Subject: Double Success at Codex Meetings: Aluminum & NHF Speech
Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2013 15:16:55 +0200
NEWS RELEASE
WHO NEEDS HEALTHY FOOD WHEN WE CAN EAT CASH?
Industry Insensitivity to Health Drives Codex Agenda
April 27, 2012
The hazy, smoggy skies over Beijing during these March days are emblematic of the Codex meetings that the National Health Federation (NHF) has been attending for many days here in China. The Sun only shimmers as a strange, pale orange globe, casting an ethereal, almost futuristic “Bladerunner” look to the cityscape while city residents glide silently past with white face masks and we Codex delegates and staff work inside overheated rooms on international food-additive standards. Given what has transpired, the setting seems apt. Throughout the week of March 18-22, 2013, the Codex Committee on Food Additives (CCFA) met at the Asia Hotel in Beijing, China, chaired by Dr. Junshi Chen of the China National Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment, to consider hundreds of food additives, some of which are innocuous, even healthful, others of which are most decidedly toxic.One of the toxic additives up for review was aluminum.The problem is that many of the Codex delegates cannot discern the difference between the two, the haziness of their thinking working in some sort of bizarre parallel to the opaque weather outdoors. Toxic Aluminum Yet, despite the strong opposition of Australia, the United States, Canada, and the other usual list of suspects such as the International Food Additives Council (IFAC) – an industry front group with ties to Monsanto and DuPont –the success of the European Union delegation and the NHF could be tallied by the numerous uses of aluminum food additives that the Working Group would suggest be discontinued to the full Committee meeting.Although there were also many food-additive uses for aluminum that still remained – no thanks to the interventions of voluble Australia, the U.S., Canada, IFAC, and others – they were at greatly reduced levels, usually cut in half or more.So, progress was made; and most delegates agreed that Codex’s goal was the eventual elimination of all aluminum food additives. Those of you familiar with the Codex Alimentarius Commission already know that it is an international body created under the auspices of the World Health Organization and the Food and Agricultural Organization, and is charged with the task of creating global guidelines and standards for food and food supplements.With some two dozen Committees hosted by various member countries, the CCFA is just one such committee, but a very important one specifically dealing with food additives.Its delegates meet each and every year in order to establish guidelines and standards that will affect the foods that you eat.That is why these standards are important, because they do directly impact your health. NHF Speaks for Consumers in Moscow After the success of the Beijing Codex meeting, it was then off to Moscow, Russia for NHF, where – in a huge shock to many – NHF had been invited to provide the speech for consumers worldwide on the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the founding of Codex.NHF president Scott Tips gave the speech before more than 200 assembled Codex delegates, driving home the message that those delegates were there to ensure consumer access to a healthy diet and not there to cozy up with industry.Amazingly enough, the speech was very well received.
NHF Codex Book NHF Codex Overview
(May be used as an article or printed as a handout to educate on Codex) NHF-UK Codex Overview
(May be used as an article or printed as a handout to educate on Codex) NHF-Dutch Codex Overview
(May be used as an article or printed as a handout to educate on Codex)
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National Health Federation: Established in 1955, the National Health Federation is a consumer-education, health-freedom organization working to protect individuals' rights to choose to consume healthy food, take supplements and use alternative therapies without unnecessary government restrictions. The NHF is the only such organization with recognized observer-delegate status at Codex meetings.
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The hazy, smoggy skies over Beijing during these March days are emblematic of the Codex meetings that the National Health Federation (NHF) has been attending for many days here in China. The Sun only shimmers as a strange, pale orange globe, casting an ethereal, almost futuristic “Bladerunner” look to the cityscape while city residents glide silently past with white face masks and we Codex delegates and staff work inside overheated rooms on international food-additive standards. Given what has transpired, the setting seems apt.
Throughout the week of March 18-22, 2013, the Codex Committee on Food Additives (CCFA) met at the Asia Hotel in Beijing, China, chaired by Dr. Junshi Chen of the China National Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment, to consider hundreds of food additives, some of which are innocuous, even healthful, others of which are most decidedly toxic. The problem is that many of the Codex delegates cannot discern the difference between the two, the haziness of their thinking working in some sort of bizarre parallel to the opaque weather outdoors.
As the only consumer group present at this meeting, and the working group that preceded it, the NHF offered a unique perspective on what its members consider healthful and what it does not. To us, aluminum-containing food additives and aspartame are self-evidently toxic and should be removed from the food supply. However, to the trade organizations here, and their foot servants in too many of the regulatory agencies that sit in as the country-member Codex delegates here, such food additives are simply vehicles of manufacturing convenience and health be damned. In fact, I rather suspect that had these same businesses been manufacturing leaden drinking vessels during the heyday of the Roman Empire, then they would have similarly defended such vessels’ use as vital and indispensable tools of commerce, no matter that the users were slowly being poisoned by the deadly, leaching lead.
Ubiquitous, Dangerous Aluminum
Scientists have known that aluminum is toxic since at least 1911. Even the first commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Dr. Harvey Wiley, admitted, in his 1929 book History of Crime against the Food Laws, that “From the earliest days of food regulation, the use of alum [aluminum sulphate] in foods has been condemned. It is universally acknowledged as a poison in all countries. If the Bureau of Chemistry had been permitted to enforce the law … no food product in the country would have any trace of … any aluminum or saccharin.” Dr. Wiley was the major force behind the first pure food law in the United States, but he resigned in disgust because the laws were not being enforced. To this date, aluminum has never been tested for safety by the FDA.
Aluminum is a known neurotoxin, easily crossing the blood-brain barrier, and it interferes with ATP enzymes, which carry out the important function of energy transfer among brain cells. Aluminum worsens the effects of other toxins, such as pesticides, herbicides, mercury, cadmium, fluoride, lead, and glutamate. It also detaches highly oxidizing iron in the bloodstream from its protective carrier transferrin. This greatly increases the toxicity of iron and is at least one of the mechanisms by which aluminum is toxic to the brain. Warnings about the toxic effects of aluminum could, and do, fill volumes.
Aluminum ammonium sulfate, aluminum silicate, calcium aluminum silicate, sodium aluminum phosphates, and sodium aluminosilicate are the food additives that Codex was reviewing this session. They can be found in practically as many foods as you can imagine: vegetables, soybean paste, crackers, pastas and noodles, bagels, English muffins, pita bread, bread and baking mixes, chewing gum, milk and cream powder, processed cheeses, flours, batters for fish and poultry, dairy-based drinks such as eggnog, beverage whiteners, dried-whey products, salt, seasonings and condiments, soup and broth mixes, and sauces. And do not think that you can always look at labels and see them disclosed there because often the aluminum compound is hidden within a particular product identity.
The Working Group
One of the things you learn early on at Codex meetings is the importance of the various ad-hoc working groups that the Codex Committees form from time to time to deal with specific food topics. These working groups either take the form of “electronic” Working Groups (eWGs) or “physical” Working Groups (pWGs). In the same way that the Codex Committees perform the grunt work for the parent Codex Alimentarius Commission, the working groups perform the dirty work for the Committees. If a delegate wants to have an impact at Codex, it is important to start at the bottom of the food chain and work one’s way upward.
At the Physical Working Group (as opposed to the Electronic Working Group) on the Codex General Standard for Food Additives (GSFA) that met on Friday, March 15-16th, and which was ably chaired by Mr. Paul Honigfort (a Consumer Safety Officer with the FDA), the NHF and the European Union repeatedly and harshly criticized aluminum-containing food additives and called for their removal. At various times the delegations of Iran, Japan, Brazil, and even China helped us by joining us in that call. But, we were opposed by the usual Codex suspects, the ones whom you would really think knew better – the delegations of Australia, the United States and Canada – and their handlers, those front organizations that masquerade as trade organizations, such as the International Food Additives Council (IFAC). Playing tag-team with IFAC on this issue was the International Council of Grocery Manufacturers Associations (ICGMA), another industry apologist for keeping aluminum in food additives.
In dishing out scorching criticism of aluminum and its proponents, NHF came under return fire from Australia, IFAC, and the Working Group Chairman! The arrogance of Australia was particularly notable since Australia seems to always be on the wrong side of the health issues at all Codex meetings. What's up with that? Is it ignorance or is Australia simply the point man for the United States on all of these issues? To my memory, Australia has never met an unhealthy Codex standard that it did not love. And "in your face" discussions by Katherine Carroll (a member of the NHF delegation) with Australia only confirmed Australia's intransigence and lack of interest in health.
As the delegations tangled and argued over the aluminum food additives, the essence of the debate was not over the danger of the additives but over the need of the industry for aluminum in producing its foods and drinks. Supported by Australia, IFAC, along with its sidekick ICGMA, cried out constantly that the "Industry" just could not make its products without aluminum food additives. Their members' spraying equipment "might overheat and catch fire," IFAC lamented. When NHF suggested that this was a not a genuine issue and that the industry has enough clever engineers to easily innovate its way out of this "problem" and create non-overheating equipment, NHF was sharply rebuked by the Chairman for suggesting that IFAC might not be telling the truth. Yet, really, in a World full of engineers, how long would it take to fashion a solution to the spraying-equipment fires, if any, that IFAC successfully interjected as a reason to keep some aluminum food additives? Monkeys in a zoo could solve this problem. Or, maybe not – if they had consumed too much aluminum.
At one point, the ICGMA representative stated that the aluminum food additive was the “best” for the job. Speaking immediately next, I started out with the retort that “’Best’ obviously did not include any consideration of health. It only included consideration of what was best to manufacture the product.” It would seem that for these food-additive companies, whatever is best for them must be best for the rest of us. Which is sort of like saying that if you kick someone enough times for you to feel good, then it must be good for the victim too.
Still, by the end of the first day and after I had spoken out some two dozen times, the success of the EU and NHF could be tallied by the numerous uses of aluminum food additives that the Working Group would suggest be discontinued to the full Committee meeting. Although there were also many food-additive uses that still remained – no thanks to the interventions of voluble Australia, the U.S., Canada, IFAC, and ICGMA – they were at greatly reduced levels, usually cut in half or more. So, progress was made; and most delegates agreed that Codex’s goal was the eventual elimination of all aluminum food additives.
On the issue of aspartame as a food additive, which was the subject of a Conference Room Document (CRD 12) drafted by the Federation, neither the working group nor the full Committee had the time to debate this additive and the can was kicked down the road, to be considered at next year’s meeting.
With minor adjustments of no real import, the overall recommendations of the working group were accepted by the full Committee and referred up to the Codex Commission.
The Opposition
It seemed self-evident that the main country delegations pushing aluminum additives had received their marching orders from industry. The real key, then, was industry itself, represented as it was at Codex by trade groups that, in some cases, might be more properly called front groups for big players like Monsanto and DuPont. They seemed to be calling the shots, but who is really behind them?
Dr. Joseph Mercola, in particular, recently and very helpfully wrote, “[I]’m making public IFAC’s list of officers and board members as of 2011. It wasn’t easy to find this list, primarily because IFAC isn’t a regular 501(c)(3). In fact, it isn’t a 501(c)(3) at all. Actually, it’s a 501(c)(6) – an IRS classification for nonprofit “commercially oriented” organizations such as football leagues, chambers of commerce and, apparently, groups like IFAC. Once you know its non-profit classification, you can find its 990 forms – which all non-profits must file, complete with lists of officers and directors. I obtained IFAC’s 990s for the years 2004-2011. And there I learned the truth. Except for two, who I couldn’t find any information at all on, all of IFAC’s officers and directors are linked to processed foods and additives in some way, with at least six of them having direct or business links to Monsanto and/or DuPont. That’s right. Six of IFAC’s governing board members are linked to the largest GMO producers in the world.”
And in looking at the large IFAC delegation, one can see names linked with Solae LLC (which used to be known as DuPont Protein Technologies), Innophos Inc. (leading producer of phosphates), Ashland China (BigAg), and the Kellen company (which manages so many of these front groups). The paw prints of these anti-health companies are all over the industry trade group INGOs at Codex, just as they are over certain Codex delegations. The NHF was the only consumer group present at the CCFA meeting – the David against these Goliaths.
Speech in Moscow
Still, the National Health Federation has gained enough respect over its many years at Codex, and after so many vocal battles with Chairmen, Chairwomen, and other delegations in arguing for health and health freedom, that while at the CCFA meeting in Beijing, I was asked by the Chairman of the Codex Committee on Contaminants in Food (CCCF) to give a speech for NHF on behalf of all consumers worldwide on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the founding of Codex. The speech was to be given in Moscow, Russia on April 10th during a special session of the meeting. I accepted.
That acceptance, though, meant flying back through California, New Jersey, and France, and then on to Moscow in time for the meeting and speech. Stubborn snow, carefully scooped up off the streets and sidewalks into neat piles, slowly melting in the Sun, greeted me as I arrived there. I prepared my speech during the trip and while there in Moscow, and on that clear Wednesday day, presented it.
There were seven speakers in all, four country delegations, the NHF for consumers, and then two industry speakers, in that order. Sitting at the head table before more than 200 delegates, I was right next to the podium, and speakers as they each spoke in turn. I could see them up close and they all spoke well, using PowerPoint, and about their country/industry’s involvement in Codex.
When it was my turn to speak, I spoke instead, without PowerPoint, about my experiences in arguing against melamine at my first CCCF meeting; about the essence of Codex being to protect the consumer by ensuring access to a healthy diet; about consumers being suspicious of Codex and its cozy relationship with industry; about the ease with which regulators can get caught up in “standard making” and forget the human faces and costs behind these rules and standards; about ”science based” evidence being nothing more than a word that can be twisted and used in the wrong way as it was once used against Galileo; about “old errors being more popular than new truths”; about us all being consumers with families and lives, and that it is important for us to always remember that there are real people, real human faces, affected by the decisions made at Codex; and about the delegates' duty to them.
It was not the firebrand, head-clubbing speech that some there had feared I would make (or that others not there had hoped I would make), but it was spoken to win hearts and not smash them. Seemingly, the message was received. Perhaps in time it will even be acted upon.
NEWS RELEASE - Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2013 20:22:58 +0100
Please tune in! The life you save could be your own!
Wednesday, January 16th, 2013 at Noon Pacific Time
Join Scott Tips’ interview of the week with Dr. Andrew Saul, Wednesday, January 16th, 2013, at noon PST.
Andrew W. Saul, Ph.D.has published over 180 reviews and editorials in peer-reviewed publications. Dr. Saul is on the editorial board of the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, is Editor-In-Chief of the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, and is featured in the documentary film Food Matters.
National Health Federation: Established in 1955, the National Health Federation is a consumer education, health-freedom organization working to protect individuals' rights to choose to consume healthy food, take supplements and use alternative therapies without unnecessary government restrictions. The NHF is the only such organization with recognized observer-delegate status at Codex meetings.
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Wednesday, December 19th, 2012 at Noon Pacific Time
Join Scott Tips' interview of the week with Dr. John Cannell, Vitamin D expert, December 19th, 2012, at noon PST.
John Jacob Cannell, M.D. is an American activist, most notably taking a stand on the Vitamin D deficiency epidemic. In the past, he contributed to such areas of public debate as Black Lung legislation, and the problems with educational testing. In recent years, Dr. Cannell has taken an active role in educating the public about the health benefits of Vitamin D. He is the founder of the Vitamin D Council. He is the author of two recent theories concerning vitamin D. The first is on vitamin D and influenza and the second on vitamin D and autism.
National Health Federation: Established in 1955, the National Health Federation is a consumer education, health-freedom organization working to protect individuals' rights to choose to consume healthy food, take supplements and use alternative therapies without unnecessary government restrictions. The NHF is the only such organization with recognized observer-delegate status at Codex meetings.
P.O. Box 688, Monrovia, CA 91017 USA ~ 1 (626) 357-2181 ~ Fax 1 (626) 303-0642
In a stunning display of nutritional ignorance, Codex rams through a standard that
leaves many with sub-optimal nutrition
December 14, 2012
The Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU) just finished meeting all last week (December 3-7) in Bad Soden, a small German city near Frankfurt. Nearly 300 delegates were in attendance, comprised of government functionaries and international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) representatives. So, for one week, the assembled delegates – including the INGO delegation of the National Health Federation (NHF) –met, discussed, and debated a wide number of food and food-supplement issues, including the controversial draft Nutrient Reference Values (NRVs) for vitamins and minerals.
Those of you familiar with the Codex Alimentarius Commission already know that it is an international body created under the auspices of the World Health Organization and the Food and Agricultural Organization, and is charged with the task of creating global guidelines and standards for food and food supplements. With some two dozen Committees hosted by various member countries, the CCNFSDU is just one such committee, but a very important one specifically dealing with food nutrition. Its delegates meet each and every year in order to establish guidelines and standards that will affect the foods that you eat and the supplements you take.
And those who have been following the National Health Federation’s efforts at Codex since the mid-1990s will recall that at the Codex Nutrition Committee meeting in Dusseldorf, Germany in 2009, the NHF singlehandedly launched the opposition that stopped the Australian delegation and others from “dumbing down” these Nutrient Reference Values (which are essentially Recommended Daily Allowances).
Australia and its supporters had wrongly proposed that lower NRVs be adopted for certain important vitamins and minerals, including Vitamin C. For example, the Proposed Draft Additional or Revised NRVs for Labelling Purposes in the Codex Guidelines on Nutrition Labelling suggested reducing the Vitamin A NRV from 800 micrograms down to 550 micrograms, Vitamin C down from an already-abysmally-low 60 milligrams to 45 milligrams, Thiamin down from 1.4 milligrams to 1.2 milligrams, Niacin from 18 milligrams down to 15 milligrams, Magnesium down from 300 milligrams to 240 milligrams, and so forth. Each of these new values would represent 100% of the daily intake for consumers for those vitamins and minerals.
Fortunately, because of NHF and its key supporters India and Iraq at the 2009 meeting, the Committee wisely chose not to move forward with any of those proposed NRVs and instead held the work back for further review and study. Three years have passed since we first stopped these NRVs from being adopted, and each year of non-adoption has been a victory for NHF, and for you.
Unfortunately, this year’s meeting in Bad Soden saw mixed results, with approximately half of the vitamin and mineral NRVs with lower-than-optimal daily values being advanced forward for review by the parent-body Commission. The other half has been held back for further review and evaluation by the Committee itself, and for further discussion at next year’s meeting.
NHF Codex Overview
(May be used as an article or printed as a handout to educate on Codex) -
NHF-UK Codex Overview
(May be used as an article or printed as a handout to educate on Codex) -
NHF-Dutch Codex Overview
(May be used as an article or printed as a handout to educate on Codex) -
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NHF GOES TO GERMANY TO SPEAK FOR YOU AT CODEX MEETING
December 01, 2012
NHF delegate Scott Tips speaking out at last year’s Codex Nutrition Committee Meeting
The National Health Federation (NHF) – your only voice for Health Freedom at Codex meetings – will be actively participating in the upcoming Codex Alimentarius meeting in Bad Soden, Germany. The Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU) will meet all next week (December 3-7) on a wide number of issues, including the controversial draft Nutrient Reference Values (NRVs) for vitamins and minerals.
Those who have been following the NHF’s efforts at Codex since the mid-1990s will recall that at the Codex Nutrition Committee meeting in Dusseldorf, Germany in 2009, the NHF singlehandedly launched the opposition that led to the failure of certain country delegations to succeed in “dumbing down” the Nutrient Reference Values.
Some delegations had mistakenly proposed that lower NRVs be adopted for certain important vitamins and minerals, including Vitamin C. For example, the Proposed Draft Additional or Revised NRVs for Labelling Purposes in the Codex Guidelines on Nutrition Labelling suggested reducing the Vitamin A NRV from 800 micrograms down to 550 micrograms, Vitamin C down from an already-abysmally-low 60 milligrams to 45 milligrams, Thiamin down from 1.4 milligrams to 1.2 milligrams, Niacin from 18 milligrams down to 15 milligrams, Magnesium down from 300 milligrams to 240 milligrams, and so forth.
Fortunately, thanks to NHF (and its supporters India and Iraq), the Committee wisely chose not to move forward with any of those proposed NRVs and instead held the work back for further review and study. Three years have now passed since we first stopped these NRVs from being adopted, and each year of non-adoption has been a victory for NHF and for you.
This year, though, the Committee will once again take up discussion of the appropriate NRVs for Codex to adopt. We assure you that we will be just as forceful advocates for increases in the NRVs of those vitamins and minerals that some Codex delegations wish to “dumb down.”
While NHF’s position fortunately has support among other delegations at Codex, we still remain the only health-freedom organization with the right to speak out to the delegates and argue this issue at Codex meetings. In fact, NHF just submitted its written comments to the Committee today, arguing the NHF position in advance of our anticipated oral arguments next week.
Another group has mentioned that it will also be in attendance at this Codex meeting; but it is important to remember that they can only attend as an individual member of the U.S. delegation (which typically numbers a dozen or more persons and is run by the FDA), with absolutely no right to speak out at the meeting; and the person attending for the organization must even sign a written agreement with the FDA stating that, as a condition of being allowed to sit “like a bump on a log” on the delegation, he or she will not lobby any other delegations except to parrot the United States’ position on issues. Handcuffed like this, non-governmental members of the U.S. delegation cannot really impact the proceedings. So don’t be misled.
The NHF will keep you informed about its progress at the German meeting and appreciates the support of all of you who have donated to us so that we may continue to attend Codex meetings and protect your health and health freedom!
National Health Federation: Established in 1955, the National Health Federation is a consumer-education, health-freedom organization working to protect individuals' rights to choose to consume healthy food, take supplements and use alternative therapies without unnecessary government restrictions. The NHF is the only such organization with recognized observer-delegate status at Codex meetings.
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The Empire Shoves Ractopamine Down Our Throats after Razor-Thin Vote
By Scott C. Tips
It sounded like doom. After having taken a vote by secret ballot on July 5th, the Chairman of the Codex AlimentariusCommission, Mr. Sanjay Dave, solemnly announced the results of the voting on whether or not ractopamine[1] standards were adopted. Out of 143 ballots cast, the vote was 69 for ractopamine, 67 against ractopamine, with 7 abstaining. If only one vote had shifted from the “for” camp to the “against” camp, then the result would have been completely different and the ractopamine standard would have been defeated.
This voting was forced upon the Commission by the harping insistence of the United States, Canada, Costa Rica, and Brazil that the long stalemate over the adoption of a standard for Ractopamine MRLs (Maximum Residue Levels) could not be resolved through the Codex-preferred process of “consensus” but would, after all, have to be voted upon.
The Greedo Drug[2]
Among the many standards and guidelines being discussed by the Codex Alimentarius Commission at its 35th session in Rome, Italy during the sun-drenched week of July 2-7, 2012, was this highly charged one for ractopamine – a beta-agonist drug given to pigs, turkey, and cattle to promote their protein and weight gain before slaughter.
FAO Building, Rome, Italy
This veterinary drug, developed and owned by Eli Lilly’s Elanco Technology, takes nutrients away from fat production and pushes them instead into muscle, creating a leaner and ostensibly more-valuable animal. While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved this drug for animal use in 2002, three years later it sent Elanco a warning letter accusing the company of withholding critical information that had led to approval.[3]
Most of the World’s countries (some 160 at last count) wisely do not allow ractopamine-doped meat to be sold within their borders. Especially strict is the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which has found that ractopamine constricts blood vessels and quickens the heart.[4] EFSA also has strong concerns about the drug’s carcinogenicity as well as its stressing and other adverse effects on the animals given the drug. As for humans, since there is no clearance period of two weeks prior to slaughter as with other veterinary drugs to rid the meat of drug residues, consumers are being medicated with ractopamine residue when they eat the treated meat.[5] The Chinese Government has spent many millions of Yuan in studies of the health effects of ractopamine and, convinced of its health risks, has banned both its import and export.[6] As a further nail in ractopamine’s coffin, EFSA and its member States have a very sensible public-health policy against drugging healthy animals just for steroid-like effects.
Yet, JECFA[7] conducted its own industry-influenced assessments of the risks of ractopamine and established MRLs for ractopamine residues that have been seized upon by the drug’s promoters as “proof” of its safety.[8] Mentioning JECFA’s reports as frequently and fervently as drug addicts mainlining on heroin, the pro-ractopamine group conveniently overlooks the fact that JECFA’s study groups consisted of only six healthy human males and a band of monkeys (the embarrassing dog study having been slyly omitted from the reports). They also overlook the fact that JECFA’s science is based only on industry studies. JECFA science is often both political and highly suspect, a fact that escapes most Codex delegates.[9]
Victory is Never Final at Codex
For those of you who have been following the ractopamine drama at previous Codex meetings, you already know that the National Health Federation (NHF) has been fighting the adoption of this standard for years. At one Codex meeting, NHF read the warning label, word for word, which clearly prohibits use by humans, from the ractopamine packaging to the entire Codex Commission delegates. At the same meeting, as well as others, we flaunted Codex protocol by also harshly denigrating JECFA’s poor excuse for “science,” which is nothing more than regurgitated industry studies spoon-fed to JECFA and then recycled back to the Codex delegates with an untouchable religious aura surrounding it.
The ractopamine standard, though, should never have even made it this far – to the final Step 8 of the eight-step Codex process for approval – but for the United States’ own extremely suspect actions. The U.S. is the host country for the Codex Committee on Residues of Veterinary Drugs in Foods (CCRVDF) – the committee that created and debated the adoption, at the committee level, of the ractopamine standard before it was passed up to the Commission for final approval and adoption. Unfortunately, at the critical stage of its adoption by the Committee, the U.S. government reportedly refused to approve the visas for the Chinese scientists who were planning to attend the meeting and present their own science showing the dangers of ractopamine! When I mentioned this fact during the ractopamine debates at the Commission meeting in Geneva in 2010, the Chinese delegates nodded their heads in agreement.
Along with the European Union (EU), Russia, China, Turkey, Iran, Norway, Switzerland, and many other delegations, all of whom have been firmly opposed to the adoption of a standard for ractopamine that would permit WTO trade challenges against existing ractopamine bans, NHF had helped to successfully stop its adoption at this, its final, ultimate step. And at last year’s Codex meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, the United States, Canada, and others had forced the issue to a vote and lost – by only five votes; but like flies on a carcass, they kept coming back for more.
Compromise?
One of the flaws with the Codex process is that there is rarely, if ever, the final defeat of a proposed standard. As long as any delegation or group of delegations wants to keep pushing that standard, then it can lose vote after vote and still win. But once the standard is adopted, that is final; and there is no revisiting of that adoption decision to reverse what was even obviously a bad decision. That is why it is so important to never allow bad standards to be adopted at Codex. Unfortunately, that is exactly what happened with the ractopamine standard.
View towards Podium of CAC Meeting in Rome July 2012
Despite various attempts to negotiate – Codex calls it “facilitate” – a compromise between the two opposing camps, those efforts failed completely, just as I had publicly predicted long ago. How does one compromise between having poison in your food and not having poison? You either do, or you don’t. And as NHF has argued over the years at Codex meetings, it is absolutely insane to study any toxin, poison, chemical, whatever you want to call it, in isolation and then declare it safe. These days, people are exposed to numerous different chemicals and electromagnetic energies that our grandparents were not; and the interaction among these chemicals and their cumulative effects upon the body are still unknown.
The last example of an attempt to arrive at consensus occurred during a special "facilitated" session that was held from 8:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. on the second day of the week-long meeting.[10] The Chairman projected onto large screens in the room six different options for dealing with the ractopamine stalemate. Cleverly, the U.S. and its sidekick Canada wanted the six proposed options deleted and reduced to a simpler, black-and-white, two-option choice. To my mind, it was simply their strategy to reduce the issues to two options that delegates could then vote on either thumbs up or thumbs down.
During the debate on these options, NHF was the third-to-last to speak that morning; and I had the opportunity to refute some of the arguments made by South Africa and Antigua, who respectively had argued that we should just "note our objections and move forward" and "not offend the Experts by not accepting their opinions, otherwise they will stop giving them to Codex"! In my warmest way, and among other things, I said that “Codex should never just blindly accept the Experts' opinions – some you might accept, others you do not. The 'experts' did not have all of the data and their conclusions are flawed as shown by the fact that more than 70% of the World's pork-consuming countries oppose ractopamine doping of their food. The "way forward" does not mean continuing on the same false path but in wisely retracing one’s steps back until the correct path is found.”
The facilitated session ended, as had all of the others, with no consensus on ractopamine. But, as it turned out, finding consensus on ractopamine at this meeting had never been in the game plan for the pro-ractopamine forces.
The Empire Strikes Back
The Fourth of July saw fireworks of the verbal kind with numerous statements by the country delegates as to their respective positions either for or against the ractopamine standard. But, amazingly, when the Chairman first asked for comments from the floor, there was an awkward, extended silence as no delegation wished to be the first to speak. The Swiss delegate finally ended the calm when he fired the opening shot of the day’s debate, bluntly stating, “There are two risks here. Risk Number 1 is in using anabolizing drugs that affect health. Risk Number 2 is that the use of ractopamine will increase consumer distrust and they will feel cheated by the system that is supposed to protect them. If there is no consensus, and this standard is adopted, then Switzerland might withdraw from Codex.”
The delegate for the Netherlands, Mr. Friedericy, gave a scathing speech against ractopamine, on the order of what NHF itself had planned to say somewhat less diplomatically when its turn to speak came. Among other things, he denounced the commercial interests that were promoting ractopamine over true health, arguing:
“When we now accept that Codex Alimentarius is used as a backdoor to force a large part of the World to allow food products from another large part of the World which contain certain products, the use of which is diametrically opposed to what our consumers expect from safe food, and in no way contributes to the health or well-being of that consumer, the Codex Alimentarius will lose its credibility as an international body to promote food safety and as a protector of consumers’ health. And despite all the splendid work for mankind that Codex has done in the past and may be doing in the future, it will be regarded by the ordinary citizen as a tool for foreign industries to force unhealthy products down their throats.”
Dutch delegate Mr. Friedericy with colleague
But those words of wisdom, and others, were unfortunately smashed by the World Health Organization (WHO) representative Angelika Treitscher, who, sitting at the head table with a mantle of scientific authority that was neither deserved nor merited given her words, firmly drove a stake into the heart of the objectors when she summarily took the floor and pontificated that the JECFA review had shown ractopamine to be safe and that any opposition to the adoption of a ractopamine standard was not based upon health concerns.[11] At that, the room erupted into applause by those pro-ractopamine forces which themselves, curiously enough, had cynically swept all health concerns under the rug and then were busy calculating their profits from increased pork and other meat sales throughout the World.
Her words clearly comforted those pro-ractopamine delegates who, in lie after lie, had lamented how badly the World "needs" ractopamine to feed the hungry millions and how the science "proves" this animal steroid drug is safe. Yet, between those arguments and reality lay an astonishing darkness, which no amount of reason could illuminate.
The debate went back and forth between the pro-ractopamine forces (essentially all of the Western Hemisphere, plus Australia, New Zealand, and most of Africa) and the anti-ractopamine forces (the Eastern Hemisphere minus most of Africa) until the Chairman abruptly and unilaterally cut off any further discussion, leaving 36 country delegations and 2 INGOs (the National Health Federation and Consumers International) without any opportunity to share their views on this issue.
This decision was especially unfortunate because both NHF and CI were once again prepared to speak out strongly against the WHO representative’s unsupported comment that “Science” supported the safety of ractopamine in the food supply. The Chairman’s abrupt decision to cut off discussion also stood in sharp contrast with that of the previous Codex Chairwoman, Karen Hulebak, who had permitted a much fuller discussion of the delegates’ views, no matter how unpopular they might have been.
When the Chairman stated his view that “there is clearly no consensus” and that the Codex Procedural Manual states that we should adopt standards by consensus, it seemed as if the standard might fail. But the Chairman then recognized Ghana to speak on procedure, and that country announced – again to applause – that Codex Procedural Manual Rule 12 calls for a vote in those cases where consensus cannot be reached.
The European Union and other delegations – firmly opposed to the adoption of a standard for ractopamine that would permit WTO trade challenges against existing ractopamine bans – challenged the need for a vote, as they knew that the United States, Canada, and others had been lobbying Codex countries since last year to support ractopamine use throughout the World. If the ractopamine standard were to be decided upon by consensus alone, then it would be defeated; however, if it were voted upon, then there was the strong risk of it being adopted.
Codex delegates looking at the Voting Board
In a late-evening Codex session held on July 4th, and in a reprise from last year's vote, the first vote was to decide whether a secret ballot or an open ballot vote would be taken on whether to vote or not. The pro-ractopamine forces wanted the vote to be "open ballot" so as to ensure that "their" votes didn't stray and vote the “wrong” way. The EU, the NHF, and many others wanted a vote in secret to allow delegates to vote their consciences. This vote, the anti-ractopamine won by 93-41. But the next vote – on whether to submit to a vote the adoption of the ractopamine standard – was won by the pro-ractopamine forces, 68 to 64.
Clearly jubilant and sensing blood (and most certainly wanting to have a Fourth of July victory to celebrate), the U.S. delegate Darci Vetter pushed for the meeting to continue so that the vote could be held that night. The Chairman, noting the hour hand resting on nine, wisely refused.
Darth Vader
This year’s U.S. delegate in chief, Darci Vetter (whose name sounds eerily similar to a sinister George Lucas Star Wars character), had clearly been working the delegate crowd before and during the meeting. By misrepresenting the science and telling everyone it's about "Food Security" (a code word for "let's unload more of our junk food on the World"), she and her sales crew corralled widespread support from many developing-nation delegations, which mistakenly look to the U.S. for global leadership.
The U.S. Delegation at the Codex Meeting in Rome
All of the Western Hemisphere was sewn up solid in the pro-ractopamine court, from Canada down to Argentina and Chile. And to the surprise of many, among the biggest and most vocal supporters of ractopamine were the anti-American countries of Venezuela and Cuba. Since the previous Codex Commission meeting, and probably with U.S. and others’ threats and promises still ringing in their ears, all of Africa had defected to the ractopamine camp (except for staunch Kenya, Egypt, Zimbabwe, and Libya).
I wish I had been a fly on the wall during the many discussions the U.S. had had with the undecided Codex delegates. One can only speculate as to the promises and/or implied threats that were made to such postage-stamp nations as Tonga (pop. 104,000) and St. Kitts and Nevis (pop. 53,000, sopping wet) for them to come to Italy, eat pizza, and vote the American way. When you realize that Tonga and St. Kitts and Nevis each have the same voting power as China and India, you start to see the absurdity of the pro-ractopamine delegates’ calls for "voting." This is not democracy in action, this is pure Theatre of the Absurd. Why, a back alley in Beijing has more people than St. Kitts and Nevis! The political blowback on the U.S. and its sidekick Canada from this travesty will be enormous - perhaps sooner rather than later.
And just when we could not imagine the U.S. becoming any more overbearing, it happened. The night before the final vote, the U.S. Ambassador in Rome reportedly spent his time from 9:00 p.m. until 9:00 a.m. the next morning calling Codex delegates to lobby for their support. In some cases – our sources report – he, or someone, instructed countries (such as Georgia) to vote the U.S. way or else.
The Ugly American turned from fiction to reality at Codex.[12] But Darth Vader and her troops were not the only villains in this tragi-comedy. The Special Villains for pushing this Greedo drug on the World also include Canada, Brazil, Costa Rica, Panama, Cuba, Ghana, Nigeria, Japan, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, the Philippines, and WHO. I only hope that their children and grandchildren will be healthy enough to forgive them all for putting money before health.
The Vote and Aftermath
As already known, the vote was taken and the ractopamine standard was adopted by a razor-thin margin. If only one vote had changed sides, then the standard would have lost and not been adopted. Yet, ironically, it would still have lived on to be debated at next year’s Commission meeting. Yes, that’s right: In this rigged game, if ractopamine won this year, then the standard is adopted. Had it lost, then the fight to get it adopted would just continue until the anti-ractopamine forces are worn down, bought out, or simply out-voted. In the warped universe of Codex what passes for democracy is nothing more than an obsessive death wish to pass food standards – healthy or unhealthy, it doesn’t matter – at all costs so as to preserve Codex “credibility.”
Those who voted for ractopamine were hardly profiles in courage – in fact not even profiles at all. The disgusting exchange of “thumbs up” signals between Darth Vader and the Israeli delegate, which I witnessed, as the latter arrived and slithered into her seat at the very last minute in time to vote for the adoption of the standard is just one example of such unprincipled action that week.
The delegates filed in one at a time to vote on ractopamine
The true profiles in courage were those who spoke out strongly against the ill-health that ractopamine represents and who challenged the "holy" word of JECFA, which had already promoted the ractopamine standard to sainthood. Those individuals are too numerous to mention here; but Ella Strickland and Eva Zamora, who led the EU delegation, deserve special mention since they were the fulcrum around which all opposition was balanced and they so often spoke true and from the heart about the health dangers posed by ractopamine.
After the vote was announced, and China and Norway had expressed their strongest objection and disappointment with the vote, Ms. Strickland spoke for the EU, calmly saying, “The EU has repeatedly stated that there is no justification for ractopamine. Let me be clear, the EU’s current legislation will remain in place. Further serious reflection is warranted here, and Codex was not well-served here by this voting.”
In turn, the U.S. delegate said, “We are pleased that the Commission could move forward but we take no pleasure in how it was accomplished. We thank the delegates for using all of the tools that we have here when there is no consensus. We want decisions on food-safety science.”
Others – Kenya, Egypt, Turkey, Croatia, Iran, Switzerland, Russia, and Zimbabwe – registered their strongest reservations about and disgust with the outcome of the vote. In all my many years of participating in Codex meetings, I have never seen a sharper divide among the delegates on an issue.
The Death Star on Station
With the ractopamine standard in place and two other bad ones on the way,[13] the food markets of the World look primed for change. Most of the World is not happy and they will resist what happened at Codex that senseless week.
The narrow vote reflects the absurdity and vulnerability of Codex. We have less than 30% of the World’s pork-consuming countries dictating standards to the other 70% plus of the World. The European Union, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey, Russia, Kenya, and China correctly argued throughout that the science on Ractopamine was not settled, that this standard was not about health but about pushing commercial profits instead, and that Codex would be damaged by the adoption of this unhealthy standard. In fact, that is exactly what will unfold as a result of the Commission’s decision: Codex has lost whatever scientific credibility it ever had, even amongst those who have been its biggest supporters. Despite especially the EU representatives’ herculean efforts – and they are truly the unsung heroines of the day – bad science and ill-health prevailed, and the World is a worse place for it.
NHF predicts that today’s adoption of a standard for Ractopamine MRLs will lead to trade challenges by the United States against China and by Brazil against the European Union to crack open those consumer markets to Ractopamine-doped meat products. The victory of the United States today in pushing the wishes of its commercial masters – and certainly not those of its citizens, most of whom oppose Ractopamine-doped foods – may very well backfire on that country and its minions as a chain reaction of events unfold, the full scope of which no one here yet knows.
[1] Ractopamine is a steroid-like vet drug, the residues of which remain in the slaughtered animal to then be consumed by meat-eaters
[2] “Greedo,” with its double meaning, is probably the best name to give this drug. Greedo was the Star Wars bounty hunter who tried to kill Han Solo at the Mos Eisley Cantina, but was killed instead. At the same time, greedy farmers using this drug expect a net return of $2.00-3.00 per pig sold, a pittance compared to the harm done to animals and humans from this toxin.
[3] The 14-page letter read in pertinent part: “Our representatives requested a complete and accurate list of all your GLP [Good Laboratory Practices] studies involving Paylean® (Ractopamine hydrochloride), including their current status as well as the names of the respective study monitors. In response, your firm supplied to our representatives multiple lists which differed in the names of the studies and their status. In addition, your firm could not locate or identify documents pertaining to some of the studies. This situation was somewhat confusing and created unneeded delays for our representatives.” Moreover, the letter asks: Where was mention of the farmer phone calls to Elanco reporting, "hyperactivity," "dying animals," "downer pigs" and "tying up" and "stress" syndromes. Where was the log of phone calls that included farmers saying, "animals are down and shaking," and "pig vomiting after eating feed with Paylean"?
[5] As much as 20% of Paylean (given to pigs for their last 28 days), Optaflexx (given to cattle their last 28 to 42 days), and Tomax (given to turkeys their last seven to 14 days), remains in consumer meat, says author and well-known veterinarian Michael W. Fox. (See http://www.alternet.org/story/145503/, accessed August 1, 2012.)
[7] JECFA is the acronym for the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives, and is the Codex-spawned expert group upon which Codex Committees rely for expert scientific opinions in forming Codex standards.
[8] JECFA’s risk assessments were undertaken in 2004, 2006, and 2010 and provided its recommended MRLs for Ractopamine (Ractopamine hydrochloride) in the target tissues (muscle, fat, liver, and kidney) for cattle and pigs.
[9] Far too many Codex delegates blindly worship at the false altar of JECFA science, believing that JECFA, like some ancient Greek oracle, infallibly proclaims the truth. This religious adulation of JECFA amongst delegates supposedly trained in science is one of the most incongruent aspects of Codex this writer has ever encountered.
[10] This facilitated session followed the one-day facilitated session chaired by CAC Chairman Dave (pronounced “Dah-vey”) in Paris, France on April 5, 2012, during a break in the meeting of the Codex Committee on General Principles. NHF attended that meeting and made a strong statement against the adoption of the ractopamine standard.
[11] It is important to note that when EFSA had pointed out the fatal flaws in the JECFA Report on ractopamine, JECFA simply declared that EFSA had not presented any “new data” and EFSA’s concerns were summarily rejected. That is not how scientific review and debate is conducted in the real world. In the real scientific world, JECFA would have had to respond and/or correct the flaws, regardless of whether EFSA’s critique presented any “new data” or not.
[12] One example of utter pettiness stems from Darth Vader not liking a particular response that the FAO Legal Counsel David Byron had given at the meeting (when she had asked what “holding Ractopamine at Step 8 pending further action by Codex” meant). He had responded, in a polite tone and manner, that it simply meant that, as with all Codex standards held at Step 8, the Commission could then take action at a later date. Offended, she then complained to Mr. Byron’s boss about his comment.
[13] At this same Codex meeting, the Commission agreed over many strenuous objections to revive and put back on track the standard for recombinant Bovine Somatotrophin (bST) as well as commence review of a standard for Zilpaterol hydrochloride. The latter is another steroid vet drug that makes ractopamine look tame by comparison. The NHF spoke out against both of these drugs.
"It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error, It is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error."
Robert Houghwout Jackson, Chief Judge at the War-Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg.
NEWS RELEASE
FORCE HARRY REID’S HAND TO VOTE ON H.R.6079
By Lee Bechtel, NHF Lobbyist
July 24, 2012
The House of Representatives has again passed a bill (H.R.6079, Repeal of Obamacare Act), to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act otherwise known as Obamacare.
The bill goes to the Senate with many Democratic Senators up for reelection in 117 days who don’t wish to vote on it, and neither does Majority Leader Reid or Barack Obama. They do not want to be pushed into a position of having to vote against this bill, which would mean sustaining another tax bill on Americans.
While Barack Obama wants to “give middle income” taxpayers a “tax break” by extending the Bush tax breaks for those earning less than $250,000, he wants to keep Obamacare and the 12 new taxes it imposes on families earning less than $250,000 dollars. This does not include the mandated tax penalty for people who choose not to pay into a federally-run insurance program that is a massive extension of government control over our lives.
We Get Scraps, They Get Cake
Yet, interestingly enough, this wonderful “gift” of healthcare that Congress voted us last year, and that was signed by Obama into law, specifically exempts Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court justices from its purview. They get to keep their own gold-plated healthcare plans while the peasants make do with the scraps tossed their way. If Obamacare is so wonderful, then why are they not dining at the same table?
They Get Our Money First
Keep in mind, too, that its “benefits” do not even kick in for several more years, while the taxes imposed upon us start immediately. Again, if Obamacare were so wonderful, then why shouldn’t its benefits start immediately?Because, this legislation has never been about health, but about raising revenue for a nearly bankrupt Federal government, which needs to make it past the next election.
Obamacare has never been about health. It is about power and control, and enriching the big corporations with money from those people who can ill afford it, all the while delivering a very inferior “disease-care” service loaded with drugs.
It Perpetuates the Medical Mafia Monopoly
Obamacare forces more Americans - against their will - into a failing disease-care system that will be anything but “affordable” with 159 new agencies, 13,000 new pages of regulations, and 15,000 new IRS agents to enforce it. Even though many call this disease-care law by its nickname, Obamacare, make no mistake, this law violates the Constitution and is an assault on our natural health care, supplements, and other alternative treatments that “free” Obamacare would push aside in the marketplace by making them uncompetitive.
Because Obamacare’s power-hungry proponents can tug on our heartstrings with their continual pleas about “the poor masses without health insurance,” they have lured many into a naïve acceptance of, even advocacy for, Obamacare. Yet, those so duped overlook the fact that this system is nothing more than a jail into which we are all being shoved and that the promise of “healthcare” coverage does not equate at all with better health.
Our Health Freedom Is At Stake!
It is not an overstatement to say that our future health freedoms and liberties are at stake. This is why Obamacare needs to be repealed and why the NHF needs your help and your renewed pressure on your Senators to have a vote take place on H.R.6079. Everyone needs to contact their U.S. Senators and demand that they: (1) Bring H.R.6079 to the floor for a vote; and then (2) Vote for its passage and thus for repeal of Obamacare.
Too many people have forgotten the lesson that true health comes from freedom and not coercion. It is time to allow a true free market in health care. Contact your US Senator today and ask him or her to petition Senators Reid and Dick Durbin, the Democratic leaders, to hold a vote, and for them to vote to repeal this unconstitutional law.
Yesterday, and by a 5-4 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court barely upheld Barack Obama’s misnamed “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.” While the Court rejected Congress having any power to enforce this individual mandate under the Commerce Clause, it did uphold the mandate as a “tax.” The funny thing is that, when this Act was passed, both Barack Obama and those in Congress voting for it swore up and down it was nota tax. Yet, the Supreme Court just said it was a tax; and being a tax, could stay in effect. It’s Not a Tax, It’s a Tax "The Affordable Care Act's requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may reasonably be characterized as a tax," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the Court's majority opinion in National Federation of Independent Business et al. v. Sebelius. He continued, "Because the Constitution permits such a tax, it is not our role to forbid it, or to pass upon its wisdom or fairness," he concluded. (See http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/11-393c3a2.pdf) Chief Justice Roberts was the “swing” vote here, supported by Justice Stephen Breyer, and of course the three female Justices Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan, who never saw a Nanny-State law or regulation they didn’t love. The dissent ripped into the majority opinion’s reasoning. “In a few cases,” the dissent wrote, “this Court has held that a ‘tax’ imposed upon private conduct was so onerous as to be in effect a penalty. But we have never held—never—that a penalty imposed for violation of the law was so trivial as to be in effect a tax. We have never held that any exaction imposed for violation of the law is an exercise of Congress’ taxing power—even when the statute calls it a tax, much less when (as here) the statute repeatedly calls it a penalty. When an act ‘adopt[s] the criteria of wrongdoing’ and then imposes a monetary penalty as the ‘principal consequence on those who transgress its standard,’ it creates a regulatory penalty, not a tax. Child Labor Tax Case, 259 U. S. 20, 38 (1922).” We agree with the dissent, it’s not a tax, it’s a penalty. Regardless of who is right, the law is unconstitutional, immoral, and absolutely counter-productive to its stated objectives. ObamaCare Has Never Been About Health It is simply aboutpower and control, and enriching the big corporations with money from those people who can ill afford it, all while delivering a very inferior “disease-care” service loaded with drugs. The health-insurance companiesloveObamacare! After all, they helped pass it. More customers forced against their will into a failing disease-care system. Unfortunately, very well-intentioned people have been lured into supporting this Government Healthcare because they think it will help others, especially the downtrodden. It won’t. It will harm, injure, and kill millions! And anyone who thinks otherwise, either doesn’t care or is naïve. Among other things, the law requires 159 new government agencies to be created in order to handle the workload. This is yet another heavy cost to burden taxpayers. Leaving aside the immorality of forcing individuals into a healthcare system they neither want nor would use, ObamaCare will never achieve its publicly stated goals. Never. It’s About Massive Government Control Over Our Lives Make no mistake, this legislation, which the U.S. Supreme Court just upheld in its idiocy, is a massive extension of government control over our lives and our health. As the Dissenting Opinion remarked, “The Government was invited, at oral argument, to suggest what federal controls over private conduct (other than those explicitly prohibited by the Bill of Rights or other constitutional controls) could not be justified as necessary and proper for the carrying out of a general regulatory scheme. ... It was unable to name any. As we said at the outset, whereas the precise scope of the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause is uncertain, the proposition that the Federal Government cannot do everything is a fundamental precept. See Lopez, 514 U. S., at 564 (“[I]f we were to accept the Government’s arguments, we are hard pressed to posit any activity by an individual that Congress is without power to regulate”). Section 5000A is defeated by that proposition.” (emphasis added) The U.S. Constitution enumerates those powers to be enjoyed by the Federal government. All others, not so enumerated, are reserved to the States and the people. There is a reason for Federal governmental powers to be shackled like this. The Founders knew that government power grows with time, inevitably. If government can do anything, then it will do everything. It will become tyrannical. The Constitution simply does not permit the Federal government to involve itself in any way in healthcare. Period. The Supreme Court has demonstrated this week that it knows less about the Constitution than did a college student living 100 years ago. One Silver Lining One silver lining, though, can be found in the Court’s decision that the Federal government may not force the States to either implement the law or lose Medicaid funding. This ruling means that all citizen efforts at the State level to prevent the implementation of ObamaCare’s health exchanges will get a considerable assist. So What’s Next? The Supreme-Court decision hasn’t provided a clear end to the health-care debate. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) just announced that the House of Representatives will vote on repealing the health-care law soon after its July 4th recess. Rep. Cantor sets the floor schedule in the House and specifically said that the House will vote on the repeal during the week of July 9th. This, Cantor promised, will clear the path for “patient-centered reforms that lower costs and increase choice.” So, there will be a concerted challenge in the House to repeal this odious and unconstitutional legislation. Moreover, the voters are going to be very angry at the polls this November; and, so, this Court ruling might very well backfire on Obama’s re-election chances. State Nullification State nullification is an approach, lately popularized by author Thomas E. Woods, Jr., that posits the power of the States to nullify unconstitutional laws. Throughout the history of the United States, the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution has been offered as one of the important checks and balances against Federal tyranny. In this context, then, the Tenth Amendment Center’s Executive Director Michael Boldin recently commented: “The Supreme Court says the federal government can’t force you to do something through a mandate, but it can tax you for doing nothing in order to ‘encourage’ you into doing something. Sounds like Orwellian doublespeak to me. But the bottom line is that the federal government has no enumerated power to create a national health care system in the first place. The entire notion of federal health care is unconstitutional, even if you buy into this tax malarkey.” His Center and many others are urging State nullification of this unconstitutional law. So, regardless of whether or not Congress acts in a few weeks’ time to repeal ObamaCare, many States (26 after all sued the Federal government over ObamaCare) may now proceed down this path. Massive Civil Disobedience? Like the salt tax that Mahatma Gandhi successfully protested in India through massive civil disobedience, this illegal and immoral “tax” cries out to be protested and repealed. Most Americans are solidly against this legislation. Those who aren’t are the ones who hope to pick the pockets of those who would be forced to pay. Some are calling for Americans to not even comply. It will be interesting to see if civil disobedience comes back into play in the U.S. Take Action Now While the Court’s decision is being described as a political victory for Obama, the clear losers are the American people. And even though many call this disease-care legislation by its nickname, ObamaCare, both political parties can claim credit for its passage since members of both parties pushed for its individual mandate. The probability is that when Congress reconvenes to consider repealing ObamaCare, it will really result in nothing more than a reconstructed ObamaCare meant to look acceptable to the voters but essentially offering the same great expansion of Federal power over Americans. So what to do now? Renew your pressure on your Congressional delegates. And demand that Congress truly repeal the ObamaCare monstrosity! Simply put, you and I must continue an uncompromising fight for health freedom. As we all know, or should know, health-care costs have skyrocketed, especially recently, due to increasing government interference into that market. With the Court’s decision, that interference will increase even more. Unfortunately, too many people have forgotten the simple lesson that true health will come from freedom, not coercion. It is time to allow a true free market in health care, while at the same time getting the Federal and other government attack dogs to back down from their assaults on natural health care, supplements, and other alternative treatments that “free” ObamaCare would push aside from the marketplace. Do not allow this government decision to discourage your commitment to fighting for liberty. Contact your Congressional representative today, asking him or her to vote to repeal this unconstitutional law. Act Now To Repeal Obamacare -http://act.thenhf.com/7135/repeal-obamacare/
NEWS RELEASE
DURBIN FAILS IN ATTEMPTED END RUN AGAINST DSHEA
Lee Bechtel, NHF Lobbyist
May 24, 2012
The Durbin amendment, # 2127, to S.B.3187 to reauthorize the FDA Prescription Drug and the Medical Device User Fees has failed on the Senate floor. The Durbin amendment would have heaped yet more reporting requirements on supplement manufacturers with those companies who launched, reformulated, or discontinued supplements having to report those products and any changes within thirty days of the launch, reformulation, or change. What does any of this nonsense have to do with food safety? Absolutely nothing. It’s all about making supplements more expensive and less affordable for the average consumer. The NHF closely followed and lobbied against the Durbin amendment. Both Senators Harkin and Hatch opposed the Durbin amendment, pointing out that his contention that supplements should be regulated like drugs violated all of the provisions of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA) and was neither needed nor wanted. The Durbin amendment was supported by the Consumer Union and Center for Science in the Public Interest, both quack anti-supplement groups lobbying Congress. The amendment was voted down with 77 Senators voting to table, i.e., kill the amendment, and only 20 voting in support of Durbin’s anti-health freedom, anti-dietary supplement attempt to end run the DSHEA law. The NHF and the health-freedom community have once again forced the Senator’s hand, and he has failed to deliver. The final bill passed the Senate by a vote of 96 For and 1 Against (without the Durbin amendment). The legislative and political games are not over in that the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the full House have yet to consider and pass a bill. Even then, any bill differences will have to be resolved in a joint House/Senate conference and re-passed by both chambers. Keep in mind that Congressman Henry Waxman is still around and could carry on the Durbin attempts to regulate dietary supplements like prescription and over-the-counter drugs. Unfortunately, the Rand Paul amendment to prohibit FDA agents from carrying firearms and making arrests with court-ordered warrants for health-claim product violations was also voted down with 78 voting to table and kill the amendment and 15 voting to support the amendment.
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NEWS RELEASE
THE FDA IS PRESSING AHEAD – ACT NOW – FIGHT BACK
May 16, 2012
As was recently reported by another health-freedom group, the FDA has once again become very active and has sent “warning letters,” breaking its promise not to enforce the draft Guidance on New Dietary Ingredients (NDIs). Actually, the FDA had previously said it was cracking down on such supplements, so this was not a surprise. The FDA has already issued warning letters of this sort. So, this is not new “News.” If Daniel Fabricant can be believed, this FDA action has no direct relation with the draft Guidance on NDIs (as he discussed just this in a webinar with industry some months ago). These are warning letters and not withdrawal-from-the-market-enforcement letters. There is a difference, although it does not mean that we should not work even harder to kick the props out from under this draft Guidance. But, this FDA action to get tough on warning letters is just another example of why the National Health Federation’s legislation, the Dietary Supplement Protection Act (H.R.3380), is needed and needed now. And, not sitting on the sidelines while oppression from the FDA continues. Many of you have been great supporters and have called and petitioned your Congressional representatives to co-sponsor H.R.3380, but many of you reading this have not. Please get onboard with this cause and legislation and get others to back this legislation. Contrary to rumors, H.R.3380 can pass. If it does not, then it will be a major setback for all of us. We need a tsunami wave of consumer outrage to hit the FDA and Congress and force this legislation to be enacted. Just recently, the Family Farm bill was withdrawn due to the deluge that Congress received from the grassroots groups of individuals, farmers, and others who vehemently opposed this bill. The bill basically told farmers under what conditions their own children could work on their own farms, a definite overreach by government if there ever was one. The issue also became too politically risky for Obama in an election year. But, what is most important is that it was stopped by American citizens persistently demanding their rights. As an American, you must fight back against the FDA and let them hear your voice. You may never have another chance to make this issue right. Do not stay in the shadows, hoping that someone else will speak for you, they will not. Join the NHF in demanding our dietary-supplement rights via H.R.3380. For more on this issue from NHF National Lobbyist Lee Bechtel [CLICK HERE) CLICK HERE TO ACT NOW -http://www.thenhf.com/DSPA
NEWS RELEASE
DEMAND THE RIGHT TO KNOW WHAT YOU ARE EATING
By Cheri Tips
Executive Director, NHF
May 8, 2012
Unfortunately, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are currently in many of our staple foods such as soybeans, corn, and sugar beets. Therefore, the foods you are presently buying at your local grocery storedocontain genetically engineered ingredients. A genetically modified organism is an organism whose genetic material has been altered using genetic engineering techniques. The genetic material from one species is taken and then inserted into the permanent genetic code of another. These techniques, generally known as recombinant DNA technology, use DNA molecules from different sources, which are combined into one molecule to create a new set of genes. The Threat The safety of humans, animals, and our environment are threatened by this untested manipulation of foods produced for consumption and contaminating our food supply and environment. There have been many studies showing the harm that genetically modified organisms can cause, such as cancer, allergies, impaired DNA function, and accumulated toxins, to humans and animals. Environmentally, it will and has contaminated our pure, non-modified food supply. The U.S. grows the most GMO crops in the World. “We see the increasing prevalence of GMO crops in North America as the most serious threat to our food security not to mention the ever growing organic food industry. Front Door Organics only sources certified organic products and we're extremely concerned about maintaining the integrity of our organic food supply," said JJ Sheppard, who screens the products FDO carries. The Puppeteers and Their Agenda Who are the culprits that want to keep us in the dark concerning GMOs? Can you say Monsanto? And, their evil sisters, Dupont, Dow, and others? They purport that anything containing GMOs are healthy, safe, and do not need labeling. Their silent motto is most probably “Control the food, control the people.” Their prize – unbelievable profits. At this time Monsanto is even suing the State of Vermont because that State has introduced a bill, H-722 (Vermont Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act), to fight against non-labeling of GMO foods. It requires any food producer to label anything containing genetically modified ingredients. Monsanto is not alone against consumers on this issue. We can add to the mix of “bad guys” corporate agribusinesses in general, and the U.S. FDA, in particular, which sides with commercial interests and refuses to stand up for what the people whom they are charged with protecting are demanding. They know consumers will not buy GM foods. Health Canada and the FDA have consistently blocked standards and guidelines at Codex Committees that would mandate labeling of GMO foods. Currently, Codex has compromised on this issue by letting each country decide whether to require its own GMO food labeling. But let’s not forget Congress, which ignores proposed anti-GMO legislation and their own constituents’ desires on the issue. Clearly, Agribusiness lobbyists have gotten to them. Who Is Fighting Back Ninety percent of U.S. and Canadian consumers want their food labeled as GMO if it contains biotech food. Europe has fought back against GMOs in their food supply for more than a decade with stringent food rules and regulations. The National Health Federation has been fighting on U.S. and Canadian soil against GMOs for years and internationally at Codex Alimentarius (the World food governing body) meetings for full disclosure to consumers on labels of GMO products. California and Vermont, for their part, are fighting back with their “Right to Know” legislation, with a Statewide California ballot this Fall to vote for their right to GMO labeling. Our governments will not fight for our rights, so, the playing field is now consumers, environmentalists, and farmers against agribusinesses and their own government. What Can You Do? Consumers have the right to be fully informed about the foods and drinks they consume. Demand full disclosure of all food products sold in America. Put pressure on the U.S. FDA to require mandatory labeling domestically and to represent U.S. consumers’ wishes at Codex by correcting FDA’s position and ending its close alignment with industry groups.Visit the NHF website (www.thenhf.com) to send your petitions today! Consumers can win this. The momentum has begun but it is up to you now. Let Agribusiness and our government see our power.
NEWS RELEASE
SURPRISE RACTOPAMINE MEETING AT CODEX
By Scott Tips, President, National Health Federation
April 5, 2012
Tipped off by the European Union delegation while at the Codex Committee on Contaminants in Foods meeting in Maastricht last week, I attended a very special session of the Codex Alimentarius Commission where the animal steroid drug Ractopamine was discussed. Held in Paris, France today, the meeting was another one of those special “facilitated” sessions where a facilitator – in this case the Codex Alimentarius Commission Chairman Mr. Sanjay Dave – somehow tries to bring two irreconcilable sides together so as to reach a compromise. The compromise? To see if the 70% of the World who refuses to accept unhealthy, ractopamine-doped meat in its food supply from the other 30% who want to make more money by selling such unhealthy meat (pork, beef, turkey, etc.) can be convinced to yield to the 30%. Some compromise! Heads you lose, tails we win . . . . Evidently, the Western Hemispheric countries (from Canada in the north down to Argentina and Chile in the south) want to sell their Arnold-Schwarzenegger animal meat with nary a thought for the adverse health effects (to humans or the animals), just so long as they can make a few dollars more per animal. So, I went to this meeting expecting the worst. Remember, the NHF had fought ractopamine-doped meat at Codex many times before (seehttp://www.thenhf.com/article.php?id=2945) and barely won at previous meetings, thanks really to the firm opposition of the European Union, China, Russia, and the others who actually, ironically, speak more for American and Canadian consumers than do those citizens’ own representatives! But NHF is well-known for being aggressively outspoken on these issues. Today, I spoke out twice against this drug monstrosity. The second time followed Australia’s feeble attempt to justify poisoning the World with yet another dangerous chemical. “We either abide by our own rules or we don’t,” he intoned, building on his theme that since the Codex scientists had conducted three expert reviews that said a little of this poison in our meat supply was fine we should swallow the poison wholesale. I spoke right after him and agreed that “We either abide by our own rules or we don’t. In this case, let’s just buy a big rubber stamp labeled ‘Approved,’ give it to the Secretariat, and from now on just let her rubber-stamp every decision given to Codex by the scientists. What need is there then for our review at the Commission level? It’s been proposed that just because JECFA [the scientists] issued an opinion and just because the underlying Committee accepted it, then we at the higher Commission level must automatically accept it. That’s wrong and the rules say that we can either accept or reject such decisions. The JECFA science is faulty, they are not perfect and we should not automatically accept bad science here. What we at NHF do not understand is when so much of the World’s population has substantial health concerns with a proposed standard and with the supposed science behind it, how could anyone justify forcing that unhealthy standard upon the majority? It will destroy the credibility of Codex, all for some commercial interests that want to push their ractopamine-doped meat on the rest of the World.” The three-hour-long special meeting was not productive, the two sides’ irreconcilable positions were just restated for all to hear once again amidst calls for the Commission to abandon its attempt to set a Maximum Residue Level for ractopamine-doped meat in the food supply. But it shows how determined the United States, Canada, Brazil, and other New-World countries are to push their ill-health upon the rest of us. The issue will come up again at the Commission meeting in Rome this coming July. The NHF’s position: How can you compromise with ill-health? You either have the poison in your food or you don’t. Anything in between is yielding to the poison, and accepting the concept that money is more important than good health. The NHF will continue being outspoken on this issue and will do whatever it can to stop our food from being poisoned. Your support is critical to help us keep fighting this and other issues at Codex. We are Your Voice for Health Freedom! Help us be there for you. Go to www.thenhf.com and join us, donate, volunteer.
