EMERGENCY CODEX ALERT:
EMERGENCY CODEX ALERT: Pharmaceutical Cartel Plotting To Crush The Sale Of Dietary Supplements Worldwide
Date: 7/1/05
Author: Greg Ciola Interviews John Hammell Source: Crusador Enterprises
Codex Alimentarius: Back Door Strategy To Attack Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) and Force U.S. To Harmonize Supplement Laws To Restrictive International Standards
CRUSADOR Editor Greg Ciola Interviews John Hammell of International Advocates For Health Freedom (IAHF), A Leading Consumer Advocacy Group Fighting To Defend Health Freedom Rights
Like a huge tsunami originating across the ocean, draconian Codex standards threaten to sweep over the American supplement market in the next few years and wash away everything in their path. That is, if supplement consumers do not wake up to the impending threat and take immediate action to oppose this very sophisticated stealth attack against our health freedoms.
The reality is we no longer live in a world protected by national borders. America’s active participation in the United Nations, the World Trade Organization (WTO), NAFTA, and soon to be CAFTA and FTAA, if they aren’t defeated, will eventually lead to our entire country becoming internationalized in the coming years, including our domestic laws being trashed to conform to a new set of Orwellian international standards.
How could this happen? Well, all countries that signed on to be members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) have agreed to “harmonize” their domestic trade laws to a new set of international standards so merchandise can flow across borders unimpeded. However, in order to enforce these trade laws, the World Trade Organization (WTO) needed teeth. This was granted back in the mid 1990s, when the Disputes Settlement Body of the WTO was established. The Disputes Settlement Body of the WTO is a foreign court operating in secret off U.S. shores where unelected judges and bureaucrats decide cases of trade law.
Most supplement consumers were unaware at the time that the formation of the WTO and the passage of a host of other trade agreements like NAFTA would eventually lead to an incremental attack on all of our food and supplement laws. Most supplement companies in the nutritional industry have simply gone along with the advice of their pharmaceutically dominated trade associations and know very little, if any, about these complicated international developments.
In an effort to alert the American public about these dangerous threats to our health freedoms, CRUSADOR editor, Greg Ciola, interviews John Hammell of IAHF in a no-holds-barred discussion. John Hammell has played an intricate role in working to defend our rights to free access of dietary supplements. He has been sounding the alarm that serious trouble is brewing since 1996.
Unfortunately, John’s hard efforts and pleas for help have mostly fallen on deaf ears, as Codex continues to plod forward virtually unopposed, spurred on by complicity from high level U.S. delegates with pharmaceutical ties representing us at the Codex meetings. The time to muster the troops and stop these insane Codex standards -- based on “junk science” -- from steamrolling our health freedoms is NOW. If we don’t all act together on these life-threatening issues, our dietary supplement laws may eventually be challenged in a secret foreign court that could force the U.S. to adopt restrictive international vitamin laws.
John, let me begin by asking about IAHF and how you got started in this movement?
International Advocates For Health Freedom (IAHF) is a consulting firm to the dietary supplement industry on legislative issues. I do lobbying, public speaking, grass roots organizing, write articles, and try to serve as a catalyst to encourage 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.
Tell us a little bit about Codex and what they are hoping to accomplish?
Codex Alimentarius comes from Latin and means “food code.” Codex Alimentarius is the most authoritarian set of international food standards ever developed. The United Nations Codex Alimentarius Commission was originally created in 1962, set up as a joint program of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO). It was ostensibly created to generate a harmonized trade standard governing the sale of all food products internationally. The idea behind it was that if there was only one set of regulations, it would eliminate the expense of having to comply with a variety of regulations among different countries. It would enable companies to more efficiently move their products. At least that was the basic idea.
So, Codex was created to “harmonize” the laws of all U.N. and WTO member countries to a new set of international standards – correct?
Yes! 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 any international standard. It was strictly voluntary up to that point. After the advent of the WTO, it became mandatory for member countries to adopt these international standards as their own. And the only legal means through which a country could refuse to adopt a Codex vitamin standard into law was on the basis of safety.
The only problem is the case would be “tried” in a new international court outside of the U.S. called the Disputes Settlement Body which was created by the World Trade Organization. It’s a rigged, Mickey Mouse court, that doesn’t follow our rules of evidence. It is rigged to uphold the greed driven interests of multinational corporations and it makes its rulings in secret.
The public doesn’t have access to its deliberations. You and I can’t walk into a courtroom presided over by the Disputes Settlement Body or watch these proceedings. The problem is that no private citizen has standing to appear before that court regardless of how well qualified they are. In theory, a private citizen could appear before that court, but only if both conflicting parties agreed to allow it. That has never happened.
What most consumers and supplement companies are being told is that Codex is only going to affect international law – it’s not going to affect us domestically. They all seem to believe that we’re protected by the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act passed in 1994 and that Codex is only going to impact vitamin supplement companies in the U.S. that export their products to other countries that have adopted Codex guidelines or standards. Where do the industry trade associations stand on the Codex issue, since they are a primary source of this information?
Health food trade associations are leading supplement companies into the arms of the Codex beast. The Council For Responsible Nutrition (CRN), the National Nutritional Foods Association (NNFA), the American Herbal Products Association (AHPA), and the International Alliance of Dietary/Food Supplement Associations (IADSA), are attempting to pull a fast one on the vitamin consumers of the world.
All of the vitamin trade associations worldwide are being controlled from the top-down by pharmaceutical interests. The larger companies are dominating the trade associations, and all they care about is grabbing increased market share, even if this comes at the expense of consumers. These companies take the view that they’re big enough to weather any storm. They don’t care that they will be forced to water down the quality of what they’re allowed to sell, as long as they drive their smaller competitors under in order to please investors.
I had a long conversation with John Hathcock, who’s the director of international affairs at CRN and Michael McGuffin, who’s the executive director of American Herbal Products Association. They are both saying that Codex can’t impact U.S. law, that it would only affect our international sales.
My comment to them was, “So, you are denying the reality of globalization? You’re denying the push to create a carbon copy of the European Union in our hemisphere through the FTAA?” Michael McGuffin had nothing to say on this issue. John Hathcock simply went into denial on this issue, denying that it could ever happen here.But it is happening. We’re seeing a push in that direction, a huge push.
The Rockefeller Foundation commissioned a book called “Integrating The Americas, The FTAA and Beyond,” published by Harvard University Press. It’s a boat anchor of a book about 4 inches thick and weighs about 10 pounds. It’s chock full of information from economists who are all pushing the idea of “harmonizing” all the laws between the Arctic Circle and Tierra del Fuego -- that is make the laws the same for all of North, Central, and South America.
If this happens, it would be the rough equivalent of the European Common Market, which spawned the birth of the European Union. The architects responsible for the creation of the European Union are attempting to force the same thing on our hemisphere through the FTAA. They even have a plan for a hemispheric wide currency they intend on calling the “Amero.” So, we’re seeing a very heavy-handed shadow government campaign to move us in that direction and “harmonize” the laws throughout our hemisphere.
Tell us a little bit more about these trade associations and why you feel they are misleading the nutritional supplement industry.
Well, NNFA, the National Nutritional Foods Association, has a conflict of interest disclosure section, article 14.3, in their bylaws, which they ignore. It also has a code of ethics that can be seen on thewebsite at www.nnfa.org that they’re not enforcing. Any prospective new member company reading these would be led to believe that the trade association is behind them and truly protecting their interests, but NNFA is not. Not when they let pharmaceutical companies join. Not when they let employees of companies like Pfizer hold key chairmanships on committees like their international committee. Not when they hire a law firm to draft reports telling us that Codex won’t impact our supplement laws, when the primary clients of this law firm are the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies. This trade association is setting the whole industry up to go over the cliff.
IADSA is an umbrella group that represents the vitamin trade association industry all over the world, which has non-governmental organization (NGO) status at Codex.. IADSA has been lying to the industry for years about what it’s actually doing. It claims to be trying to help harmonize the rest of the world to U.S. law. In reality, it has been setting us up for harmonization to some very restrictive international standards.
I was at a hospitality suite dinner at the NNFA vitamin trade show in Las Vegas in 1999 where IADSA was introduced to members of NNFA. People were shown a slide show and a simplistic map of the world with the U.S. marked in green, indicating an appropriate degree of supplement access due to DSHEA, and countries like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, England, Ireland, Holland and Sweden marked in stripes, indicating supplement access that was less than ideal, but still better than a lot of other countries. Then the whole rest of the world was red, indicating very poor access. Their conclusion: 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, here to protect our industry by representing us at Codex meetings. They were led to believe that IADSA’s goal was to harmonize the world to DSHEA. Yet, the reality of IADSA is that it’s actually doing the diametric opposite of what it claims to be doing. I built the website that exposes this. The address is http://iadsa-exposed.tripod.com
Well, it appears obvious to me that the pharmaceutical industry and big multinationals have infiltrated these trade associations. For example, you can go right to the website of CRN, the Council for Responsible Nutrition, at (www.crnusa.org/who_omc.html ) and see huge companies like Archer Daniels Midland, BASF, Monsanto, Wyeth, Bayer, Cargill, Pfizer, and other power players on their board of directors. It’s very hard for me to believe they are representing our interests. What’s going on here, John?
I’ve seen the spin that’s come from people like Sam Caster, the CEO of Mannatech, which is a member of CRN. He would have his distributors believe that it’s not a big deal that there are pharmaceutical companies amongst CRN’s membership. After all, the raw materials used in the manufacture of dietary supplements come from those companies. And yes, that’s true, they do come from those companies.
However, those companies have a vested interest in creating a scenario whereby they can make more money from the raw materials and, at the same time, water down the effectiveness of the products so that they don’t interfere with the potency or cut into the sale of their prescription drugs. That way they can have their cake and eat it, too. That’s what they’re after through Codex. They win any way you slice it. If a wealthy person has to buy 10 bottles of a supplement to get the same potency they used to get from one bottle, who wins?
Don’t you feel these companies and trade associations are going to be left with some serious egg on their face, if our supplement laws are eventually harmonized to Codex standards at some point down the road, after they’ve told everybody it’s not an issue?
Well, what I’ve been saying all along is that the smaller, innovative manufacturers who are members of these trade associations need to look very closely at what they’re actually being told, because if they make the effort, they will see that they’re being lied to and led down the primrose path. What I think they should do is ban together to file lawsuits against the trade associations for not properly looking out for their interests. I also think they should quit the trade associations immediately and get behind this burgeoning grassroots-led health freedom movement, including the Coalition for Health Freedom, a brandnew international alliance of health freedom organizations.
How does what’s happening with the EU Food Supplements Directive tie in with Codex?
All 25 member countries of the European Union are members of the U.N. Codex Alimentarius Commission and send delegates to the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Use meetings. The European Union controls 17 votes here, making them the dominant political power.
Germany, largest country in the EU, is the host of the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Use. At every Codex meeting, Rolf Grossklaus, the German Chair of the Committee, has deferred to the wishes of the EU Delegate, Basil Mathoudakis of Greece. Clearly, an effort is underway to overlay the EU Food Supplements Directive as a template on top of Codex standards as a means of expanding its scope in the future beyond just vitamins and minerals.
The problem is all 25 of these EU countries are going to have the power to force a really restrictive vitamin and mineral standard through at Codex, because they are all walking in lock-step with Germany. Germany is the world’s largest pharmaceutical-producing country, and the biggest opponent of dietary supplements in the world. That’s why they became the host country for the Codex Committee on Nutrition, because they have a real vested interest in railroading us.
So if I understand you correctly, by having all these EU countries aligned with the pharmaceutical industry, they’re going to basically have the power to set very restrictive standards at Codex, which will then be utilized to harmonize the rest of the world’s trade laws. Is that correct?
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 set up similar regional trading blocks all over the world.
The FDA recently developed a website which basically tells people, “Don’t worry, the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act protects our industry and we’re never going to allow our industry to be harmonized to international law or regulated by international law.” How do you think they are going to bypass our domestic supplement laws to get us to accept Codex standards?
One possible way would be through a WTO trade dispute. The industry claims that this is not likely to happen, since our dietary supplement laws are so much more flexible than in other countries.And it is true that ours are more flexible. They say that the triggering mechanism for a trade dispute would have to be the FDA blocking a foreign manufacturer from bringing a product into the United States. They think that that’s unlikely, considering the flexibility of our laws compared to most countries.
My comment to that is “not so fast.” There’s a section of DSHEA pertaining to new dietary ingredients requiring companies who want to sell a product containing one or more ingredients that weren’t grandfathered in or permitted with the passage of DSHEA in 1994 to submit an extensive safety dossier on these ingredients. I believe this requires 75 days advance notice.
I just recently read the transcript of a public hearing that the FDA held on this very issue -- New Dietary Ingredients. It’s clear that in recent months, the FDA has blocked a whole lot of different new dietary ingredients from coming on the market. If a manufacturer were to unilaterally start marketing a product containing one or more new dietary ingredients without first notifying the FDA, the FDA would be bound by law to yank that product off the market. So, I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility that a foreign manufacturer might try to export a product to the United States containing one or more new dietary ingredients and the FDA could easily block it from coming in. They might even do it on purpose, knowing that it would trigger a trade dispute.
How would such a dispute potentially threaten DSHEA or get us to adopt Codex guidelines as a replacement, if that happened?
Well, the new international court created by the WTO called the Dispute Settlements Body is not run like a U.S. court. It doesn’t follow our Rules of Evidence and it’s held behind closed doors. No private citizen would have standing to appear before it, regardless of how well qualified they may be. We would be, “represented” by the very same FDA bureaucrats who have been, I feel, setting us up to lose in a trade dispute in the first place.
You also have to look at the track record of that court. Laurie Wallach from Public Citizen testified recently before the House Ways and Means Committee in Congress about U.S. membership in the WTO. She cited that in 42 out of 48 cases brought against the United States in which a WTO panel has made a ruling, we’ve lost. The WTO has labeled as illegal policies ranging from sea turtle protections and clean air regulations to tax and anti-dumping policies. So, we’re seeing a trend in which our laws are being overruled by the WTO. With only two exceptions, every health, food safety or environmental law challenged at the WTO has been declared a barrier to trade. Only two exceptions! That doesn’t make me feel really comfortable.
However, even if that weren’t used as the vehicle to harmonize us, it could be done at the hemispheric level through the FTAA by the Sanitary Phytosanitary Measures Agreement (SPS). This agreement is found verbatim in both the WTO trade agreement and in NAFTA and would most likely be included in CAFTA and the FTAA, thus broadening and deepening its scope.
