CODEX UPDATE November 2005 by Helke Ferrie
Welcome to the Battle against Codex! Your voice and your actions are desperately needed and I thank you for considering to join in this important project. Below you will find two articles on Codex which I wrote after the European Advocate General released his recommendation in April 2005 (www.straightgoods.com), October 2005 (Vitality) Upon the European Union's proposal to remove all nutritional supplements from the market by August 2005 and, again, after the International Court of Justice made its ruling on the same issue in July of 2005. Both articles are also available in French and you are free to use these without my permission. You will also find a membership form for Friends of Freedom that you may download and fill in to join this effort. Finally, you will find a petition for Canadian MPs in the legally required format which you may also download and use to collect supportive signatures.
Codex is an international committee of the United Nations that oversees and regulates trade in foods and drugs. Since approximately 1990, Codex focused on nutritional supplements with the view to have these regulated in all member states as drugs. Such a definition of nutrients would then require toxicity tests and the establishment of upper safe limits - both absurd scientifically and resulting in driving the cost up for the consumer, especially if a doctor's prescription is required. If you want the whole story on this, I recommend the documentary film that has been made on the history and current activities of Codex entitled "We Become Silent". Available through Kos Publishing: info@kospublishing.com or through its producer: www.WellTV.com.
In July of this year (2005) Codex approved a highly restrictive proposal on supplements and did so for all member states, in spite of the firm opposition of various countries, e.g. South Africa, China, India, the representatives of many countries' health freedom organizations which have official standing at Codex meetings, and even the criticisms from the World Health Organization. All Codex decisions are enforced by the World Trade Organization because the member states of Codex are also members of the WTO - Canada included. However, national laws and policies cannot be overruled, especially now that the free trade agenda promoted by the USA has suffered several devastating blows from many key countries.
It is therefore essential to understand that whatever rulings come down from Codex will, without a doubt, apply to North America unless the people of the USA and Canada act now and use the available political channels to ensure that national laws take precedence over international harmonization efforts.
In November of 2004, when the Codex meetings ended for that year, the delegates from some 140 nations left with the assurance that the proposed restrictions on supplement availability would be voluntary and subject to each country's domestic policies. After the delegates had all left, the committee ruled - in their absence - that all the proposals would be legally binding and not subject to domestic policies. The delegates of all the member states learned this from the Codex website later. You may check this by going to the Codex website yourself: the fastest and most easily accessible way to get at the Codex documents as via the website of the UK-based Alliance for Natural Health (ANH) www.coalitionforhealthfreedom.org.
However, the ruling of the international Court of Justice, which came down after Codex had ruled in this authoritarian manner, explicitly requires independent scientific assessments as well as a differentiation between synthetic and natural products when considering safety: the former being deemed potentially toxic - which is correct, and the latter being considered essential to the human diet. Therefore, the drug definition Codex sought is becoming less likely - but only if consumers continue to ensure their voices are heard. Finally, the assumption Codex operates with, that people all over the world get their essential nutrients from their diets, which makes supplementation in the opinion of Codex unnecessary for most people, is to be challenged as well. That assumption is currently based on nutritional research some 50 years old which no longer reflects the current situation, especially in those parts of the world where people are chronically undernourished.
The two court rulings were initiated by the Alliance for Natural Health in the UK under the leadership of the medical and naturopathic physician Dr. Robert Verkerk. Supported by many health freedom organizations, university departments, medical researchers in Europe and North America, Dr. Verkerk is now going to work towards ensuring that mandatory scientific assessments on essential nutrients will be based on actual science (fully available in the medical research of the world), not on Codex-selected, rigged information such as has already been published (in German only) by the Codex chairman Dr. Rolf Grossklaus. His scientifically insupportable report on nutrient safety is available on the Codex website and the website of the ANH for those who can read German (as I can).
In October of this year, 2005, health freedom groups and lawyers from Europe and the USA, who attend Codex meetings, met for a conference on Codex at Minneapolis, Minnesota; see www.nationalhealthfreedom.com. The decision made there concerned every single state in the US with the view to ensure that freedom of choice is safeguarded in each of them; many already have excellent health freedom legislation, and in many such legislation is currently pending. Nationally, the USA has a health freedom law, DSHEA (Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act) which currently defines supplements as foods. Additionally, the decision as made to form a World Health Freedom Assembly as a counterpoint to Codex itself.
Each country was encouraged to support whatever efforts are ongoing to en sure freedom of choice locally, so that Codex is countered by national policies and laws.
In Canada we currently have pending a federal bill C-420 which would decriminalize treating diseases with nutrients; this part of the bill has the support of all parties because of the overwhelming scientific evidence that most chronic illnesses are indeed nutrient deficiencies (classic examples are scurvy, which can only be treated with vitamin C, palegra which can only be treated with vitamin B3, or anaemia which is an iron deficiency etc. Since an election is likely to happen soon in Canada, this bill needs strong public support to get it passed now or when parliament returns after the election.
This is what you can do:
- Join the the Friends of Freedom by clicking here and filling out the membership form, so you have a voice both at Codex as well as in the newly formed World Health Freedom Assembly.
- Download the petition prepared by Friends of Freedom and have your friends and neighbors and colleagues sign it; then forwarded it as instructed so it gets to your MP.
- Make an appointment with your MP and take half a dozen or more friends along and demand that he/she support Bill C-420.
- Buy a copy of Dr. Carolyn Dean's (a Codex delegate) book Death By Modern Medicine and/or my book Dispatches from the War Zone of Environmental Health and present your MP with those books so he/she cannot say they are not in formed! (My book is available for this purpose at 50% discount: info@kospublishing.com; when requesting it, tell me which MP you want it for, so I can autograph it for that specific parliamentarian. To purchase copies of Dr. Dean's book contact www.matrixverite.com or www.deathbymodernmedicine.com). This strategy worked wonderfully when we fought for the Kwinter Bill in Ontario: each MPP was presented with the massive Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine published by the Burton Goldberg Group. Several MPPs, after reading it, turned themselves to alternative health care and testified to its excellent results when speaking for this bill (all in Hansard!) which became law in Ontario in 2000.
Summary
If we petition our government and insist on Bill C-420 to be passed by this or the next government, we will retain our access to nutritional supplements as well as ensure that doctors are free to use effective therapies instead of the still mandatory cut-burn-and-poison routines almost all of which are based on pharmaceutical-industry rigged research.
For the fully documented information on the Codex issue in Canada please read my articles of February, April and October 2005 (click on all given below).
You cannot do this all by yourself. Therefore, it is essential you join Canada's voice at Codex and the international health freedom groups, namely Friends of Freedom whose Codex representative, Dr. Carolyn Dean wrote this excellent book on the harm modern medicine causes. It is based on sources which stem entirely from mainstream medical research. Our allies in this Codex battle are not only the health freedom organizations, the Codex delegates of half the world's population (e.g. China and India), but also the medical research establishment which is struggling to free itself from the destructive collusion between governments and the pharmaceutical industry.
For further information, e-mail me at info@kospublishing.com.
Helke Ferrie, November 2005