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Never Quit, Continue on, Make a Difference
These days, in the world of health freedom with the multitude of health-freedom issues that abound, on a daily basis, you must first prioritize, then choose the most important issues to tackle at that moment. The list has become endless, especially in this last decade. A sincere, hardworking activist can easily work 24/7 with no end in sight. The average citizen’s health is now bombarded via their water, lack of food quality, pesticides, GMOs, fluorides, MSG, aspartame, vaccination, the FDA, Codex, Congressional legislation, fracking, diet products, chemtrails, smart meters, nanoparticles, even the death of bees, etc. Again, the list is endless.
When the Federation was first formed in 1955, the motto was to “Protect and Educate.” This motto still stands and that is what we attempt to do daily.
There are many issues currently on our radar at this moment, but two of them are particularly current: one involving a State, and the other the United States. Both concern threats to health, freedom, individual liberties, and American citizens. To lighten our mental load before tackling these matters for consideration, please enjoy two relevant cartoons of health-freedom artist, Emma Holister.
All Eyes Are On Obamacare
The Federation considers this legislation one of the toughest challenges that we have taken on in awhile. We felt that we fought against passage of this misnamed “Affordable Care Act (ACA) with everything we had but sadly it passed (two years ago), to become effective in 2014. As stated by Virginia Atty. Gen. Ken Cuccinelli, “It’s not about health insurance, it’s about liberty.” The Constitution does not give the U.S. Congress the power to enact laws that force Americans to buy a product.
The light of hope at the end of the tunnel is still shining for our side. 26 of 50 U.S. States filed against Obamacare declaring that it was unconstitutional for the government to require its citizens to buy health insurance. The Reason-Rupe poll http://reason.com/ found that 62% of Americans feel the law is unconstitutional and 54% felt that there would be a rationing of health care services. On the day that Obamacare was signed into law, a group called “Liberty Counsel” was the first to file a private lawsuit against Obamacare and is the only pending Supreme Court case that challenges both the individual and the employer mandates.
Paul Clement, the attorney challenging Obamacare in the Supreme Court stated, “I would respectfully suggest that it’s a very funny conception of liberty that forces somebody to purchase an insurance policy whether they want it or not.”
The Supreme Court (9 Justices) agreed to examine the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act and they met March 26th-28th, 2012 to hear oral arguments. Several outcome scenarios could happen in the high court. Obamacare could be upheld and initiated in 2014, they could strike down the core requirement that Americans are forced to buy insurance or be taxed, and could also hold Medicare as is or expand it greatly.
There will be months of deliberation with a ruling expected in June but it is also speculated that the high court could push a final decision off until 2015. From a health-freedom perspective, we can only hope that the Supreme Court will recognize the unconstitutionality of Obamacare and stop this legislation from moving forward. The Federation will continue to keep you on top of this important issue.
ALERT FOR CALIFORNIA NHF MEMBERS & READERS ACT NOW AGAINST - California Assembly Bill 2109 Vaccine exemptions are in grave danger in California
AB 2109 was introduced by Assembly member, Dr. Richard Pan (Democrat physician), and co-authored by Senator Wolk on February 23, 2012.
Here is the scenario that AB 2109 is proposing. If passed, and you decide that you do not want to vaccinate your child and want a philosophical/religious exemption, you must follow certain steps. Under the new Bill, you would be required to contact an M.D., nurse practitioner or physician’s assistant (naturopaths and chiropractors are excluded) for an appointment to obtain their signature on your exemption from vaccination. A law that actually makes you ask permission to “say no” to a medical procedure, vaccination. Very invasive!
The new Department of Public Health form required will state that all risks and benefits of vaccinations have been explained to the parent before a signature is given. The pretense of proponents of AB 2019 is to get a parent in, sway the truly uninformed guardian and vaccinate their child. The parent must also be able to find a health care provider that will give them the appointment and will actually sign the exemption form, which must be done within six months of school starting to be considered valid.
As stated by National Vaccine Information Center, “AB 2109 discriminates against families utilizing complementary and alternative medicine by forcing them into paying money to a medical practitioner they wouldn’t otherwise use who is already philosophically opposed to the parent’s personal and religious convictions regarding vaccination.”
Passage of this Bill could occur by this Summer, but, let’s not let that happen. It is said that grassroots democracy is dead in California, let’s show them they are dead wrong. The same Bill went through Washington State last year and was opposed by NVIC and others but became law within months. Whether you have children or not, please help stop this government invasion of individual health rights.
Special mention: Emma Holister has been a Federation friend and fellow health-freedom fighter, educator, and alternative medicine proponent besides her great career in art. She has always been so kind as to donate her cartoons for use by the NHF for many years and we are very grateful. Her websites are: www.art-margin.com/ & http://candida-international.blogspot.com
The Federation has an extremely long-standing (57 year) reputation for being factual, reputable, and never backing down to those who try to rape and pillage our health-freedom rights. Join the Federation in support, donate so that we will have more power to spread the word of these issues, and most of all, never be apathetic thinking someone else will fight your fight. We can win with your support and the Federation as your health-freedom voice.
Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:40:34 +0200
NEWS RELEASE
VICTORY AT CODEX ON THE MELAMINE ISSUE!
March 27, 2012
Scott Tips & CCCF Chairman Martijn Weijtens after melamine victory
At the first day’s meeting of the 6th Session of the Codex Committee on Contaminants in Food (CCCF) yesterday in Maastricht, the Netherlands, the Committee unanimously agreed to cancel the blank check previously written to the food-packaging industry that would have allowed them to contaminate liquid infant formula with melamine-based packaging without any limits imposed upon such contamination. Melamine is a man-made, cumulative toxin used in food equipment and packaging, as well as in an herbicide, which has killed thousands of pets and babies in years past and still continues to be a pervasive background contaminant. At previous Committee meetings, the food-packaging industry had won an “open skies” exemption from the Maximum Permitted Upper Level of melamine contamination of liquid infant formulas. (Read about it athttp://www.thenhf.com/article.php?id=2947.) Scott Tips, NHF president and its Codex delegate, noted after yesterday’s victory, “It has been a long journey - not in terms of time as much as in terms of support - to arrive at this result, and amazingly enough with no opposition at the end. Three years ago, when the National Health Federation (NHF) first began speaking out at CCCF against melamine contamination of our foods, NHF was the absolute lone voice at this Committee. I was looked at as if I were from the Moon. In 2010, NHF was again alone – not another delegation supported us. But by the 2011 CCCF meeting several important and outspoken delegations, such as Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Peru, had joined NHF in opposing melamine contamination. Over our most-vocal objections, though, the Committee adopted the standard, with the dangerous “sky’s the limit” exemption, and sent it to the Commission for final approval. Fortunately, a groundswell of opposition had coalesced by that point - some three months later - to cause the Codex Commission Chairwoman to send the melamine standard back down to the CCCF for reconsideration.” At this week’s Committee meeting, the groundswell became unanimous as the handwriting was clearly on the wall that numerous delegations were going to fight hard to eliminate the melamine exemption. First, the powerful EU delegation privately agreed that the exemption had to go. The United States then joined in publicly, and even New Zealand - formerly a strong supporter of the food-packaging exemption - actually asked the Committee to remove the exemption. Costa Rica, Ghana, Korea, the Philippines, Nigeria, India, Kenya, Cameroon, Columbia, and of course the NHF all spoke out strongly in favor of removing the exemption, and it was, without dissent. The standard now goes to the Commission meeting to be held in Rome this coming July, where it will almost certainly be adopted without the exemption. But for the NHF’s strong and determined stand all by itself in 2009 and 2010, this exemption would have passed unhindered and would have resulted in a huge loophole for food producers to poison infants with melamine from food packaging. For those who claim that a difference cannot be made at Codex meetings, here is yet more proof that positive change has been made, and validation for NHF’s continuing efforts there as your voice for health freedom.
NHF Codex Book - NHF Codex Overview
(May be used as an article or printed as a handout to educate on Codex) - NHF-UK Codex Overview
(May be used as an article or printed as a handout to educate on Codex) - NHF-Dutch Codex Overview
(May be used as an article or printed as a handout to educate on Codex) -
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Will You Be Health Freedom's Next Hero?
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National Health Federation: Established in 1955, the National Health Federation is a consumer-education, health-freedom organization working to protect individuals' rights to choose to consume healthy food, take supplements and use alternative therapies without unnecessary government restrictions. The NHF is the only such organization with recognized observer-delegate status at Codex meetings.
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The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has continued to turn a deaf ear to consumers and their health in pushing forward its agenda to remove thousands of safe supplements from the American marketplace. The FDA is Deaf and Dumb Daniel Fabricant, Ph.D., the director of the Division of Dietary Supplement Programs at the FDA, again has stated that the Agency has no intention of withdrawing its proposed Draft Guidance for New Dietary Supplement Ingredients (NDIs) that it published last July. The FDA has not changed its position despite receiving over 7,000 comments on the draft industry guidance, which would subject many thousands of supplements to very expensive, drug-like testing and approval requirements in order to stay on store shelves. Fabricant says “alternative approaches” by the FDA to satisfy the FDA’s proposed requirements in the NDI Guidance might be reviewed. However there was no clarification on whether the requirements imposing prescription-drug-like clinical testing and scientific testing to gain FDA approval for supplements sold since 1986 and in the future would be subject to amendment, or dropped from the Guidance. He had previously implied that it could take 3-4 years to resolve these issues but now says the timeline “is really up in the air.” Fabricant’s comments can be read at http://www.nutraingredients-usa.com/Regulation/Fabricant-on-NDI-draft-guidance-Thanks-for-your-146-000-pages-of-comments.-We-ll-get-back-to-you.Interestingly enough, before joining the FDA in February 2011, Fabricant was a vice president with the Natural Products Association (NPA), which makes it very clear that Fabricant has abandoned his obviously sparse roots along with whatever understanding he ever had of the industry. The FDA Blames Industry & Punishes the Consumer More telling about the FDA’s strategy for more heavy-handed regulation is the statement that“If you look at the numbers of NDI submissions versus the number of supplements introduced to the market since 1994, it would appear there is a significant lag in compliance.”On its face, the marketplace has changed over the last seventeen years. But who is responsible for this 17-year lag in compliance? The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA) required manufacturers to submit pre-market notification applications for supplements and new ingredients when there is a history of use or other evidence establishing that an ingredient is safe when used as directed. The FDA has 75 days to accept or reject the application. A non-decision by the FDA means that the Agency accepts the evidence and that the product has complied, is approved, and can be marketed to the consuming public. Alternatively, a formal petition for a review and FDA issuance of an order prescribing the conditions under which a new dietary ingredient can be used and reasonably be expected to be safe, with the FDA having to respond within 180 days, can be filed. Again, shouldn’t a non-decision on a petition be considered as final Agency approval? If the Agency does not issue a decision either way, or if it cannot find a decision that was issued over the previous seventeen years, has it been the industry or the FDA itself who has not been in compliance with DSHEA? Apparently, the FDA believes that manufacturers and suppliers have not met the FDA’s own self-interpreted DSHEA burden of proof standard to show to the FDA that there is reasonable evidence that supplements and new ingredients in supplements are safe. The NHF believes, based upon the DSHEA law language, that this is a total misapplication of the DSHEA burden-of-proof standard. The burden of proof has been, and is on,the FDAto prove that supplements, which they have de factoapproved through the pre-marketing notification process, are unsafe in the post-marketing stage of consumer use. Since DSHEA, there have been seventeen years of additional historical use-safety experience conducted by many millions of Americans. The FDA is choosing to ignore evidence and is attempting to paint this as non-compliance. In other words, it has not done its job but instead claims that it is not the FDA’s fault – instead, supplement consumers and industry should pay the price. Take Action Now The NHF has created a solution for all of us to rally behind - the Dietary Supplement Protection Act (DSPA) as H.R.3380. Some timid souls in the industry cower in a corner, saying they are afraid to support this bill because it will “open up DSHEA.” In case they had not already realized it, DSHEA gets “opened up” by our anti-health-freedom opponents each and every year with their new legislation! Are we to be nothing but cowards when we have the chance to regain some of our own freedoms? The NHF isn’t and knows that we need to be as bold as, even bolder than, our opponents.
Both companies and consumers must support H.R.3380, especially when Congress gets back to work in mid-January 2012. The bill changes a key date in the DSHEA law that will save thousands of our supplements. It does this by acknowledging and using in our favor the new regulatory environment for supplements as well as supplements’ incredible safety record. It will put FDA bureaucrat’s feet to the fire and an end to their seventeen-year efforts to salami-slice the DSHEA law to fit their own public-policy agenda for dietary supplements.
Information on H.R.3380 and how to contact your member of Congress to sponsor H.R.3380 is available on the NHF webpage at:http://www.thenhf.com/page.php?id=295. The NHF needs everyone to contact their representatives and urge them to co-sponsor H.R.3380. We need the same consumer outrage that was seen pre-DSHEA to make this legislation a reality. Be bold and be persistent.
NEWS RELEASE
FDA SALAMI-SLICE STRATEGY CONTINUES
By Lee Bechtel, NHF Lobbyist
December 30, 2011
Please accept our apologies but we have recieved reports of a link error in our previous news release (title above) to the very important "Take Action" page for H.R.3380.You may use this link -(http://www.thenhf.com/page.php?id=295)to Take Action on H.R.3380
National Health Federation:Established in 1955, the National Health Federation is a consumer-education, health-freedom organization working to protect individuals' rights to choose to consume healthy food, take supplements and use alternative therapies without unnecessary government restrictions. The NHF is the only such organization with recognized observer-delegate status atCodexmeetings.
A RON-PAUL MOMENT AT CODEX
Like Ron Paul in the political debates, Codex tries to ignore NHF delegate
November 29, 2011
NHF delegate Scott Tips finally gets a chance to speak the following day after Codex Chairwoman ignores several NHF requests to take the floor on the issue of Saturated Fats.