Through the SPS agreement, every nation on earth is required to “harmonize” its dietary supplement laws to the mindlessly restrictive international Codex standards. Harmony is a beautiful thing when it comes to music, but it’s not a good thing to make all the laws the same all over the world and to have these laws made by unelected bureaucrats who are accountable to no one except the multinational corporations that control them.
According to a March 22nd, 2005 white paper, attorney Justin Prochnow, says of particular relevance to this discussion is Article 3 of the SPS Agreement which reads: “To harmonize Sanitary and Phytosanitary measures on as wide a basis as possible, members shall base their food safety measures on international standards, guidelines or recommendations.” According to Prochnow, these provisions with the use of the term “shall,” effectively make the voluntary Codex guidelines mandatory for member nations of the WTO. I also heard that in November of 2004 at the last Codex meeting in Bonn, Germany, that the Codex standards have gone from being voluntary to mandatory.
That’s right. They’ve eliminated their reporting requirement, which in effect makes it mandatory. This is something that Suzanne Harris of the Law Loft has widely reported, particularly in the following article,“Who Says Whatever Happens At Codex Does Not Affect U.S. Law and Why Do They Say It?” which your readers should definitely read on her website at: http://thelawloft.com/Freedom/050125_us_law.htm
In her article, she explains that the Pharma-dominated vitamin trade associations are, in fact, in an unholy alliance with the FDA and other regulators. They all want Codex. They want one set of regulations for the planet, because they don’t want to have to make different products for different countries with different labels and different ingredients. They want “one-size-fits-all” and they’re willing to sacrifice anything to get that.
Aren’t the supplement companies aware that the language has gone from voluntary to mandatory?
I don’t know what they are or aren’t aware of. In any case, they seem to be allowing themselves to be guided by the largest companies in their trade associations --the ones that want Codex, the ones that want one-size-fits-all, the ones that want to knock off their smaller competitors and are quite willing to turn their backs on consumers.
What you’re saying reeks of a conspiracy, John. If these standards and guidelines are going to be mandatory and not voluntary, that basically shreds DSHEA and flushes it right down the toilet, doesn’t it?.
The changes (legislation) would have to be made by Congress. The problem is that the globalist policies provide a huge lever to coerce Congress to conform.
Yes, but we already signed on to be a member of WTO and the United Nations, so then how could Congress prohibit the shredding of our supplement laws, based on these international agreements?
Under the threat of trade sanctions, which could impact broad sectors of our economy. Congress’s arm can be twisted to the breaking point so they’ll change any law that could wreak such economic havoc.
If, for the sake of discussion, Codex can’t be stopped and some time down the road a country decides to take the U.S. before the Disputes Settlement Body of the WTO and we lose, how would they ever enforce this?
The only legal means by which we could defend our domestic law in that court under the SPS agreement is on a basis of safety. However, the FDA has actually been taking steps to ensure that we lose a WTO trade dispute by generating false definitions of vitamin 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 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 Disputes Settlement Body. Unelected bureaucrats from the FDA would be our representatives.
In my opinion we’re dealing with illegitimate, criminal entities, John. The United Nations is a fraud, Codex is a fraud, and the WTO is a smokescreen for the multinationals who want a de facto monopoly over every enterprise, while crushing all competition. Is it possible for the U.S. to get out of all these treaties?
We would have to get out of both the WTO and the United Nations. There have been bills introduced in previous sessions of Congress that would do that, but it’s never gone anywhere and it’s unlikely to get very far because of the multinational manipulation of Congress. Historically, there have only been some people on Congressmen Paul’s Liberty Committee that have been cosponsors of the American Sovereignty Restoration Act. It’s HR1146. It’s not likely that we’re going to get out of the UN or the WTO; it would be great if we did.
You have been very cautious in your reporting about Codex because there has been a lot of disinformation put out there. Am I correct when I say that it’s your belief that Codex is only moving to ratify a framework pertaining to risk assessment and their intention is to fill in the blanks on allowable potency levels for vitamins and minerals after the fact. What do you mean by “framework?”
Their way of sliding things past us is by doing it incrementally. They know that if they had all the specifics of the regulations filled in, in advance, going into the Codex Alimentarius Commission meeting July 4-9 in Rome, that it would galvanize a huge public backlash, which they’re trying to avoid. And so they’ll ratify a framework and then move to fill in the blanks later.
(see http://www.capwiz.com/lef/mail/oneclick_compose/?alertid=%2077396911 )
And who decides what those blanks are going to be?
The World Health Organization! WHO convened a panel led by the FDA’s Dr. Christine Lewis Taylor (wife of former DEPUTY COMMISSIONER for Policy at FDA, Michael Taylor) on nutrient risk assessment. When she called for participants for this workshop, every single highly qualified person that applied, including both MDs and PhDs who believe in optimal health, were shut out. All of those people were excluded from participation in this workshop, which was obviously being rigged by pharmaceutical interests. We feel that their long range intention was to produce supplement values similar to those presented by the German Federal Institute of Risk Assessment. Incredibly, some of their allowable potencies are actually even lower than RDAs. (www.alliance-natural-health.org/_docs/ANHWebsiteDoc_145.doc )
To make matters worse, Pharma-dominated vitamin trade associations, such as the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN), have brazenly put out press releases claiming that consumers have actually benefited from the move to scrap RDAs as the basis for establishing allowable potency levels at Codex. They even announced a “victory” for consumers, supposedly because they’ve decided to base potency levels on so-called “scientific risk assessment.”
The problem is that what CRN is calling scientific, in fact, is not scientific and it’s certainly not a victory for consumers, especially if the potencies that come out of this process are as low as the ones put forth by the Germans. And yet I don’t see any reason to expect anything other than this outcome, because CRN is telling the industry that the end point of Codex will be the safe upper level numbers generated by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
When those numbers are shown to people in the industry, their reaction is those numbers aren’t so bad, those are comparable to what we’re currently allowed to sell; I have no problem with that. The problem here is that these vitamin companies aren’t being told that those numbers represent only the first tier of risk assessment. That’s what you get prior to subtracting junk science derived nutrient risk factors and also junk science derived numbers stemming from some mythical average diet which doesn’t, in fact, exist. It doesn’t take into account regional and climatic differences and the differences in nutritional needs that go with being in more northerly latitudes, for example, where people don’t get the sunlight that they do or the access to fresh fruits and vegetables that you might get in more southerly latitudes.
They also don’t take into account individual differences in absorption and so on. So the numbers that the Germans have arrived at in many cases are even lower than RDAs. And if CRN were telling the truth to its member companies, they would show them all of that fine print. But instead they’re conning them into backing this framework without telling them the truth about where it’s leading.
When do you think they would fill in the blanks and how would they do that without any public oversight, so that we’re not aware of what’s happening?
Well, they would just take the view that, “Okay, the framework has been created. The methodology is in place and, therefore, you have no choice but to accept the filling in the blanks the way that we do it.”
So, Codex is going to pass a resolution that the framework that the World Health Organization comes up with is acceptable to Codex delegates then, right?
Yes. They would just sign off on it because it’s a formality.
When do you think these allowable potency levels would then be filled in?
That’s anybody’s guess. And the problem here is that we won’t have any input. All of this will be done behind closed doors, just the way they held the workshop to create the framework.
