Tilling the Fields of Codex: Field Report No. 1 November 10, 2007
Rima E. Laibow, MD
The Natural Solutions Foundation is attending the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU) this week. There are two initial workshops which we will also attend. The first, a Working Group on Gluten - Free Foods will take place today (in just a few hours) and the second will take place tomorrow on “Risk Analysis”. Every day the US has a meeting for Americans attending Codex and we will be attending those, too.
The meeting itself has a fixed agenda which is sometimes adhered to and sometimes not. In our observations, it is rigidly adhered to when that serves the intent of the Codex Committee and, most especially, the rather astonishingly dictatorial Chair of CCNFSDU, Dr. Rolf Grossklaus, MD, the man who declared in 2003 that “Nutrients are not relevant to human health!”. That is, I believe, a rather astonishing position for a physician with a specialty in Nutritional Medicine! Even more astonishing, of course, is his insistence that Codex treat nutrients like dangerous industrial toxins and subject them to “Risk Assessment”, a technique taken directly from toxicology in which the maximum doses of poisons to which humans can be exposed without discernible change is determined, cut by a “safety margin” (usually by dividing the highest dose that produced no changes by 100) and then declared to be a safe Maximum Permissible Upper Limit or MPUL for human exposure. Perhaps the fact that Dr. Grossklaus is the Chairman of the Board of a German company called bFR (which specializes in Risk Assessment of toxins, or, in this case, supposed toxins) and that he just might have a vested financial interest in making every known nutrient into something which must be tested, perhaps by his own company, just might have some impact on his insistence, with potentially deadly consequences, that nutrients are toxins. Hmmm. What do you think? Just perhaps?
This, a wildly inappropriate system for nutrient doses, is the very system that Dr. Grossklaus has been so very enthusiastic in driving Codex to in its determination of upper limits for nutrients. Upper limits for nutrients? Oh, yes, that violates US law since nutrients are, in our legal system, considered to be foods under the 1994 Dietary Supplements Health and Education Act (DSHEA). Under DSHEA, importantly, those very foods are generally considered to be safe since foods are generally considered to be safe and they ARE foods. Hmmm. What about the fact that the US FDA announced that it would ‘ “HARMonize” US food standards and regulation to International Standards even if not complete’ (which is bureaucratic talk for “Codex”)? Yes, indeed, what about it? We are asking people who have grave reservations about this illegal “HARMonization” to sign the Natural Solutions Foundation Citizens Petition, (http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=184) a legal challenge to this illegal stand by the corporate-compromised FDA.
CCNFSDU has a number of other activities besides setting upper limits on nutrition (not legal in the US, remember, but enthusiastically endorsed and supported by the FDA here at the meetings and at home). It is interesting to note that at many Codex meetings people from the FDA serve as the Delegate representing the US. (There is only one Delegate per country but they are supported by advisers from their country). Often the US Delegate at this meeting and at a number of others is Dr. Barbara Schneeman, Head of the Office of Dietary Supplements of the FDA. She is a pleasant lady who acts against the interests of makers and takers of Dietary Supplements at every turn, as far as I can see. For example, by moving the deadly and restrictive Vitamin and Mineral Guideline (ratified July 4, 2005, Rome, Italy) forward in CCNFSDU, she is setting up a situation in which the US must have, I kid you not, a “Nutrient Risk Manager” (!) who will determine the maximum dose available for any nutrient permitted in the US (!) as long as that maximum dose is NOT more than 15% higher than the dose of the nutrient found in unprocessed food (of course, that includes food grown in demineralized soils). Hmmm. Where is that FDA bread buttered? Could it be by the Big Pharma through their impact on every aspect of FDA policy whether it is for food or drugs? Consider the wisdom of divesting the FDA of its responsibilities for the regulation of food, a policy which the Natural Solutions Foundation is presenting to Congress in our Congressional Education program.
CCNFSDU also sets standards for infant formula and foods for other special groups. It was at this same committee last November that the Natural Solutions Foundation played such a pivotal role in blocking the US’s determined efforts to include fluoride (which even the American Dental Association now admits babies under 1 year should NEVER be exposed to) as a permitted additive to infant formula for healthy babies. With the help of our African and Asian health-friendly allies we kept baby formula safe from this deadly additive - except for sick babies, of course, which Dr. Schneeman made sure would be exposed to fluoride by a last minute maneuver as the meeting was closing!
Now it is time for me to go get dressed to attend the Workshop on Gluten - Foods as your eyes and ears. More to come. Please let everyone on your list know the health freedom battle is raging both at home and internationally and that the Natural Solutions Foundation is in it protecting your health, your freedom and your right to make the health choices you want for yourself and your loved ones. Ask them to sign up for our Health Freedom Alerts (and help financially, too!) at www.HealthFreedomUSA.org.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation