Permission to repost.
LIFE UNDER CODEX - By Helke Ferrie 
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/chris/2005/01/24/life_under_codex.htm
Vitality Magazine February 2005

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, War-Crimes
Tribunal, Nuremberg, 1945

If the following information were a horror movie, we could all sit back with
our popcorn and enjoy it. Unfortunately, this is not fiction - and if you
don't do something about it, this nightmare will become waking reality in
Canada sometime soon after August 1. Whatever happens, you will never forget
Codex Alimentarius.

CODEX

Codex is a sub-committee of the United Nations mandated to establish
guidelines on food trade issues. Such guidelines are not legally binding for
any nation, but nations which are part of the World Trade Organization can
be severely sanctioned anyway. In the early 1990's, Codex began to look at
establishing internationally harmonized standards for food supplements. In
2002 a European Union Directive produced such guidelines for Codex. It turns
out, their effect will with certainty be to stop the availability of all
vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and most other essential nutrients as food
supplements; they are slated to be treated as pharmaceutical drugs,
eventually available on prescription only and manufactured by pharmaceutical
companies from synthetic materials, including from genetically engineered
substances.

Due to interlocking international treaties, specifically the WTO established
in 1995, and the still to be ratified Free Trade Agreement of the Americas
(FTAA), Canada and the US would be faced with serious sanctions if they do
not adopt these guidelines. Codex authority is already part of these treaty
texts. Australia, Norway, Denmark and Germany have already adopted these
"foods as drugs" guidelines.

Health Canada's website already lists the European Parliament Commission's
"upper safe limits" on supplements as desirable for Canadians to follow.

Without parliamentary debate, Health Canada snuck upon us and moved all
supplements under the "drug"category effective January 2004, in order to get
us ready to be "harmonized". This treachery prompted Bill C-420 (discussed
below).

Consumer groups and various medical associations throughout the world have
joined forces with the "Alliance for Natural Health", Europe's voice for the
supplement industries to challenge this Directive in the International Court in
Luxemburg as a violation of the EU Constitution.

The 25 EU member states differ widely in medical norms. Article 152 of the EU
Constitution expressly forbids any harmonization regarding availability of
medicinal and food substances related to health. This provides a solid legal
argument for the case to be heard on January 25th. The decision will be
published in March.

Because the biotech and pharmaceutical industries dominate Codex and the EU
food regulatory authority, which wrote this Directive,the International
Court's decision will be decisive for either consumer freedom of choice or the
multi-national corporations.

LIFE UNDER CODEX

In the mid-1990's my mother, then in her 80's, had a stroke. She lived in
Germany. When she left hospital, I was ready with a nutritional plan that
included high-dose vitamins: C, E, and B - especially Inositol, as well as
Co-enzyme Q 10.

I went to the pharmacy, whose owner was a family friend for some 25 years,
and handed him my list. He gave me a small packet with a price sticker of DM
200 (then about $ 200) containing vitamin E capsules manufactured by one of
Germany's largest pharmaceutical companies. The source was synthetic,
not the mixed" version from living plant sources I wanted which contains the
whole E spectrum. The package contained a total of 10,000 international
units of E, the equivalent of a mere 25 capsules of 400 IU each that we are
used to buying (I take that many in 3 days). Our bottles contain 90 capsules
and cost about $ 20. If Codex rules in Canada, we will likely pay $ 800 for a
bottle of 90 capsules of low-quality vitamin E ? if Health Canada lets us
buy that many at once, and if you can find a doctor willing to prescribe it.

He then handed me a tube-shaped metal container with vitamin C effervescent
tablets. Each tablet , when dissolved in water would release 10 mg of vitamin C
in a refined sugar solution. Thus, this ridiculously low amount,
was to be taken in a toxic medium that would neutralize the vitamin without
it doing anything at all. The cost: about $ 10 for 12 tablets.

Then he asked me, "What's Co-enzyme Q 10? Are you allowed to buy all this in
Canada in such dangerous dosages?" When I told him what I take daily, his
eyes popped.

Then I asked, "Why can't I buy these supplements here?"
He replied, "Well, Germany is a Codex country."

Oddly, Germany has several government-run hospitals where environmental
illness is treated with nutrients only, intravenous vitamin C etc. Life is full
of
paradoxes and few more follow below.

CODEX AND THE EU

Dr. Carolyn Dean, a medical doctor and naturopath well known to Toronto
readers, is currently the president of "Friends of Freedom International" in
which capacity she attended the Codex meeting in Bonn last November. She
describes Codex as "the ultimate Big Brother marching backwards into the
future."