What about these reports that I’m hearing that even when you talk about allowable potency levels, they’re only going to allow synthetic vitamins and minerals -- anything that’s natural, like natural vitamin E, organically-derived minerals, etc. would not be allowed because they want to follow strict pharmaceutical standards? Is that true?
The trend we’re seeing here is a clear effort to incorporate things from the European Supplements Directive into Codex. The EU, through their draconian Food Supplements Directive, is attempting to ban the food forms of vitamins and minerals and only allow synthetic forms, which are less bioavailable. However, there’s no legal connection between the European directive and what happens at Codex.
In order for vitamin supplement consumers to understand the full impact and seriousness of the situation, can you tell us what some of the restrictions would be on vitamins and minerals, if Codex is not stopped?
You can go to the following web page put out by the Alliance For Natural Health based in the UK (www.alliance-natural-health.org/_docs/ANHWebsiteDoc_145.doc ) that shows the mindlessly insane, low potencies they have drafted for the EU Food Supplements Directive. Remember, they are attempting to use this Directive as the blueprint for Codex. While Codex will only be ratifying a framework on nutrient risk assessment, (their intent being to fill in the blanks on allowable potencies after the fact), we see the writing on the wall in terms of what those limits could be. Only the German Federal Institute of Risk Assessment has done the full extrapolation called for by Codex, and their projected “Maximum Safe Permitted Levels” include just 225 mg for vitamin C, 5 mcg for Vitamin D, 15 mg for vitamin E and just 5.4 mg for Vitamin B-6.
When America’s supplement industry was under attack back in 1994 people rose up and flooded Congress with letters and calls demanding that they have free access to dietary supplements. What do you think people need to do today?
We need to educate Congress about the connection between the Codex vitamin issue and these trade agreements – WTO, NAFTA, CAFTA and FTAA. We need to explain to our Congressmen and women that they have sworn an oath to defend our Constitution from all enemies -- both foreign and domestic -- and that this is a matter of defending our sovereignty. Our country isn’t going to exist if we continue to go down this path.
We don’t need to go the route of what’s been happening in the European Union. Despite over a million vitamin consumers’ signatures on petitions against harmonizing their law to the European Food Supplements Directive, the ruling Labor Party in the UK said, “Sorry, we are members of the European Union, we’re going to harmonize to European law, whether you like it or not.”
Then after “stacking” the committee with “yes” men, the standing instrument got ratified, harmonizing the UK to European law in that instance. And that’s exactly what will happen here, if we don’t stop this slide into the FTAA. We’re going to see the destruction of our country. We’re already seeing it. You can see it through NAFTA. You can see it through the statistics and in Laurie Wallach’s testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee on May 17th, 2005.
Congress needs to listen to these complaints. Any member of Congress that votes in favor of CAFTA or FTAA needs to be driven out of office, and we need to tell them in advance that if you vote for CAFTA or FTAA, we will drive you out of office for these reasons and cite them all. The first reason is that we’re trying to protect our dietary supplement law. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. If we don’t kill CAFTA and FTAA, we are going to lose all of our most cherished freedoms. We’re going to lose our country.
I hesitate to make the comparison but it sounds like what we’re seeing with Codex and the consolidation of the EU is the revival of the Nazi Empire, only this time they are seeking to suck the whole world into their 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 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 un-impeachable. There’s no controversy about the fact that the European Union is a Nazi entity.
Let me pick up on something a little different. There seems to be quite a bit of conflicting information circulating over the Internet about Codex. Some of this information is leading people to believe that the Codex Vitamin and Mineral Standard will also impact things like farming, pesticides, irradiation, natural medicine and a slew of other issues. I know that there are other aspects of Codex beyond the Vitamin and Mineral standard but why are they being discussed as though they are as imminent as the Vitamin and Mineral Standard?
I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s part of a disinformation campaign to confuse people on the entire situation and mislead them. There are a whole slew of Codex committees, and there are other aspects of health that are being dealt with at Codex, including things like organic standards. However, all that is being played out separately. You can’t lump everything in together and say it’s all coming under the auspices of the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods For Special Dietary Uses when it’s not.
Do you know how far along they are on some of those other things?
I haven’t had the time or energy to focus on anything but the vitamin and mineral issue. Those are equally valid issues and the concern about globalization remains the same. If we want to protect U.S. laws, we have to protect our sovereignty. If we don’t want to be harmonized to Codex standards, not only for vitamins and minerals, but for other dietary supplements down the road if they expand it to include things like organics, then we need to protect our sovereignty. It all boils down to that. And the fact is we do have political leverage over state and federal legislators. We do not have political leverage over unelected bureaucrats at Codex, but we need to focus our energies on where we have political leverage, not on where we don’t.
But even if we are able to defeat CAFTA and FTAA, which may not happen, but even if we were, we’re still a member of the UN and the WTO. They can still hammer us that way, even if they don’t harmonize us through CAFTA and FTAA. Don’t you feel that way?
The way they’re trying to get us is through regional harmonization, the same way they’re trying to get the United Kingdom. The United Nations has teeth through the World Trade Organization. Prior to the advent of the World Trade Organization, they didn’t have the ability to force their will on other countries. Now they do.
You have consistently reported that what’s happening on the international stage with Codex is linked to a eugenics/genocide agenda. I know that sounds extremely radical to the average person, but tell us why you make these statements?
The reason I make these statements is because when you look at current world population, which is 6 1/2 billion people, and you read reports of most demographers who are predicting an increase in world population to a more than doubling of the current population by mid-century – they’re predicting a rise to over 15 billion people -- and you read reports from entities like the World Eugenics Society, the Population Council, No Population Growth (NPG), and Zero Population Growth (ZPG), it’s apparent that they do indeed have an agenda where they’re trying to cull our numbers.
You have to understand what Big Brother’s goal is here. Big Brother doesn’t want us living over the age of 65. Those in power want us to keel over on our 65th 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 got them all using chemical fertilizers, breaking the sulfur cycle. Sulfur is released into fruits and vegetables grown with manure as fertilizer. Sulfur is extremely important in preventing degenerative disease. What sulfur does is improve oxygen transport through the cell membranes. Oxygenation is extremely important to prevent cancer. An intentional effort was made to trigger a rash of degenerative disease, including cancer, in order to make more money in the hospitals, in order to sell cancer drugs. They have a business with disease.
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.
Hundreds of thousands of America are dying each year from pharmaceutical drug side effects and doctor-induced death, yet I bet we can’t even count on our hands the number of people that are dying from dietary supplements. It’s pharmaceutical drugs and pharmaceutical companies that really need more stringent regulation and oversight, not supplement companies and dietary supplements that don’t harm or kill virtually anyone.
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. 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 one of the biggest problems 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.
Well, John, you’ve certainly given us plenty of great information so vitamin consumers have a good assessment and understanding of the Codex situation. Thank you very much for your time and all the great work you’re doing to defend our freedoms.
Thank you, Greg. Keep up the excellent work you’re doing to also help defend our health freedoms.