The Conspiracy of Silence is not just limited to the political arena; it is as obvious that the Mainstream Media ignores top American presidential candidate Ron Paul in favor of their corrupt list of controlled talking-head candidates. A recently leaked internal memo from CBS News revealed a deliberate policy of sharply restricting Ron Paul’s airtime during the last Republican presidential candidate debate. Out of 90 minutes of debate, Ron Paul was given 89 seconds to talk! So, too, with Codex and NHF evidently. At the 33rd session of the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU), which just ended its week-long meeting on Friday, November 18th, its new Chairwoman, Pia Noble, had a definite problem in allowing the National Health Federation (NHF) to speak as NHF has already shown itself to be a threat at past Codex meetings. Amazingly, after all, NHF’s near solitary and obstinate opposition to the vitamin-and-mineral NRVs back in 2009 had killed the NRVs’ momentum on the path towards adoption. But for that opposition, they would, by now, have been well along the 8-step track to adoption by Codex. The Codex delegates were all here, spending time at this session on the WHO Report on these NRVs because NHF had reacted so strongly and persistently two years ago. NHF had caused this. It felt good. Scott Tips, the head of NHF’s four-person delegation present at this meeting, said, “In the end, the CCNFSDU created an Electronic Working Group charged with reporting to the Committee at next year’s meeting with its recommendations for NRVs for vitamins and minerals. The NHF will be part of this eWG. This means that – for a third year in a row – no dumbed-down vitamin-and-mineral NRVs were adopted at Codex.” On Saturated Fatty Acids, the NHF, along with two other delegations, was equally very outspoken when this issue came up. Codex is still suffering from the obsolete notion that saturated fats are “dangerous” to health and have only a minimal role in the human diet. Instead, Codex is very wrongly encouraging consumers to avoid saturated fats and replace them with polyunsaturated fats. NHF pointed out to the assembled delegates that such an approach would cause more harm to health and increase overall disease. NHF’s arguments, though, led to it being given the “Ron Paul” treatment for the rest of the day. To read the full article, please see BELOW or go tohttp://www.thenhf.com/article.php?id=3117.
A RON-PAUL MOMENT AT CODEX
Like Ron Paul in the political debates, Codex tries to ignore NHF delegate
November 29, 2011
NHF delegate Scott Tips finally gets a chance to speak the following day after Codex Chairwoman ignores
several NHF requests to take the floor on the issue of Saturated Fats.
The Conspiracy of Silence is not just limited to the political arena. For those in the know, it is as obvious as the nose on one’s face that the Mainstream Media ignores top American presidential candidate Ron Paul in favor of their corrupt list of controlled talking-head candidates. A recently leaked internal memo from CBS News revealed a deliberate policy of sharply restricting Ron Paul’s airtime during the last Republican presidential candidate debate. Out of 90 minutes of debate, Ron Paul was given 89 seconds to talk!
So, too, with Codex evidently. At the 33rd session of the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU), which just ended its week-long meeting on Friday, November 18th, its new Chairwoman, Pia Noble, has a definite problem in allowing the International NonGovernmental Organizations (INGOs) such as the National Health Federation (NHF) to speak.
Kindred Spirits
Coming from the German Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection (BMLEV), Dr. Noble, who succeeded to her Codex position upon the retirement of Dr. Rolf Grossklaus two years ago, finds kindred spirits in her fellow government bureaucratic delegates. Members of the same club, they share the same secret handshake of delight in crafting people controls. But INGOs? Well, those bozos are just gumming up the works and slowing down the adoption of Codex guidelines and standards. Nuisances, they are, really. Okay, they can fill up the bleachers at the meetings because it looks good; but they absolutely must behave themselves. Oh, Dr. Noble’s mind is so easy to read. After all, actions speak louder than smiling words.
Dr. Grossklaus, whom NHF had criticized over the long years, actually did the World a favor when he held back the Nutrient Reference Value (NRV) standard at the 2009 CCNFSDU meeting, at the instance of NHF, India, and Iraq. That was the standard that was to have dumbed down vitamin-and-mineral NRVs to absurdly low levels. Grossklaus could have allowed those standards to advance, over our stubborn objections; but he didn’t, and he is to be thanked for that. He also had no problem generally in recognizing all of the INGOs to take the floor and speak. In that respect, he was not much different than most of the other Committee chairmen and -women. He might have squabbled with the NHF delegate, but at least its view was often allowed to be expressed. Not so with Pia Noble.
The Threat
NHF has already shown itself to be a threat at these Codex meetings. Acknowledged as being rather outspoken, NHF started off its participation in the meeting on Monday, November 14th, with a bang, speaking out at every turn in favor of broadening the Terms of Reference (i.e., mandate) given to the Electronic Working Group (subcommittee) for establishing NRV standards for nutrients so as to include science other than just FAO/WHO scientific findings. Most delegates – still uncritically genuflecting at the altar of FAO/WHO pseudo-science – defer to their science in adopting numbers to insert into such standards. Forgotten is the great World of Science that beckons beyond the narrow cultish confines of FAO/WHO science. NHF’s view is that when Codex considers adopting any standards, it should look far and wide at all pertinent science, whether it comes from FAO/WHO or not.
Amazingly, after all, NHF’s near solitary and obstinate opposition to the vitamin-and-mineral NRVs back in 2009 had killed their momentum on the path towards adoption. But for that opposition, they would, by now, have been well along the 8-step track to adoption by Codex. The 2010 Committee meeting in Santiago, Chile saw even more opposition and a request by the Committee for FAO/WHO to come up with a report on NRVs, which they did just in time for this November 2011 Committee meeting.
So, as I sat there on Monday and leafed through the rather impressive 39-page FAO/WHO report, and listened while the WHO representative presented the report and the Committee then discussed it, I suddenly realized that we were all here, spending time on this, because I had reacted so strongly and persistently two years ago. NHF had caused this. It felt good.
The CCNFSDU created an Electronic Working Group charged with reporting to the Committee at next year’s meeting with its recommendations for NRVs for vitamins and minerals. The NHF will be part of this eWG. This means that – for a third year in a row – no dumbed-down vitamin-and-mineral NRVs were adopted at Codex.[1]
So Silence the Threat
Later, the Committee took up the issue of NRVs for Saturated Fatty Acids.[2] Adhering to the outdated views first espoused by the makers of Crisco in 1911, when they wanted to shove butter and lard off grocery-store shelves in favor of their new-fangled invention, Crisco (a shortened name form for “Crystallized Cottonseed Oil”), most Codex delegates still think that saturated fats are the cause of heart attacks. That is why the Committee wanted to establish an NRV of no more than 10 percent of daily energy intake for this fat[3]and push consumers towards a higher intake of the “safe” polyunsaturated fatty acids.
Such nonsense is often what passes for “science” at Codex these days, with no correlation to current research that anyone could pull off of Pub-Med within two minutes. The delegation of Malaysia, though, cannot be tarred with this tattered brush. Malaysia clearly and unequivocally stated its views that saturated fats had a role in the diet and were not correlated with the risk of coronary heart disease. The International Dairy Federation (IDF) supported this view and provided its own defense of saturated fats in a healthy diet.
NHF was given the floor to speak immediately after IDF. As I told the Committee during this one and only time that I was allowed to speak at the meeting on this issue, and in specific response to the Thai delegate’s mistaken remark that saturated fats were the cause of heart disease, “Actually, NHF disagrees. There is no convincing evidence that replacing Saturated Fatty Acids with Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids results in fewer heart attacks or less coronary heart disease. Does it show that cholesterol is lowered? Yes. But what it does not do is show that CHD is reduced. That is a myth and saturated fats have been unfairly demonized. There are any number of other factors that are more closely correlated with heart disease than cholesterol, factors such as homocysteine and C-Reactive protein levels.”
I continued, “By pushing consumers into using dietary PUFAs instead of Saturated Fats, more harm to health has resulted. PUFAs are notoriously unstable and go rancid very easily, generating free-radical damage to the body. NHF has researched this issue off and on for 50 years and I could provide at least 1,147 references showing that polyunsaturated fats are a major cause of the epidemic of obesity, type-2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, cancer, and various mental problems. On the other hand, saturated fats fulfill many important biological roles, and, not surprisingly, make up 54% of mother’s milk, while polyunsaturated fats are only a very-small 3%. So, to limit saturated-fat NRVs to 10% of energy intake is wrong.”
The WHO representative then took the floor to defend the cholesterol-causes-heart-attacks position, citing 30,900 years (!) of research on this subject proving the saturated fat-heart disease risk connection. Yes, I’m sure Copernicus was confronted with similar mounds of “evidence” to refute his position that the Earth was not the center of the Universe. In the case of the WHO evidence, these kinds of defenses are illogical through their insistence that since saturated fats “cause” high cholesterol levels, ergo, they must cause coronary heart disease. Such arguments – because that’s all they really are – invariably fail to account for the fact that calcification of the arteries, oxidized cholesterol versus cholesterol itself, and other health factors are the real culprits.
But I never got the chance to address this issue. I pushed my microphone button down and it started flashing, indicating that I had asked for the floor to speak and should have been in line to be recognized. I waited . . . and waited . . . and waited.
Meanwhile, the other delegates were all recognized to speak. Impressively enough, the Canadian delegate, Ms. Nora Lee, must have been moved somewhat by what was said about the risks of polyunsaturated fats. Showing her open-mindedness, she suggested the Committee look into PUFAs, perhaps even establishing an NRV for them. No one really spoke out in support of this sensible Canadian position (except perhaps for a favorable but different and equally sensible comment by the U.S. delegate). I was eager to support Canada; and as the issue was hanging in the balance, there was yet a chance to influence the outcome. But the Chairwoman still ignored NHF. I looked down at NHF’s microphone button, which continued to flash incessantly, as I slowly twisted in the wind.
Finally, the Chairwoman peremptorily announced to the Committee at large that NHF was asking to be recognized but that she was not going to do it! She then moved on and stated that the Committee had adopted by consensus the NRV for Saturated Fatty Acids at 10% of daily energy intake. I knew, then and there, how Ron Paul must have felt during those many presidential-candidacy debates when he was passed over and ignored.
The Solution
This has happened before, and I’ve found the best approach is the direct one. Speak with the Chairman or Chairwoman, and that’s what I did here, telling her that NHF deserved and expected to be recognized to speak. We were both polite, and I acknowledged that NHF had spoken at length before but still insisted that we had had additional matters to bring before the Committee and should have been allowed to do so. She said she understood. One member of our four-person NHF delegation, Caroline Knight, was there with me as a witness.[4]
The following day was better. NHF was again recognized; but the moment, of course, had passed. The Saturated Fatty Acid NRV will come up for debate at the next meeting of the Codex Alimentarius Commission meeting in Rome, Italy, next July, and everyone can be sure that it will again be pounced upon there. So, this matter is hardly finished.
On a more positive and important note, the general, dumbed-down NRVs for vitamins and minerals was put off for yet another year as the FAO/WHO Report is considered by an electronic Working Group of which NHF will be part. This means that the next meeting of the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses, to be held in Germany in early December 2012, will be pivotal and perhaps witness the climactic battle on this issue. Two weeks later, the ancient Mayan calendar stops, which some say means the end of the World. Maybe the Mayans were just predicting the result of the Codex meeting . . . but we'll see about that.
##########
1 Remember, these proposed, dumbed-down NRVs would have reduced the suggested daily intake of Vitamin C from an already low 60 milligrams per day down to 45 milligrams per day, Magnesium down from 300 milligrams per day to 240 milligrams, and virtually all of the B vitamins (except for folate) down an equal or near-equal percentage.
2 These are actually the Nutrient Reference Values for those Nutrients – such as Saturated Fatty Acids – Associated with the Risk of Diet-Related Noncommunicable Diseases for the General Population, or in Codex parlance, NRVs-NCD.
3 Ten percent energy from saturated fatty acids as a basis for an NRV equates to 20-22 grams based upon the reference daily intake of 8370kJ/2000 kcal.
4 The NHF delegation at this Codex meeting comprised NHF members Petra Weiss, Gudrun Weiss, and Caroline Knight, in addition to me.
Oppose the FDA Power Grab
Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2011
NEWS RELEASE
FDA PROPAGANDA ATTEMPTS TO DESTROY THE
DIETARY SUPPLEMENT INDUSTRY
By Byron J. Richards, CCN August 25, 2011
It is not surprising that FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg would use blatant and deceptive propaganda to attack the dietary supplement industry. As a self-proclaimed “zealot for the advancement of regulatory science,” Hamburg would like the consumer public to believe the earth is flat—and that dietary supplements cannot prevent and help treat disease. She is well-educated in science, especially neuropharmacology and the new genomic science, thus it poses a dilemma for her when study after study demonstrates the power of dietary supplement ingredients. These studies show that dietary supplement ingredientsinfluence the human genome in ways that prevent disease as well as offer practical solutions to help treat most common, age-related diseases that afflict millions of Americans. Such diseases include type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and many resistant forms of cancer.
Instead of embracing the nutritional gene science and ushering in a new generation of health, happiness, and wellbeing for Americans, Hamburg has chosen a return to yesteryear, a not-so healthy, happy time. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is doing everything in its power to prevent the truth from being told. Logically, we ask, what are her motives? One of them is clear—facilitating pharmaceutical takeover of many ingredients sold by the dietary supplement industry.
For as long as a hundred years, FDA management has been in a constant revolving door with high-paying Big Pharma jobs and the large agribusiness/food companies it is supposed to be regulating. This corrupt corporate culture pays lip service to actual safety issues while it uses the FDA as a vehicle to secure profits and wipe out competition. It is a flagrant abuse of regulatory power.
The FDA’s “public health” battle front is invariably against those who offer any alternative to the elite “FDA profit club.” In modern times this includes the dietary supplement industry, family/organic farms, and health professionals engaged in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Indeed, the dietary supplement industry in the United States is booming, with sales of $28 billion in year 2010. When you add in the natural/organic food industry and functional foods, that figure hits $117 billion.
Two-Pronged Attack Against Supplements
Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011
NEWS RELEASE
SENATOR DURBIN AND THE FDA VICIOUSLY ATTACK DIETARY SUPPLEMENTS
By Byron J. Richards, CCN
July 26, 2011
Under the cover of the July 4th holiday, Senator Richard Durbin (D-Illinois) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched an unprecedented and coordinated assault on the dietary-supplement industry – in essence a direct attack on consumers who rely on dietary supplements to support their health.
Without a massive consumer protest of this abhorrent abuse of regulatory power consumers will be denied access to many dietary supplements they currently take. Furthermore, the cost of dietary supplements will skyrocket due to the unnecessary regulatory burden imposed upon dietary-supplement companies, the legal wars that will go on for years, and the reduction in competition that currently keeps prices low.
While there are many political forces in play, it is clear that one of the main goals of this attack is to allow the pharmaceutical companies to take over the dietary-supplement industry.
It is very difficult for the typical consumer of dietary supplements to understand why extreme harassment of the dietary supplement industry is taking place. Such attacks are typically launched under the false cover of “consumer safety,” a pretense that plays well for sound bites and is without merit. Thus, it is of great importance to explain this current attack in the historical and political context in which it is occurring.
And it is of even greater importance that every consumer of dietary supplements, who values having them as a health option, takes action now to preserve their access to a wide range of dietary supplements at an affordable price.
To read the full details and to see how you can take action now, There is absolutely no time to waste. click here. or here it is below:-
SENATOR DURBIN AND THE FDA VICIOUSLY
ATTACK DIETARY SUPPLEMENTS
By Byron J. Richards, CCN
July 26, 2011
NewsWithViews.com
Under the cover of the July 4th holiday, Senator Richard Durbin (D-Illinois) and the FDA launched an unprecedented and coordinated assault on the dietary supplement industry – in essence a direct attack on consumers who rely on dietary supplements to support their health.
Without a massive consumer protest of this abhorrent abuse of regulatory power consumers will be denied access to many dietary supplements they currently take. Furthermore, the cost of dietary supplements will skyrocket due to the unnecessary regulatory burden imposed upon dietary supplement companies, the legal wars that will go on for years, and the reduction in competition that currently keeps prices low.
