- On its web site, CA (Latin for food code) says:
-
- "The Codex Alimentarius Commission was created in
1963 by the FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN) and WHO
(World Health Organization) 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."
-
- Whatever its founding purpose, CA is much different today
because corporate interests control it - global pharmaceutical, food, and
banking giants in league with complicit UN and government agencies to promote
GMOs over healthy foods, and drugs over natural remedies by restricting
or banning vitamin and dietary supplements, except ones they control. Organic
food as well by irradiation and hidden synthetic additives or ingredients.
-
- If CA's standards and guidelines are adopted, they'll
establish binding global rules, effectively overriding sovereign national
laws. GMO foods and drugs will proliferate. Labeling will be banned. Food
and drug giants will decide what will and won't be sold. Governments will
be prohibited from countermanding them. Everyone's health and well-being
will be jeopardized.
-
- Since its 2004 founding, the Natural Solutions Foundation
has been involved in "discover(ing), develop(ing), demonstrat(ing)
and disseminat(ing) natural solutions to the problems facing us and threatening
our health and freedom." Its goal is "to support advanced healthcare
and health freedom" globally, not a system promoting corporate interests
at the expense of human health and well-being.
-
- It explains that CA has "absolutely nothing to do
with consumer protection." It's a corporate-run "Trade Commission"
created to control "every aspect of how food and nutritional supplements
are produced and sold to the consumer." It's about profits, not human
health. It wants to ban natural remedies and promote unsafe drugs. It's
"unscientific because it classifies nutrients as toxins and uses 'Risk
Assessment' to set ultra low so-called 'safe upper limits' for them."
It wants to prohibit everything not explicitly permitted and controlled
by them.
-
- Under the 1986 - 1993 GATT Uruguay Round, its 110 member
countries agreed to harmonize their domestic laws to conform to international
standards. In January 1995, the WTO replaced GATT, and as of July 2008,
its membership included 153 nations.
-
- Its Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade was established
"to ensure that regulations, standards, testing and certification
procedures do not create unnecessary obstacles. It specifically refers
to:
-
- -- ...."the important contributions that international
standards and conformity assessment systems can make....by improving efficiency
of production and facilitating the conduct of international trade....;"
and
-
- -- the importance of "develop(ing) such international
standards and conformity assessment systems."
-
- It states that "Members are fully responsible under
this Agreement for the observance of all provisions of Article 2"
- pertaining to the "Preparation, Adoption and Application of Technical
Regulations by Central Government Bodies;" under them, "Members
shall formulate and implement positive measures and mechanisms in support
of the observance of (Article 2's) provisions by other than central government
bodies."
-
- This means that WTO members are legally bound under global
guidelines, including CA standards if adopted, that override currently
in force national laws. Under WTO rules, failure to comply may bring punitive
fines or crippling trade sanctions.
-
- At its July 2005 session, the Codex Committee on Nutrition
and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU), drew up guidelines that set
restrictive upper dosage limits on popularly used vitamin and mineral supplements
and nutrients. They prohibit the sale of all curative, preventative, and
therapeutic supplements without a doctor's prescription, most now accessible
over-the-counter at health food, other stores, or by mail order.
-
- Twenty-six other committees are tasked with setting global
standards for different areas of the global food and drug trade, including:
-
- -- fruits and vegetables;
-
- -- fruit and vegetable juices;
-
- -- fats and oils;
-
- -- meat, poultry and fish;
-
- -- cereals, pulses (used for food and animal feed) and
legumes;
-
- -- milk and milk products;
-
- -- natural mineral waters;
-
- -- sugars;
-
- -- cocoa products and chocolate;
-
- -- food hygiene;
-
- -- food labeling (as a way not to disclose GMO foods
and ingredients)
-
- -- pesticide residues;
-
- -- residues of veterinary drugs found in foods;
-
- -- food additives;
-
- -- regional coordination, and more.
-
- Codex standards are binding on all WTO members under
its Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures
and the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade. Both were included among
the Multilateral Agreements on Trade in Goods that was part of the 1994
Marrakesh Agreement that established the WTO.
-
- Currently, it says that "there is no legal obligation
on Members to apply Codex standards, guidelines and recommendations."
In fact, the WTO uses them to resolve international trade disputes that
are legally binding on all members.
-
- On December 31, 2009, Codex standards will be globally
mandated unless legal challenges prevent it. In force, they'll override
food and drug laws of all member countries, including consumer protection
ones and America's 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA).
It classifies nutrients and herbs as foods, sets no dosage limits, and
permits the sale of all dietary supplements unless expressly proved unsafe.
Codex rules reverse things by prohibiting everything NOT proved safe, including
high potency, therapeutically effective nutrients and supplements.
-
- Common foods, herbs, nutrients, amino acids, homeopathic
and other natural remedies would be called drugs. Potencies would be limited,
and prescriptions would be required for their use. Some would be banned
altogether.
-
- In contrast, about 300 dangerous food additives will
be allowed, including aspartame, BHA, BHT, potassium bromate, and tartrazine.
New guidelines will authorize the worldwide proliferation of unlabeled
GMO foods, drugs, and ingredients, known to harm human health.
-
- In addition:
-
- -- dangerous high-potency industrial chemicals, pesticides,
and fungicides will be allowed, ones now near-universally banned, including
aldrin, hexachlorobenzene and toxaphene;
-
- -- growth hormones for cows will be mandated;
-
- -- antibiotics as well for all "food herds, fish
and flocks;"
-
- -- irradiation will be required for all foods not locally
grown and sold raw and unprocessed; and
-
- -- new standards will permit dangerous toxic levels (0.5
ppb) of aflotoxin in milk produced from moldy storage conditions of animal
feed; aflotoxin is one of most potent carcinogenic compounds known.
-
- In addition, professional written, oral or other nutritional
advice will be banned, including about the benefits of vitamins, minerals,
nutrients and other health-promoting substances. Henceforth, they'll be
considered toxins or poisons to be removed from food because Codex will
prohibit their use to "prevent, treat or cure any condition or disease."
-
- In America before the 1996 Food Quality and Protection
Act passed, the 1958 Delaney Clause prohibited use of known carcinogens
in processed foods. It specifically said:
-
- "the Secretary of the Food and Drug Administration
shall not approve for use in food any chemical additive found to induce
cancer in man, or, after tests, found to induce cancer in animals."
-
- It protected against unsafe food additives, meat and
poultry drugs, color additives, and cancer-causing pesticide residues in
processed foods above a certain level.
-
- Obama's Enforcers
-
- On July 23, Obama appointed Monsanto vice-president and
lobbyist Michael Taylor as food safety czar - the man Jeffrey Smith, author
and leading GMO foods critic, called "The person who may be responsible
for more food-related illnesses and death than anyone in history....This
is no joke....What have we done?"
-
- At FDA in the early 1990s, Taylor headed policy over
letting Monsanto's GM bovine growth hormone (rBGH) be injected into cows
to increase milk supply despite the known health dangers. He also kept
containers from being labeled to warn consumers. Europe, Canada, Australia
and New Zealand banned the drug because of the significant cancer and other
risks.
-
- Taylor also got the FDA to treat genetically modified
foods and ingredients as "substantially equivalent" to natural
ones, so no testing was required for safety. Ever since in America and
many other countries, GM foods have proliferated despite reliable evidence
of their harm to human health.
-
- Rumored to become USDA's food safety head is Dennis Wolff
- an rBGH-using dairy farmer and Pennsylvania Agriculture Secretary. Wolff
spearheaded state legislation to ban rNGH-free labeling so consumers could
choose safe milk over contaminated brands. He partially succeeded when
governor Ed Rendell balked but allowed an FDA disclaimer on containers
regarding bovine growth hormone's safety.
-
- Operation Cure All
-
- A June 14, 2001 FTC press release headlined "Operation
Cure All Wages New Battle in Ongoing War Against Internet Health Fraud."
It cited a 1997 initiated law enforcement and consumer education campaign
in announcing new actions against "the fraudulent marketing of supplements
and other health products on the Internet" targeting dietary supplements,
herbal products, and various other "questionable" substances.
The FDA claimed (without evidence) that "unscrupulous marketers (were
selling to) the sickest and most vulnerable consumers." To the general
public as well that relies on them as essential nutrients and natural remedies
that are far more effective, safer, and vastly cheaper than dangerous overpriced
drugs.
-
- At stake isn't consumer safety. It's protecting drug
company profits by eliminating competition. It's about removing safe alternatives,
natural therapies, and information about them. It's to empower drug giants
and approve only their products for sale. It's to establish standards they
alone write; to pave the way for mass-marketing of genetically modified
foods and drugs. It's a stepping stone toward mandated harmful global Codex
rules.
-
- Codex Alimentarius - A Sinister Scheme for Profit at
the Expense of Human Health
-
- Empowering Ag and drug giants through CA poses an unacceptable
danger to humanity as Dr. Rima Laibow, Medical Director of the Natural
Solutions Foundation, explains:
-
- -- it will replace "safe upper (nutrient) limits
with junk science;"
-
- -- reduce them to useless levels; and
-
- -- call essential-to-life and well-being nutrient levels
toxic or poisonous.
-
- Adequate nutrient levels are vital to "health and
longevity. Nutrients are essential components of enzyme function in the
human body and enzymes are the very stuff of life because they carry out
every biological process in your body. Without enzymes, nothing would happen.
Literally."
-
- "There would be no digestion, no growth, no detoxification....no
life. At any moment, approximately 35,000 enzymatic reactions are occurring
in every cell in your body. Nutrients feed and support enzymatic action
and that's why they are so crucial to health."
-
- At optimum levels, they produce optimum health. At impaired
levels, symptoms. At unhealthy levels, illness, and "No enzymatic
action = death." Varying human nutrient needs depend on "genetic
diversity and requirement, diet, climate and energy output, toxic load
(from food, water, air, and skin absorption), underlying nutritional deficits,
(and all types of) diseases and stress." In sum, it's called "Biological
Individuality - a concept "totally absent from the philosophy of Codex
Alimentarius."
-
- According to Laibow, there is no "scientifically
measurable 'upper limit' for nutrients" because their potential toxicity
is "astonishingly low" even though at times "more is not
necessarily better." DSHEA prohibits nutrient upper limits because
they're foods, not drugs. "Scientifically, DSHEA is right on the mark."
CA is pseudo-science for profit at the expense of human health. Legal challenges
have five months left to stop them.
-
- Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre
for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at
<mailto:lendman.stephen@sbcglobal.net>lendman.stephen@sbcglobal.net.
-
- Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and
listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday
- Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished
guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy
listening.
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