Information taken from this web site:
http://www.healthliesexposed.com/articles/article_2005_07_1_3933.shtml
To Learn more about Codex and the attack against our health freedoms, it's imperative that you watch the new 28 minute video clip produced by Kevin Miller titled "We Become Silent: The Last Days Of Health Freedom. Go to: www.welltv.com
Date: 7/1/05
Author: Greg Ciola Interviews John Hammell Source: Crusador Enterprises
Codex Alimentarius: Back Door Strategy To Attack Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) and Force U.S. To Harmonize Supplement Laws To Restrictive International Standards
CRUSADOR Editor Greg Ciola Interviews John Hammell of International Advocates For Health Freedom (IAHF), A Leading Consumer Advocacy Group Fighting To Defend Health Freedom Rights
Like a huge tsunami originating across the ocean, draconian Codex standards threaten to sweep over the American supplement market in the next few years and wash away everything in their path. That is, if supplement consumers do not wake up to the impending threat and take immediate action to oppose this very sophisticated stealth attack against our health freedoms.
The reality is we no longer live in a world protected by national borders. America’s active participation in the United Nations, the World Trade Organization (WTO), NAFTA, and soon to be CAFTA and FTAA, if they aren’t defeated, will eventually lead to our entire country becoming internationalized in the coming years, including our domestic laws being trashed to conform to a new set of Orwellian international standards.
How could this happen? Well, all countries that signed on to be members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) have agreed to “harmonize” their domestic trade laws to a new set of international standards so merchandise can flow across borders unimpeded. However, in order to enforce these trade laws, the World Trade Organization (WTO) needed teeth. This was granted back in the mid 1990s, when the Disputes Settlement Body of the WTO was established. The Disputes Settlement Body of the WTO is a foreign court operating in secret off U.S. shores where unelected judges and bureaucrats decide cases of trade law.
Most supplement consumers were unaware at the time that the formation of the WTO and the passage of a host of other trade agreements like NAFTA would eventually lead to an incremental attack on all of our food and supplement laws. Most supplement companies in the nutritional industry have simply gone along with the advice of their pharmaceutically dominated trade associations and know very little, if any, about these complicated international developments.
In an effort to alert the American public about these dangerous threats to our health freedoms, CRUSADOR editor, Greg Ciola, interviews John Hammell of IAHF in a no-holds-barred discussion. John Hammell has played an intricate role in working to defend our rights to free access of dietary supplements. He has been sounding the alarm that serious trouble is brewing since 1996.
Unfortunately, John’s hard efforts and pleas for help have mostly fallen on deaf ears, as Codex continues to plod forward virtually unopposed, spurred on by complicity from high level U.S. delegates with pharmaceutical ties representing us at the Codex meetings. The time to muster the troops and stop these insane Codex standards -- based on “junk science” -- from steamrolling our health freedoms is NOW. If we don’t all act together on these life-threatening issues, our dietary supplement laws may eventually be challenged in a secret foreign court that could force the U.S. to adopt restrictive international vitamin laws.
John, let me begin by asking about IAHF and how you got started in this movement?
International Advocates For Health Freedom (IAHF) is a consulting firm to the dietary supplement industry on legislative issues. I do lobbying, public speaking, grass roots organizing, write articles, and try to serve as a catalyst to encourage 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.
Tell us a little bit about Codex and what they are hoping to accomplish?
Codex Alimentarius comes from Latin and means “food code.” Codex Alimentarius is the most authoritarian set of international food standards ever developed. The United Nations Codex Alimentarius Commission was originally created in 1962, set up as a joint program of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO). It was ostensibly created to generate a harmonized trade standard governing the sale of all food products internationally. The idea behind it was that if there was only one set of regulations, it would eliminate the expense of having to comply with a variety of regulations among different countries. It would enable companies to more efficiently move their products. At least that was the basic idea.
So, Codex was created to “harmonize” the laws of all U.N. and WTO member countries to a new set of international standards – correct?
Yes! 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 any international standard. It was strictly voluntary up to that point. After the advent of the WTO, it became mandatory for member countries to adopt these international standards as their own. And the only legal means through which a country could refuse to adopt a Codex vitamin standard into law was on the basis of safety.
The only problem is the case would be “tried” in a new international court outside of the U.S. called the Disputes Settlement Body which was created by the World Trade Organization. It’s a rigged, Mickey Mouse court, that doesn’t follow our rules of evidence. It is rigged to uphold the greed driven interests of multinational corporations and it makes its rulings in secret.
The public doesn’t have access to its deliberations. You and I can’t walk into a courtroom presided over by the Disputes Settlement Body or watch these proceedings. The problem is that no private citizen has standing to appear before that court regardless of how well qualified they are. In theory, a private citizen could appear before that court, but only if both conflicting parties agreed to allow it. That has never happened.
What most consumers and supplement companies are being told is that Codex is only going to affect international law – it’s not going to affect us domestically. They all seem to believe that we’re protected by the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act passed in 1994 and that Codex is only going to impact vitamin supplement companies in the U.S. that export their products to other countries that have adopted Codex guidelines or standards. Where do the industry trade associations stand on the Codex issue, since they are a primary source of this information?
Health food trade associations are leading supplement companies into the arms of the Codex beast. The Council For Responsible Nutrition (CRN), the National Nutritional Foods Association (NNFA), the American Herbal Products Association (AHPA), and the International Alliance of Dietary/Food Supplement Associations (IADSA), are attempting to pull a fast one on the vitamin consumers of the world.
All of the vitamin trade associations worldwide are being controlled from the top-down by pharmaceutical interests. The larger companies are dominating the trade associations, and all they care about is grabbing increased market share, even if this comes at the expense of consumers. These companies take the view that they’re big enough to weather any storm. They don’t care that they will be forced to water down the quality of what they’re allowed to sell, as long as they drive their smaller competitors under in order to please investors.
I had a long conversation with John Hathcock, who’s the director of international affairs at CRN and Michael McGuffin, who’s the executive director of American Herbal Products Association. They are both saying that Codex can’t impact U.S. law, that it would only affect our international sales.
My comment to them was, “So, you are denying the reality of globalization? You’re denying the push to create a carbon copy of the European Union in our hemisphere through the FTAA?” Michael McGuffin had nothing to say on this issue. John Hathcock simply went into denial on this issue, denying that it could ever happen here.But it is happening. We’re seeing a push in that direction, a huge push.
The Rockefeller Foundation commissioned a book called “Integrating The Americas, The FTAA and Beyond,” published by Harvard University Press. It’s a boat anchor of a book about 4 inches thick and weighs about 10 pounds. It’s chock full of information from economists who are all pushing the idea of “harmonizing” all the laws between the Arctic Circle and Tierra del Fuego -- that is make the laws the same for all of North, Central, and South America.
If this happens, it would be the rough equivalent of the European Common Market, which spawned the birth of the European Union. The architects responsible for the creation of the European Union are attempting to force the same thing on our hemisphere through the FTAA. They even have a plan for a hemispheric wide currency they intend on calling the “Amero.” So, we’re seeing a very heavy-handed shadow government campaign to move us in that direction and “harmonize” the laws throughout our hemisphere.
Tell us a little bit more about these trade associations and why you feel they are misleading the nutritional supplement industry.
Well, NNFA, the National Nutritional Foods Association, has a conflict of interest disclosure section, article 14.3, in their bylaws, which they ignore. It also has a code of ethics that can be seen on thewebsite at www.nnfa.org that they’re not enforcing. Any prospective new member company reading these would be led to believe that the trade association is behind them and truly protecting their interests, but NNFA is not. Not when they let pharmaceutical companies join. Not when they let employees of companies like Pfizer hold key chairmanships on committees like their international committee. Not when they hire a law firm to draft reports telling us that Codex won’t impact our supplement laws, when the primary clients of this law firm are the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies. This trade association is setting the whole industry up to go over the cliff.