While there are many political forces in play, it is clear that one of the main goals of this attack is to allow the pharmaceutical companies to take over the dietary supplement industry.
It is very difficult for the typical consumer of dietary supplements to understand why extreme harassment of the dietary supplement industry is taking place. Such attacks are typically launched under the false cover of “consumer safety,” a pretense that plays well for sound bites and is without merit. Thus, it is of great importance to explain this current attack in the historical and political context in which it is occurring.
And it is of even greater importance that every consumer of dietary supplements, who values having them as a health option, takes action now to preserve their access to a wide range of dietary supplements at an affordable price. At the end of this article is a Take Action Now section that explains the steps you should take today.
Politics, Big Pharma, Globalism & Dietary Supplements
The dietary supplement industry has no traditional political party as an ally. Dietary supplements empower people to be in charge of their own health, to improve their mental and physical health, and to be more self-determined in their decision making. This flies in the face of what the globalist, ruling-class elite of both political parties desire.
The elimination of health options is required for the control of a population, while the preservation of health freedom is a leading indicator of the overall freedom within a society. The ruling class knows that the control of health options is as important as the control of food and money. If you can keep a population living in fear of their health problems, worried about their financial future, and concerned about rising food prices/shortages, then you can easily control that population. Understand that much of the chaos now going on in the world is intentional and provoked by the global ruling elite.
Big Pharma and its legendary lobby buy whatever political influence they need to force healthy Americans to pay for the drugs of others, drugs which seldom fix health problems. We recently saw Big Pharma purchase the Obama administrationand lock in drug sales at taxpayer expense for years to come, as President Obama needed Big Pharma backing for his health reform legislation. Unbelievably, the popular Democratic initiative of drug re-importation at lower prices, which could have easily passed both the House and Senate when they were under Democratic control, was blocked by the Obama administration as part of pandering to the interests of Big Pharma. Big Pharma influences Democrats by aligning itself with the desire to create a socialist-style health care system that includes the unchecked sales of Big Pharma drugs at taxpayer expense.
It is not an accident that 10% of the U.S. population is on zombie-producing brain medications, helping to make a more pliable herd of sheeple. It was President George W. Bush that opened the door and encouraged massive illegal and off-label marketing of brain drugs to children and the elderly. It is shocking that atypical antipsychotic medication is now the best selling drug in the U.S. by dollar value, with most uses of the drug to control behavior and not for the intended use of the drug – typically at taxpayer expense. Of course, President Bush passed Big Pharma legislation committing taxpayers to a massive unfunded liability of paying for many of the drugs seniors take – drugs that generally do not improve health or fix health problems.
Big Pharma influences Republicans by aligning itself as a corporate conglomerate that is too big to fail, one that should be free of prudent safety regulations or reduction in grotesquely inflated prices. It fights against drug safety at every turn, while at the same time lobbying to pass laws that lock in sales or eliminate its competition. The media plays along, as Big Pharma is a wonderful source of advertising dollars that are in no small part made possible by taxpayer funding of Big Pharma drug sales.
While Big Pharma sees many aspects of the dietary supplement industry as competition, it is also the case that many pharmaceutical companies are in some aspect of the dietary supplement industry, often as raw material suppliers. Big Pharma does not want to see the dietary supplement industry eliminated, it wants to see the small and medium sized independent businesses in the dietary supplement industry eliminated and it wants to own the industry.
Their key strategy to accomplish this at this time is to lobby to pass costly laws and regulations which they can comply to and which other smaller, independent companies cannot. Such a power play to take over an industry will create a pharmaceutical-based, anti free enterprise monopoly that will massively drive up prices to consumers.
Keep in mind that the U.S. problem is part of a global elitist strategy. Similar campaigns are under way in Europe and Canada – and further along. CODEX continues to be a huge threat not only to health freedom in the U.S. but to the very sovereignty of our country. It is an FDA-supported effort to make U.S. companies comply with international laws that make U.S. citizens subservient to the desires of a band of globalist companies, with Big Pharma influences sitting at the head of the table. The FDA, through the FDA Trilateral Cooperation Charter, is also trying to harmonize U.S. citizens to conform to the existing regulations of Canada and Mexico, which are draconian compared to the rights of U.S. citizens. While pretending to be interested in consumer safety, the FDA is actually a police force bully that is using regulation as a tool to help implement a global elitist agenda. In other words, the attacks are methodical, ongoing, and coming from multiple directions.
Support for dietary supplements can come from a small minority of either Republicans or Democrats, based more on the personal beliefs of those individuals and representation of their constituents, not on a broad consensus of party politics. For example, the 1994 DSHEA (Dietary Supplements Health and Education Act) legislation, which is now at the center of the current attack, was a bipartisan effort led by Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Orin Hatch (R-Utah).
While Harkin and Hatch have been steadfast defenders of dietary supplements, they have paid a political price. They are under constant attack for having passed DSHEA from the various forces I have explained. Thus, the rights of consumers granted by DSHEA hang by a thread of support while health freedom for all Americans teeters on a precipice. The only counter balance to the Big Pharma agenda that matters to politicians is the collective voice of individual consumers.
In 1994 it was a massive consumer uprising that enabled the passage of DSHEA. Big Pharma learned their lesson and has sought to take over control of the dietary supplement industry piece by piece, trying to avoid another massive consumer protest. They have taken over major trade groups within the dietary supplement industry, invited expensive FDA regulation of the industry, while sitting back and laughing in their board rooms. They have been able to whittle away at the industry until they got it vulnerable enough for a major attack – which is now underway.
The Global Elitist Senator Durbin Orchestrates Dietary Supplement Attack
Senator Durbin represents the global elitist faction of the far left. He is the #2 Democrat on the Senate side, and is a close advisor to President Obama, sharing many associations in the Illinois political scene as well as being the former co-chair of his presidential campaign. His leadership role in the Council on Foreign Relations and other well-publicized affiliations make him a very controversial figure. His anti-American position on numerous topics is well documented and has recently been reviewed by attorney Jonathan Emord in his article, Dick Durbin, Enemy of the Founding Fathers’ Republic.
Throughout his Senate career Durbin has consistently attacked the dietary supplement industry and food industry, seeking to destroy health freedom, family businesses and small businesses, natural health options, and wholesome food. When questioned about his motives it is always the same old sickening answer – he pretends to be concerned about consumer safety. His actual motives are about ever-increasing regulations in the dietary supplement industry and food industry that favor large multi-national corporations and seek to wipe out their competition – as part of his overall globalist agenda.
This man does nothing to investigate the 100,000 or more Americans who are needlessly killed and the more than a million who are seriously injured by Big Pharma medications every year. Rather, he does everything he can to get more people connected to this failing system of health management. At the same time he aggressively attacks the competition to Big Pharma drugs. He is a total hypocrite. The dietary supplement industry has a sterling safety record. Current FDA regulations already allow for consumer protection – no more laws or regulations are needed.
On June 30, 2011 Durbin launched his latest attempt at a new law to damage the dietary supplement industry. It is called S.1310 “Dietary Supplement Labeling Act of 2011.” It is not often that the entire dietary supplement industry agrees on much. However, the industry as a whole is against this legislation. It is an alarming regulatory nightmare that is trying to treat vitamins as if they are drugs. Durbin and the FDA can’t stand the fact that these compounds are inherently safe and that by law the FDA must prove them unsafe. Rather, they want the supplement industry to prove safety with burdensome and costly regulations when no safety issues exist. Such regulations would run small and medium size companies out of business, reduce consumer access to safe products, drive up costs, and reduce the number of people taking supplements, all of which are Durbin goals. Such unnecessary regulatory efforts create a major opportunity for Big Pharma companies to wipe out the dietary supplement industry as we know it today.
S.1310 has now been referred to the HELP committee (Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions). Thankfully for the dietary supplement industry Tom Harkin is the chairman of the committee and we all hope that he would never let this bill out of committee. However, we can take no chances. It is possible that a last minute back room deal in the middle of the night could attach this bill as an amendment to some other legislation, as part of a tit-for-tat bargain. This means that this disastrous piece of legislation needs to be on the radar screen of every Senator, especially those on the HELP committee. Please write your Senators and tell them NO on S.1310.
The second part of the Durbin-orchestrated attack is by utilizing the FDA to concoct regulations and retroactively applying them to damage the dietary supplement industry. This diabolical stunt has been planned for some time. Durbin’s Food Safety Modernization Act, another regulatory nightmare attacking small family farms, was signed into law by President Obama on January 4th 2011, after sliding through in the dark hours of the Lame Duck session. Within that bill Durbin had inserted language requiring the FDA to issue guidance within 180 days of the passage of the Food Safety Modernization Act on a section of the 1994 DSHEA law regarding the definition of a New Dietary Ingredient or NDI. It is important to understand that this is a Durbin effort to ruin the dietary supplement industry, using both newly proposed legislation (S.1310) and retroactively redefining the DSHEA law through new FDA regulations to reflect what is being proposed in S.1310 – undermining the clear intent of the DSHEA law. The DSHEA law intended consumers to have wide access to dietary supplements. Durbin is intent upon the opposite.
Twisting the NDI Issue to Wreck the Dietary Supplement Industry
The 1994 DSHEA legislation was by no means perfect. Compromises were made to satisfy the anti-vitamin, pro-pharmaceutical lobby. The language in the law regarding new dietary ingredients was such an undesirable compromise. It was able to grandfather in every dietary supplement in use as of 1994 while offering up a vague description of what a new dietary ingredient may be and requiring its approval before it enters the market. The dietary supplement industry has interpreted the law to mean that if the ingredient existed in food prior to 1994 (or in a dietary supplement), then it was grandfathered in.
The working understanding between the FDA and the dietary supplement industry was that if you were trying to bring something to market as a dietary supplement that was outside this definition then you better get approval of that ingredient as an NDI.
This understanding of NDI, along with a number of other understandings between the FDA and dietary supplement industry based on gray areas of the DSHEA language, has provided a relatively peaceful relationship between the FDA and industry. Prior to 1994 it was a decades-long war. It appears headed back in that direction.
On July 1, 2011, as part of the coordinated Durbin attack, the FDA issued proposed new regulatory guidelines to define NDI and who needed to apply for one. Shockingly, the new definitions far exceed anything written or intended by DSHEA – rather they mirror the opinions of Durbin. These regulations seek to change what was essentially a notification process into a costly approval process. This is a flagrant disregard for the intent of the DSHEA law, for which the FDA is suddenly writing regulations 18 years after the fact.
The net effect of the regulations is to reclassify many nutritional compounds currently on the market as NDI. This would force them off the market until they get NDI approval, which will take months and may never be granted. This will throw the industry into chaos, massively disrupt your access to dietary supplements, drive up your prices, and deny you access to many supplements you have counted on for your health.
The FDA is trying to say that production and extraction methods for dietary supplements could readily reclassify a formerly grandfathered nutrient as an NDI. This means that advances in production technology that have enabled better extracts of nutrients to be produced will now put that nutrient back to ground zero – potentially and likely eliminating it from the market. This is ludicrous.
Furthermore, it will not only be required for the manufacturer of the NDI to get approval, every distributor of the product that wants to use the NDI would need to file a separate NDI application. In other words, a costly approval process has to be undertaken over and over again simply to sell something that was safe in the first place. This is completely illogical, bordering on regulatory insanity.
These regulations are also obsessed with the dosing levels of the NDI, forcing any dosing above the amount in food to have drug-like safety testing. This is a key strategy in the global CODEX campaign to water down the therapeutic benefit of dietary supplements so as to reduce their effectiveness and eliminate competition to Big Pharma sales. This is psychotic paranoia on the topic of public health. The only real threat is to the ongoing sales of Big Pharma drugs that don’t fix health problems and actually injure and kill many.
This is an effort by the FDA and Durbin to force dietary supplement companies to get drug-like or food-additive-like safety approval for all their nutrients under the false premise of a need to demonstrate safety. The current law is that it is up to the FDA to prove that any dietary supplement is not safe. The FDA has the ability and expansive regulatory powers to do this right now so as to protect the safety of the public regarding any issue involving dietary supplements.
Thus, their grand plan is to force a redefinition of what defines an NDI. Then they will retroactively apply this definition to all products currently on the market and try to force them off the market or force them off the market for an undefined period of time while the company goes through extensive and costly NDI approval. If companies don’t comply they will send armed U.S. Marshals to seize their highly effective and safe products as some sort of tainted/adulterated drug. Compliance would likely cost small companies millions of dollars that they cannot possibly afford.
This chess game is being played with a pathetic opening strategy based on imaginary safety problems. The gambit requires an ignorant public for its success. It requires naïve, spineless, and self-serving dietary supplement companies – of which there are many. And it requires dietary supplement trade groups like CRN and NPA to go along with key provisions – which is more likely to happen than you may think.
A 90-day comment period on these proposed guidelines currently exists for consumers and members of the dietary supplement industry to let the FDA know what they think about this. It expires on September 30, 2011.
It is vital that all consumers file a written protest to the FDA explaining your concerns over their rewriting of the intent of the DSHEA law based on their newly proposed regulations. You are especially concerned that products you rely on for your health could be eliminated from the market and/or will cost you significantly more money. Urge them that no matter what guidelines they eventually issue, all dietary supplement products on the market prior to the issuance of their final guidelines should be grandfather in so as not to disrupt the current market and potentially injure the health of Americans.
Members of the dietary supplement industry should also submit comments to preserve their rights to pursue future legal challenges, though such comments need to be written in legal language and will require costly legal advice (just the beginning of burdensome legal expenses for small and medium size dietary supplement companies).
Once this comment period is over then the FDA can take as long as it wants to issue final guidelines. In fact, they don’t have to issue final guidelines if they don’t want to. They can simply begin enforcement based on their current thinking as explained in their draft guidelines and then establish court rulings to foster their position. It is more likely they will issue some type of final ruling. Large dietary supplement companies will weather the storm and bear the expenses, jockeying for their position in the New World Order of dietary supplements. Such large companies, including those aligned with Big Pharma interests and many involved with the largest dietary supplement trade groups (CRN and NPA), would actually like their competition from smaller companies to be eliminated. Yes, it is a greedy dog-eat-dog world.
Smaller companies will do what they can to get ready. It is likely that the FDA will go after 10 – 15 of them, trying to make an example for the rest of the industry. Some companies will buckle immediately; others will stand and fight the David vs. Goliath battle.
The losers are consumers. Consumers will have fewer health options in terms of nutrients that can assist their health. What is left on the market will be far higher in price. Innovation in the industry will be set back to the Dark Ages and all new ingredients will come to the market with Big Pharma dollars. We are witnessing the attempted takeover of an entire industry.
All that stands in the way of this outcome is a massive outcry from outraged consumers. The forces orchestrating this attack have no answer to the power of the consumer joined together on social media and the internet. If you rely on dietary supplements for your health it is time to spread the word.
Take Action Now
1) Pass on this article to everyone you know who values their access to dietary supplements as a safe way to enhance their health.
You can find excellent sample letters and specific directions on how to contact your Senators and the FDA on many health freedom websites. One good resource is the National Health Federation website, whose take action page gives you step-by-step instructions and can be accessed by clicking here.2) Write your Senators and tell them to be aware of S.1310 and to vote no on it. Write the FDA and tell them you want all nutrients currently on the market grandfathered in so that none of them need to comply retroactively to new NDI guidelines. Tell them it is vital you have access to all of the nutrients currently on the market and that their regulatory actions will drive up prices, cause nutrients to needlessly disappear from the market, and result in health harm to the American public – not improved safety.
E-Mails are used strictly for NWVs alerts, not for sale
Byron J. Richards, Board-Certified Clinical Nutritionist, nationally-renowned nutrition expert, and founder of Wellness Resources is a leader in advocating the value of dietary supplements as a vital tool to maintain health. He is an outspoken critic of government and Big Pharma efforts to deny access to natural health products and has written extensively on the life-shortening and health-damaging failures of thesickness industry.
