " All things are interconnected. Everything goes

somewhere. There's no such thing as a free lunch. Nature bats last. "

 

by Ernest Callenbach