IADSA is an umbrella group that represents the vitamin trade association industry all over the world, which has non-governmental organization (NGO) status at Codex.. IADSA has been lying to the industry for years about what it’s actually doing. It claims to be trying to help harmonize the rest of the world to U.S. law. In reality, it has been setting us up for harmonization to some very restrictive international standards.
I was at a hospitality suite dinner at the NNFA vitamin trade show in Las Vegas in 1999 where IADSA was introduced to members of NNFA. People were shown a slide show and a simplistic map of the world with the U.S. marked in green, indicating an appropriate degree of supplement access due to DSHEA, and countries like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, England, Ireland, Holland and Sweden marked in stripes, indicating supplement access that was less than ideal, but still better than a lot of other countries. Then the whole rest of the world was red, indicating very poor access. Their conclusion: 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, here to protect our industry by representing us at Codex meetings. They were led to believe that IADSA’s goal was to harmonize the world to DSHEA. Yet, the reality of IADSA is that it’s actually doing the diametric opposite of what it claims to be doing. I built the website that exposes this. The address is http://iadsa-exposed.tripod.com
Well, it appears obvious to me that the pharmaceutical industry and big multinationals have infiltrated these trade associations. For example, you can go right to the website of CRN, the Council for Responsible Nutrition, at (www.crnusa.org/who_omc.html ) and see huge companies like Archer Daniels Midland, BASF, Monsanto, Wyeth, Bayer, Cargill, Pfizer, and other power players on their board of directors. It’s very hard for me to believe they are representing our interests. What’s going on here, John?
I’ve seen the spin that’s come from people like Sam Caster, the CEO of Mannatech, which is a member of CRN. He would have his distributors believe that it’s not a big deal that there are pharmaceutical companies amongst CRN’s membership. After all, the raw materials used in the manufacture of dietary supplements come from those companies. And yes, that’s true, they do come from those companies.
However, those companies have a vested interest in creating a scenario whereby they can make more money from the raw materials and, at the same time, water down the effectiveness of the products so that they don’t interfere with the potency or cut into the sale of their prescription drugs. That way they can have their cake and eat it, too. That’s what they’re after through Codex. They win any way you slice it. If a wealthy person has to buy 10 bottles of a supplement to get the same potency they used to get from one bottle, who wins?
Don’t you feel these companies and trade associations are going to be left with some serious egg on their face, if our supplement laws are eventually harmonized to Codex standards at some point down the road, after they’ve told everybody it’s not an issue?
Well, what I’ve been saying all along is that the smaller, innovative manufacturers who are members of these trade associations need to look very closely at what they’re actually being told, because if they make the effort, they will see that they’re being lied to and led down the primrose path. What I think they should do is ban together to file lawsuits against the trade associations for not properly looking out for their interests. I also think they should quit the trade associations immediately and get behind this burgeoning grassroots-led health freedom movement, including the Coalition for Health Freedom, a brandnew international alliance of health freedom organizations.
How does what’s happening with the EU Food Supplements Directive tie in with Codex?
All 25 member countries of the European Union are members of the U.N. Codex Alimentarius Commission and send delegates to the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Use meetings. The European Union controls 17 votes here, making them the dominant political power.
Germany, largest country in the EU, is the host of the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Use. At every Codex meeting, Rolf Grossklaus, the German Chair of the Committee, has deferred to the wishes of the EU Delegate, Basil Mathoudakis of Greece. Clearly, an effort is underway to overlay the EU Food Supplements Directive as a template on top of Codex standards as a means of expanding its scope in the future beyond just vitamins and minerals.
The problem is all 25 of these EU countries are going to have the power to force a really restrictive vitamin and mineral standard through at Codex, because they are all walking in lock-step with Germany. Germany is the world’s largest pharmaceutical-producing country, and the biggest opponent of dietary supplements in the world. That’s why they became the host country for the Codex Committee on Nutrition, because they have a real vested interest in railroading us.
So if I understand you correctly, by having all these EU countries aligned with the pharmaceutical industry, they’re going to basically have the power to set very restrictive standards at Codex, which will then be utilized to harmonize the rest of the world’s trade laws. Is that correct?
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 set up similar regional trading blocks all over the world.
The FDA recently developed a website which basically tells people, “Don’t worry, the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act protects our industry and we’re never going to allow our industry to be harmonized to international law or regulated by international law.” How do you think they are going to bypass our domestic supplement laws to get us to accept Codex standards?
One possible way would be through a WTO trade dispute. The industry claims that this is not likely to happen, since our dietary supplement laws are so much more flexible than in other countries.And it is true that ours are more flexible. They say that the triggering mechanism for a trade dispute would have to be the FDA blocking a foreign manufacturer from bringing a product into the United States. They think that that’s unlikely, considering the flexibility of our laws compared to most countries.
My comment to that is “not so fast.” There’s a section of DSHEA pertaining to new dietary ingredients requiring companies who want to sell a product containing one or more ingredients that weren’t grandfathered in or permitted with the passage of DSHEA in 1994 to submit an extensive safety dossier on these ingredients. I believe this requires 75 days advance notice.
I just recently read the transcript of a public hearing that the FDA held on this very issue -- New Dietary Ingredients. It’s clear that in recent months, the FDA has blocked a whole lot of different new dietary ingredients from coming on the market. If a manufacturer were to unilaterally start marketing a product containing one or more new dietary ingredients without first notifying the FDA, the FDA would be bound by law to yank that product off the market. So, I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility that a foreign manufacturer might try to export a product to the United States containing one or more new dietary ingredients and the FDA could easily block it from coming in. They might even do it on purpose, knowing that it would trigger a trade dispute.
How would such a dispute potentially threaten DSHEA or get us to adopt Codex guidelines as a replacement, if that happened?
Well, the new international court created by the WTO called the Dispute Settlements Body is not run like a U.S. court. It doesn’t follow our Rules of Evidence and it’s held behind closed doors. No private citizen would have standing to appear before it, regardless of how well qualified they may be. We would be, “represented” by the very same FDA bureaucrats who have been, I feel, setting us up to lose in a trade dispute in the first place.
You also have to look at the track record of that court. Laurie Wallach from Public Citizen testified recently before the House Ways and Means Committee in Congress about U.S. membership in the WTO. She cited that in 42 out of 48 cases brought against the United States in which a WTO panel has made a ruling, we’ve lost. The WTO has labeled as illegal policies ranging from sea turtle protections and clean air regulations to tax and anti-dumping policies. So, we’re seeing a trend in which our laws are being overruled by the WTO. With only two exceptions, every health, food safety or environmental law challenged at the WTO has been declared a barrier to trade. Only two exceptions! That doesn’t make me feel really comfortable.
However, even if that weren’t used as the vehicle to harmonize us, it could be done at the hemispheric level through the FTAA by the Sanitary Phytosanitary Measures Agreement (SPS). This agreement is found verbatim in both the WTO trade agreement and in NAFTA and would most likely be included in CAFTA and the FTAA, thus broadening and deepening its scope.