Seen any walnuts in your medicine cabinet lately? According to the Food and Drug Administration, that is precisely where you should find them. Because Diamond Foods made truthful claims about the health benefits of consuming walnuts that the FDA didn’t approve, it sent the company a letter declaring, “Your walnut products are drugs” — and “new drugs” at that — and, therefore, “they may not legally be marketed … in the United States without an approved new drug application.” The agency even threatened Diamond with “seizure” if it failed to comply.
Diamond’s transgression was to make “financial investments to educate the public and supply them with walnuts,” as William Faloon of Life Extension magazine put it. On its website and packaging, the company stated that the omega-3 fatty acids found in walnuts have been shown to have certain health benefits, including reduced risk of heart disease and some types of cancer. These claims, Faloon notes, are well supported by scientific research: “Life Extension has published 57 articles that describe the health benefits of walnuts”; and “The US National Library of Medicine database contains no fewer than 35 peer-reviewed published papers supporting a claim that ingesting walnuts improves vascular health and may reduce heart attack risk.”
This evidence was apparently not good enough for the FDA, which told Diamond that its walnuts were “misbranded” because the “product bears health claims that are not authorized by the FDA.”
The FDA’s letter continues: “We have determined that your walnut products are promoted for conditions that cause them to be drugs because these products are intended for use in the prevention, mitigation, and treatment of disease.” Furthermore, the products are also “misbranded” because they “are offered for conditions that are not amenable to self-diagnosis and treatment by individuals who are not medical practitioners; therefore, adequate directions for use cannot be written so that a layperson can use these drugs safely for their intended purposes.” Who knew you had to have directions to eat walnuts?
“The FDA’s language,” Faloon writes, “resembles that of an out-of-control police state where tyranny [reigns] over rationality.” He adds:
This kind of bureaucratic tyranny sends a strong signal to the food industry not to innovate in a way that informs the public about foods that protect against disease. While consumers increasingly reach for healthier dietary choices, the federal government wants to deny food companies the ability to convey findings from scientific studies about their products.
Walnuts aren’t the only food whose health benefits the FDA has tried to suppress. Producers of pomegranate juice and green tea, among others, have felt the bureaucrats’ wrath whenever they have suggested that their products are good for people.
Meanwhile, Faloon points out, foods that have little to no redeeming value are advertised endlessly, often with dubious health claims attached. For example, Frito-Lay is permitted to make all kinds of claims about its fat-laden, fried products, including that Lay’s potato chips are “heart healthy.” Faloon concludes that “the FDA obviously does not want the public to discover that they can reduce their risk of age-related disease by consuming healthy foods. They prefer consumers only learn about mass-marketed garbage foods that shorten life span by increasing degenerative disease risk.”
Faloon thinks he knows why this is the case. First, by stifling competition from makers of more healthful alternatives, junk food manufacturers, who he says “heavily lobb[y]” the federal government for favorable treatment, will rake in ever greater profits. Second, by making it less likely that Americans will consume healthful foods, big pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers stand to gain by selling more “expensive cardiac drugs, stents, and coronary bypass procedures” to those made ill by their diets.
But people are starting to fight back against the FDA’s tactics. “The makers of pomegranate juice, for example, have sued the FTC for censoring their First Amendment right to communicate scientific information to the public,” Faloon reports. Congress is also getting into the act with a bill, the Free Speech About Science Act (H.R. 1364), that, Faloon writes, “protects basic free speech rights, ends censorship of science, and enables the natural health products community to share peer-reviewed scientific findings with the public.”
Of course, if the Constitution were being followed as intended, none of this would be necessary. The FDA would not exist; but if it did, as a creation of Congress it would have no power to censor any speech whatsoever. If companies are making false claims about their products, the market will quickly punish them for it, and genuine fraud can be handled through the courts. In the absence of a government agency supposedly guaranteeing the safety of their food and drugs and the truthfulness of producers’ claims, consumers would become more discerning, as indeed they already are becoming despite the FDA’s attempts to prevent the dissemination of scientific research. Besides, as Faloon observed, “If anyone still thinks that federal agencies like the FDA protect the public, this proclamation that healthy foods are illegal drugs exposes the government’s sordid charade.”
FDA Guidance - Save Our Supplements
Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011
NEWS RELEASE
SAVE YOUR SUPPLEMENTS
Write the FDA Now - Here's Why & How
By Scott Tips
July 19, 2011
Everyone with even an ounce of common sense has grave concerns about the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s recently released Draft Guidance for Industry: Dietary Supplements: New Dietary Ingredient Notifications and Related Issues. This Agency sprang this trap on both industry and consumers without seeking any prior input from us at all. It had almost 17 years to seek our opinion before coming out with this document, and now they are giving us a miserly 90 days to respond with our comments. Why is this issue so important?
The Erosion of Our Health Rights
When the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA) was passed, contrary to what the mainstream media falsely reports, the law did not remove dietary supplements from the regulatory oversight of the FDA. What it did do is to remove the FDA’s arbitrary powers of life and death over supplements so that they could be treated more like foods rather than as drugs. The innovative tidal wave that was unleashed as a result of this breakout from regulatory prison resulted in some 1,000 new products a year in this market. What an incredible difference DSHEA made, and we all benefitted from the prison break. Oh, wait, the FDA’s drug-industry bosom-buddies did not benefit. And that is something they have never forgotten and have been fuming over ever since.
Not without their cohorts in U.S. Congress, the drug industry’s lobbyists have been pushing for years to hamstring DSHEA and its freedoms. For more than a decade, they have failed. But for the last several years, they have succeeded with sausage-slicing tactics that have gradually eroded DSHEA. First, there was the Adverse Event Reporting law, then the law mandating “Good Manufacturing Practices,” and after that came the so-called FDA “Modernization” Act – each one designed to ratchet up the pressure on supplements, to drive out the smaller supplement manufacturers who could not keep up with the increasing regulatory costs demanded of them by these laws that were touted as making already-safe supplements “safe,” and to gradually eliminate individual supplements. Were these laws ever truly designed to protect consumers? No, these laws had only one purpose in mind: To make supplements more expensive, less available, and to drive the consumer back into the filthy arms of the drug pushers.
This latest nonsense is straight out of the warped minds of the FDA’s Berchtesgaden nest of anti-health thugs. They could care less about good health, certainly care less about you or me. This has been proven so many, countless times over the decades of the Agency’s existence that there can no longer be even a shred of doubt. The revolving door between the drug industry and the FDA is a never-stopping one. Just witness its recent hiring of Johnson & Johnson’s executive Spielberg who was tapped by FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, as the latest deputy commissioner within the Office of the Commissioner to oversee the Agency’s drug and device centers. This is not an exception, this is the rule.
The Compromise
Unfortunately, when DSHEA was passed, a compromise was reached in order to get unanimous passage. The parties agreed that all dietary supplements not marketed as of the date of DSHEA’s passage (October 15, 1994) would be “new dietary ingredients” (NDIs) for which notification would be sent to the FDA. At the time, some did not think much was wrong with this compromise. After all, most supplements had already been discovered. But, now, almost 17 years later, the health-food market is awash with these new dietary ingredients, such as resveratrol, ubiquinol, GABA, curcumin, and bioperine. Notifications to the FDA have been made for many, but what is to happen to them now, with the FDA changing the law, all on its own?
Fantasy Land
This draft Guidance is a step into fantasy land. One night the FDA went to sleep and had a wonderful dream, a dream about a land where bureaucrats reigned supreme and the common citizen answered to every edict that flowed from the lovely bureaucrats’ mouths. If the bureaucrat said jump, then the citizen would jump; if the bureaucrat said roll over, then the citizen would roll over. It was a wonderful place, this bureau-paradise. But then the FDA woke up, and the non-dream reality was not nearly that perfect, yet the urge to make it bureau-perfect remained. Hence, these constant bureaucratic attempts to whittle down our freedoms until we can only jump to the tune of some unknown functionary sitting in some unknown office thinking that he or she knows better for us than we do.
This draft Guidance is just such an attempt. It turns the law on its head by changing a very basic notification system into an approval system subject to the arbitrary whims of the FDA. It requires very safe NDIs to go through unnecessary, expensive tests so that they can meet drug-like safety requirements. In essence, this Guidance ignores the incredible, proven safety record of supplements, both new and old. The FDA can produce no dead bodies whatsoever coming from the use of these new dietary ingredients.
Yet the FDA, ignoring the many tens of thousands of actual dead bodies coming from its expensive drug-approval regulatory regime, wants to imprint that badly flawed drug-approval regime upon the dietary-supplement market. In doing so, it ignores the clear intent of Congress when passing DSHEA that “the Federal Government should not take any actions to impose unreasonable regulatory barriers limiting or slowing the flow of safe products and accurate information to consumers” and that “the right of access of consumers to safe dietary supplements is necessary in order to promote wellness.”
Flood Them with Letters
The Guidance document is not law, but it is a clear expression of how the FDA intends to enforce its interpretation of the law. This interpretation is badly flawed. And its implementation will result in unnecessary high costs, arbitrary discrimination against small- and medium-sized businesses that will put thousands of people out of work by destroying jobs in a time of economic decline, and the loss of many useful and healthful supplements.
The FDA must withdraw this Guidance document at once, consult with industry and consumers on a longer-term basis than this miserly 90-day period, and come out with a new Guidance that better reflects the realities of the marketplace and the safe track record of supplements, including those with NDIs. The FDA’s proposed document is unauthorized under Law and will guarantee a backlash of legislative action the likes of which have not been seen in this legislative arena since the passage of DSHEA in 1994. The NHF suggests that the cut-off date for NDIs either be eliminated entirely or else pushed forward to a date 15 years after 1994.
Please mail, fax, or e-mail your protest letter (Click Here for Sample Letter) to the FDA as soon as possible, but in no event later than October 1st of this year. They need to be awakened from dreamland.
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CODEX - WHERE MELAMINE STANDS NOW
Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2011
NEWS RELEASE
CODEX SENDS MELAMINE BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD
NHF lends a big helping hand to this decision
July 16, 2011
As our members and followers already know, at the Codex Alimentarius Commission’s 34th session in Geneva, Switzerland this last week of July 4-9, 2011, the Commission met and debated many standards, including that of ractopamine. But another standard that came up for debate was the one concerning the toxic contaminant Melamine, a man-made chemical used in tableware, food equipment, packaging, and a few pesticides that has poisoned and killed infants and pets alike in the past and which continues to plague all of us as one of many low-level background contaminants.
This Codex standard was the “Proposed Draft Maximum Levels for Melamine in Liquid Infant Formula.” As reported previously,[1] the Codex Committee on Contaminants in Food (CCCF) had approved sending up this draft Standard for approval by the Codex Alimentarius Commission. Unfortunately, CCCF had done this over the strong objections of the National Health Federation (NHF) as well as the delegations of Costa Rica, Peru, and Nicaragua. The main sticking point in our minds had been (and still is) that although the Maximum Levels for Melamine contamination had been lowered to 0.15 mg/kg at the last CCCF meeting, an exemption with no limit had been created for Melamine migration from food packaging material into the formula itself! As NHF argued then, and once again at the Commission meeting last week, this was an exemption with a hole big enough to drive a truck through!
When the NHF first began following the Melamine contamination issue in 2009, the NHF was the only Codex attendee to speak out on the dangers of this man-made toxin. This was also true at the 2010 CCCF meeting in Izmir, Turkey. Yet, by the 2011 CCCF meeting, Costa Rica, Peru, Nicaragua, and Tanzania had joined NHF in speaking out against this public-health hazard. Now, opposition has snowballed to Costa Rica, Columbia, Chile, Uruguay, Tanzania, Nigeria, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, and one other delegation, as well as the NHF, so that at the Commission meeting in Geneva, ten country delegations and NHF opposed the draft standard.
As Scott Tips, the NHF’s president and delegate at these meetings, said to the Commission:
“The CCCF Chairman defended the proposed standard along with the huge exemption that made a mockery of the lowered limit on contamination, stating in part that there was no danger of melamine migration from packaging and that in any case it was unavoidable. When my turn to speak arrived, I responded that if there were no danger from such migration, then why was it not subject to the limit as well? And I argued further that it was avoidable by changing manufacturing processes to eliminate melamine spraying onto the packaging material used. No one can be, or is, sure of the true danger posed by melamine migration into these formulas being consumed by infants with immature detoxification systems.”
The Chairmen and Chairwomen of the Codex Committees and the Commission itself wield considerable power, especially where the issue is close. This issue was close; and, to her immense credit, Commission Chairwoman Karen Hulebak made the brave and correct decision to send this standard back to the Committee for further discussion and debate. Equally impressive was her subsequent defense of this decision against Australia, Canada, and Fiji’s concerted attempts to get her to change her mind. To Canada’s tedious arguments that it had conducted risk assessments showing no risk, the Chairwoman firmly replied, “Share it widely with CCCF next year.” And that was that.
Ractopamine Almost Shoved Down the Throats of 70% of World’s Pork Consumers Who Don’t Want It
July 14, 2011
At the Codex Alimentarius Commission’s 34th session in Geneva, Switzerland this last week of July 4-9, 2011, the Commission met and debated many standards. But the most hotly debated standard of all was the one in which the Western Hemispheric countries wanted to force virtually the entire rest of the World to accept its ractopamine-tainted meat.
Ractopamine is a beta-agonist drug given to pigs and cattle to promote protein and weight gain before slaughter. There is no “wash-out” period so drug residues remain in the meat that is then sold to market. The United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Australia all contend that this ractopamine residue is safe for human consumption; yet studies and reviews conducted in other countries and regions, such as the European Union, China, Taiwan, and Russia, reveal significant health concerns about its use in both animals and humans. For this important reason some 160 countries do not allow ractopamine-doped meat to be imported into their jurisdictions.
Scott Tips, president of the National Health Federation (a Codex-accredited INGO) and present and arguing throughout this meeting, reports:
“The United States, Canadian, and Brazilian delegations were so confident of victory that they pushed the Commission into the rarely seen position of having to vote on whether or not to vote on adoption of the ractopamine standards. A victory by the pro-ractopamine-doping countries would have allowed them to almost literally shove this toxic residue down the unwilling throats of more than 70% of the World’s pork consumers!
As usual, the NHF argued strenuously against adoption of this standard, which would permit billions of people to be exposed to a toxic veterinary drug in the meat they consumed. We pointed out in particular that the science relied upon in creating this standard was highly flawed and should not be used. NHF urged discontinuance of any work on this standard.
Fortunately the pro-ractopamine forces lost, albeit barely. Five votes either way would have swung the decision. And with another outcome, Codex itself could have easily imploded as its credibility as being representative of all countries would have been severely damaged.
After this meeting, the ractopamine standard balances delicately on the precipice of adoption, at Codex’s final Step 8. Next year’s meeting in Rome, Italy will reveal whether the junk science of the pro-ractopamine-doping countries can continue to fool those Codex delegations sitting on the fence.”
To read the full story of what happened during the Codex debate on ractopamine, click here.
NHF Codex Overview
(May be used as an article or printed as a handout to educate on Codex) -
NHF-UK Codex Overview
(May be used as an article or printed as a handout to educate on Codex) -
NHF-Dutch Codex Overview
(May be used as an article or printed as a handout to educate on Codex) -
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National Health Federation: Established in 1955, the National Health Federation is a consumer-education, health-freedom organization working to protect individuals' rights to choose to consume healthy food, take supplements and use alternative therapies without unnecessary government restrictions. The NHF is the only such organization with recognized observer-delegate status at Codex meetings.
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The U.S. Delegation at the Codex Meeting in Rome
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