Through the SPS agreement, every nation on earth is required to “harmonize” its dietary supplement laws to the mindlessly restrictive international Codex standards. Harmony is a beautiful thing when it comes to music, but it’s not a good thing to make all the laws the same all over the world and to have these laws made by unelected bureaucrats who are accountable to no one except the multinational corporations that control them.
According to a March 22nd, 2005 white paper, attorney Justin Prochnow, says of particular relevance to this discussion is Article 3 of the SPS Agreement which reads: “To harmonize Sanitary and Phytosanitary measures on as wide a basis as possible, members shall base their food safety measures on international standards, guidelines or recommendations.” According to Prochnow, these provisions with the use of the term “shall,” effectively make the voluntary Codex guidelines mandatory for member nations of the WTO. I also heard that in November of 2004 at the last Codex meeting in Bonn, Germany, that the Codex standards have gone from being voluntary to mandatory.
That’s right. They’ve eliminated their reporting requirement, which in effect makes it mandatory. This is something that Suzanne Harris of the Law Loft has widely reported, particularly in the following article,“Who Says Whatever Happens At Codex Does Not Affect U.S. Law and Why Do They Say It?” which your readers should definitely read on her website at: http://thelawloft.com/Freedom/050125_us_law.htm
In her article, she explains that the Pharma-dominated vitamin trade associations are, in fact, in an unholy alliance with the FDA and other regulators. They all want Codex. They want one set of regulations for the planet, because they don’t want to have to make different products for different countries with different labels and different ingredients. They want “one-size-fits-all” and they’re willing to sacrifice anything to get that.
Aren’t the supplement companies aware that the language has gone from voluntary to mandatory?
I don’t know what they are or aren’t aware of. In any case, they seem to be allowing themselves to be guided by the largest companies in their trade associations --the ones that want Codex, the ones that want one-size-fits-all, the ones that want to knock off their smaller competitors and are quite willing to turn their backs on consumers.
What you’re saying reeks of a conspiracy, John. If these standards and guidelines are going to be mandatory and not voluntary, that basically shreds DSHEA and flushes it right down the toilet, doesn’t it?.
The changes (legislation) would have to be made by Congress. The problem is that the globalist policies provide a huge lever to coerce Congress to conform.
Yes, but we already signed on to be a member of WTO and the United Nations, so then how could Congress prohibit the shredding of our supplement laws, based on these international agreements?
Under the threat of trade sanctions, which could impact broad sectors of our economy. Congress’s arm can be twisted to the breaking point so they’ll change any law that could wreak such economic havoc.
If, for the sake of discussion, Codex can’t be stopped and some time down the road a country decides to take the U.S. before the Disputes Settlement Body of the WTO and we lose, how would they ever enforce this?
The only legal means by which we could defend our domestic law in that court under the SPS agreement is on a basis of safety. However, the FDA has actually been taking steps to ensure that we lose a WTO trade dispute by generating false definitions of vitamin 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 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 Disputes Settlement Body. Unelected bureaucrats from the FDA would be our representatives.
In my opinion we’re dealing with illegitimate, criminal entities, John. The United Nations is a fraud, Codex is a fraud, and the WTO is a smokescreen for the multinationals who want a de facto monopoly over every enterprise, while crushing all competition. Is it possible for the U.S. to get out of all these treaties?
We would have to get out of both the WTO and the United Nations. There have been bills introduced in previous sessions of Congress that would do that, but it’s never gone anywhere and it’s unlikely to get very far because of the multinational manipulation of Congress. Historically, there have only been some people on Congressmen Paul’s Liberty Committee that have been cosponsors of the American Sovereignty Restoration Act. It’s HR1146. It’s not likely that we’re going to get out of the UN or the WTO; it would be great if we did.
You have been very cautious in your reporting about Codex because there has been a lot of disinformation put out there. Am I correct when I say that it’s your belief that Codex is only moving to ratify a framework pertaining to risk assessment and their intention is to fill in the blanks on allowable potency levels for vitamins and minerals after the fact. What do you mean by “framework?”
Their way of sliding things past us is by doing it incrementally. They know that if they had all the specifics of the regulations filled in, in advance, going into the Codex Alimentarius Commission meeting July 4-9 in Rome, that it would galvanize a huge public backlash, which they’re trying to avoid. And so they’ll ratify a framework and then move to fill in the blanks later.
(see http://www.capwiz.com/lef/mail/oneclick_compose/?alertid=%2077396911 )
And who decides what those blanks are going to be?
The World Health Organization! WHO convened a panel led by the FDA’s Dr. Christine Lewis Taylor (wife of former DEPUTY COMMISSIONER for Policy at FDA, Michael Taylor) on nutrient risk assessment. When she called for participants for this workshop, every single highly qualified person that applied, including both MDs and PhDs who believe in optimal health, were shut out. All of those people were excluded from participation in this workshop, which was obviously being rigged by pharmaceutical interests. We feel that their long range intention was to produce supplement values similar to those presented by the German Federal Institute of Risk Assessment. Incredibly, some of their allowable potencies are actually even lower than RDAs. (www.alliance-natural-health.org/_docs/ANHWebsiteDoc_145.doc )
To make matters worse, Pharma-dominated vitamin trade associations, such as the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN), have brazenly put out press releases claiming that consumers have actually benefited from the move to scrap RDAs as the basis for establishing allowable potency levels at Codex. They even announced a “victory” for consumers, supposedly because they’ve decided to base potency levels on so-called “scientific risk assessment.”
The problem is that what CRN is calling scientific, in fact, is not scientific and it’s certainly not a victory for consumers, especially if the potencies that come out of this process are as low as the ones put forth by the Germans. And yet I don’t see any reason to expect anything other than this outcome, because CRN is telling the industry that the end point of Codex will be the safe upper level numbers generated by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
When those numbers are shown to people in the industry, their reaction is those numbers aren’t so bad, those are comparable to what we’re currently allowed to sell; I have no problem with that. The problem here is that these vitamin companies aren’t being told that those numbers represent only the first tier of risk assessment. That’s what you get prior to subtracting junk science derived nutrient risk factors and also junk science derived numbers stemming from some mythical average diet which doesn’t, in fact, exist. It doesn’t take into account regional and climatic differences and the differences in nutritional needs that go with being in more northerly latitudes, for example, where people don’t get the sunlight that they do or the access to fresh fruits and vegetables that you might get in more southerly latitudes.
They also don’t take into account individual differences in absorption and so on. So the numbers that the Germans have arrived at in many cases are even lower than RDAs. And if CRN were telling the truth to its member companies, they would show them all of that fine print. But instead they’re conning them into backing this framework without telling them the truth about where it’s leading.
When do you think they would fill in the blanks and how would they do that without any public oversight, so that we’re not aware of what’s happening?
Well, they would just take the view that, “Okay, the framework has been created. The methodology is in place and, therefore, you have no choice but to accept the filling in the blanks the way that we do it.”
So, Codex is going to pass a resolution that the framework that the World Health Organization comes up with is acceptable to Codex delegates then, right?
Yes. They would just sign off on it because it’s a formality.
When do you think these allowable potency levels would then be filled in?
That’s anybody’s guess. And the problem here is that we won’t have any input. All of this will be done behind closed doors, just the way they held the workshop to create the framework.
What about these reports that I’m hearing that even when you talk about allowable potency levels, they’re only going to allow synthetic vitamins and minerals -- anything that’s natural, like natural vitamin E, organically-derived minerals, etc. would not be allowed because they want to follow strict pharmaceutical standards? Is that true?
The trend we’re seeing here is a clear effort to incorporate things from the European Supplements Directive into Codex. The EU, through their draconian Food Supplements Directive, is attempting to ban the food forms of vitamins and minerals and only allow synthetic forms, which are less bioavailable. However, there’s no legal connection between the European directive and what happens at Codex.
In order for vitamin supplement consumers to understand the full impact and seriousness of the situation, can you tell us what some of the restrictions would be on vitamins and minerals, if Codex is not stopped?
You can go to the following web page put out by the Alliance For Natural Health based in the UK (www.alliance-natural-health.org/_docs/ANHWebsiteDoc_145.doc ) that shows the mindlessly insane, low potencies they have drafted for the EU Food Supplements Directive. Remember, they are attempting to use this Directive as the blueprint for Codex. While Codex will only be ratifying a framework on nutrient risk assessment, (their intent being to fill in the blanks on allowable potencies after the fact), we see the writing on the wall in terms of what those limits could be. Only the German Federal Institute of Risk Assessment has done the full extrapolation called for by Codex, and their projected “Maximum Safe Permitted Levels” include just 225 mg for vitamin C, 5 mcg for Vitamin D, 15 mg for vitamin E and just 5.4 mg for Vitamin B-6.
When America’s supplement industry was under attack back in 1994 people rose up and flooded Congress with letters and calls demanding that they have free access to dietary supplements. What do you think people need to do today?
We need to educate Congress about the connection between the Codex vitamin issue and these trade agreements – WTO, NAFTA, CAFTA and FTAA. We need to explain to our Congressmen and women that they have sworn an oath to defend our Constitution from all enemies -- both foreign and domestic -- and that this is a matter of defending our sovereignty. Our country isn’t going to exist if we continue to go down this path.
We don’t need to go the route of what’s been happening in the European Union. Despite over a million vitamin consumers’ signatures on petitions against harmonizing their law to the European Food Supplements Directive, the ruling Labor Party in the UK said, “Sorry, we are members of the European Union, we’re going to harmonize to European law, whether you like it or not.”
Then after “stacking” the committee with “yes” men, the standing instrument got ratified, harmonizing the UK to European law in that instance. And that’s exactly what will happen here, if we don’t stop this slide into the FTAA. We’re going to see the destruction of our country. We’re already seeing it. You can see it through NAFTA. You can see it through the statistics and in Laurie Wallach’s testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee on May 17th, 2005.
Congress needs to listen to these complaints. Any member of Congress that votes in favor of CAFTA or FTAA needs to be driven out of office, and we need to tell them in advance that if you vote for CAFTA or FTAA, we will drive you out of office for these reasons and cite them all. The first reason is that we’re trying to protect our dietary supplement law. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. If we don’t kill CAFTA and FTAA, we are going to lose all of our most cherished freedoms. We’re going to lose our country.
I hesitate to make the comparison but it sounds like what we’re seeing with Codex and the consolidation of the EU is the revival of the Nazi Empire, only this time they are seeking to suck the whole world into their 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 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 un-impeachable. There’s no controversy about the fact that the European Union is a Nazi entity.
Let me pick up on something a little different. There seems to be quite a bit of conflicting information circulating over the Internet about Codex. Some of this information is leading people to believe that the Codex Vitamin and Mineral Standard will also impact things like farming, pesticides, irradiation, natural medicine and a slew of other issues. I know that there are other aspects of Codex beyond the Vitamin and Mineral standard but why are they being discussed as though they are as imminent as the Vitamin and Mineral Standard?
I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s part of a disinformation campaign to confuse people on the entire situation and mislead them. There are a whole slew of Codex committees, and there are other aspects of health that are being dealt with at Codex, including things like organic standards. However, all that is being played out separately. You can’t lump everything in together and say it’s all coming under the auspices of the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods For Special Dietary Uses when it’s not.
Do you know how far along they are on some of those other things?
I haven’t had the time or energy to focus on anything but the vitamin and mineral issue. Those are equally valid issues and the concern about globalization remains the same. If we want to protect U.S. laws, we have to protect our sovereignty. If we don’t want to be harmonized to Codex standards, not only for vitamins and minerals, but for other dietary supplements down the road if they expand it to include things like organics, then we need to protect our sovereignty. It all boils down to that. And the fact is we do have political leverage over state and federal legislators. We do not have political leverage over unelected bureaucrats at Codex, but we need to focus our energies on where we have political leverage, not on where we don’t.
But even if we are able to defeat CAFTA and FTAA, which may not happen, but even if we were, we’re still a member of the UN and the WTO. They can still hammer us that way, even if they don’t harmonize us through CAFTA and FTAA. Don’t you feel that way?
The way they’re trying to get us is through regional harmonization, the same way they’re trying to get the United Kingdom. The United Nations has teeth through the World Trade Organization. Prior to the advent of the World Trade Organization, they didn’t have the ability to force their will on other countries. Now they do.
You have consistently reported that what’s happening on the international stage with Codex is linked to a eugenics/genocide agenda. I know that sounds extremely radical to the average person, but tell us why you make these statements?
The reason I make these statements is because when you look at current world population, which is 6 1/2 billion people, and you read reports of most demographers who are predicting an increase in world population to a more than doubling of the current population by mid-century – they’re predicting a rise to over 15 billion people -- and you read reports from entities like the World Eugenics Society, the Population Council, No Population Growth (NPG), and Zero Population Growth (ZPG), it’s apparent that they do indeed have an agenda where they’re trying to cull our numbers.
You have to understand what Big Brother’s goal is here. Big Brother doesn’t want us living over the age of 65. Those in power want us to keel over on our 65th 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 got them all using chemical fertilizers, breaking the sulfur cycle. Sulfur is released into fruits and vegetables grown with manure as fertilizer. Sulfur is extremely important in preventing degenerative disease. What sulfur does is improve oxygen transport through the cell membranes. Oxygenation is extremely important to prevent cancer. An intentional effort was made to trigger a rash of degenerative disease, including cancer, in order to make more money in the hospitals, in order to sell cancer drugs. They have a business with disease.
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.
Hundreds of thousands of America are dying each year from pharmaceutical drug side effects and doctor-induced death, yet I bet we can’t even count on our hands the number of people that are dying from dietary supplements. It’s pharmaceutical drugs and pharmaceutical companies that really need more stringent regulation and oversight, not supplement companies and dietary supplements that don’t harm or kill virtually anyone.
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. 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 one of the biggest problems 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.
Well, John, you’ve certainly given us plenty of great information so vitamin consumers have a good assessment and understanding of the Codex situation. Thank you very much for your time and all the great work you’re doing to defend our freedoms.
Thank you, Greg. Keep up the excellent work you’re doing to also help defend our health freedoms.
Information taken from this web site:
http://www.healthliesexposed.com/articles/article_2005_07_1_3933.shtml
To Learn more about Codex and the attack against our health freedoms, it's imperative that you watch the new 28 minute video clip produced by Kevin Miller titled "We Become Silent: The Last Days Of Health Freedom. Go to: www.welltv.com
posted by Karen Herrmann-DeSantis, Herb Specialist, Natural Health Educator | 10:54 AM
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