Effective August 1, all vitamin and mineral supplements on the so-called
"positive list", including everything from Beta Carotene to Zinc, will only
be available in the 25 EU countries if they comply with specific rules set
out in the June 10, 2002, EU Directive Relating to Food Supplements. All
products must show maximum safe levels "as established by science". Those
nutrients found in the mythic "balanced diet" are to be subtracted from the
final values, and Article 6 (2) decrees that labels shall "not attribute to
food supplements the property of preventing, treating or curing a human
disease, or refer to such properties." So, the Directive's "science" knows
nothing of Vitamin C preventing and curing scurvy, Vitamin D preventing and
curing rickets and osteoporosis, or vitamin B curing and preventing anemia.

It also ignores the mountain of evidence showing our diets are chronically
deficient in essential nutrients because of factory-style farming practices.

To "ensure a high level of protection for consumers and facilitate their
choice", they even included baking soda and table salt. We must assume they will
be unavailable as of August 1 anywhere in Europe
- with interesting consequences for the tourist industry in the baked
goods paradises Austria, Switzerland and France.

Now, there is also a "negative list" covering essential fatty acids,
phytonutrients, all the enzymes and more. Those cannot be marketed at all,
until the EU scientific committee in charge has made a final decision. So,
forget omega-3 and omega-6 fats, cod liver oil, and much more. The effect of
this directive will be that thousands of products and businesses will be
gone this year. In the UK alone some 21 million people will suddenly have no
access to any supplement vitamins, minerals, enzymes, fatty acids and more.

Since the onus is on businesses to produce the scientific information on
safety, they can't produce or sell anything ?not even to physicians who have the
power to prescribe any toxic drug as well as any essential nutrient.

Obviously, there will be ludicrous enforcement issues:
Picture basement-concocted vitamins sold in dark alleys alongside crack and
Ecstasy.

TOBACCO SCIENCE

Health Canada's famous food safety activist, Dr. Shiv Chopra, refers to
corporate-generated pseudo-science (designed to look snazzy but being in fact
sleazy) as "tobacco science", which is what obviously informed the Directive.

For example, the misleadingly named "International Alliance of Dietary
Supplements" (see www.iadsa-exposed.tripod.com )
has already started the process of establishing "safety limits" for
supplements by providing Codex with a report: it is based on outdated
secondary literature, cites no evidence of dead bodies from vitamin overdosing,
asserts nonetheless that we are all overdosing, and it is produced by a
"scientific" committee chaired by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer's very own Randy
Dennin.

Nutrients are essential to life and cannot be subjected to safety analyses
like environmental toxins or synthetic drugs.

Virtually all research published in mainstream journals is focused on how
essential nutrients heal organisms on the cellular level, which nutrients act
together to bring about organ repair, and how they cause systemic healing
when given in very high doses.

Science has known for at least a century that deficiencies cause standard
diseases. In the presence of certain viruses and environmental toxins, such
deficiencies are major contributing factor to AIDS and all cancers. Indeed, the
South Africans recently renamed AIDS to NAIDS which stands for "Nutritionally
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome" because recent research showed that for the
HIV virus to cause illness, a person must also be deficient in the
immune-system-controlling mineral Selenium
(Foster 2004).

Toxicity studies basically don't exist for essential nutrients (one of a few
is vitamin A under certain circumstances). To establish the lethal dose 50,
half of a hundred lab rats or mice dies at a substance's concentration which
is then designated as the toxic level. Well, you can't do that with Vitamin
C or essential fatty acids, for example. They can't kill. The body
metabolizes these substances and excretes excesses.

The occasional individual allergy to a specific type of vitamin does
not invalidate general biocompatibility. Meeting the August 1 deadline is
impossible in principle and in practice. It is a trap.

By contrast, all synthetic drugs without exception are systemically toxic,
meaning they are toxic to more than one body system as well as on a cellular
level . Hence the constant need to weigh the benefits of their use with the
known risks of their toxicity, specific doses of just so many mg, timing of
ingestion, duration of treatment - and the prescription requirement.

All this doesn't apply to apples, magnesium or probiotics.
If you eat too many apples, you get the runs - same mess for too much
vitamin C.

Furthermore, all drugs, from Aspirin to Zocor, also deplete essential
nutrients. Most accumulate in body tissues because they cannot be metabolized by
our
enzymes which freak out when encountering this phony chemistry and simply move
on.

Used for a long time, drugs frequently shut down the body's natural
detoxification center, the liver, and in extreme cases destroy it ?
ecessitating a liver transplant.

Of course, essential nutrients are readily metabolized and distributed in
accordance with the laws of nature, while simultaneously nourishing the liver.

RESISTANCE

About 800,000 people die every year in North America from properly
prescribed and ingested drugs. No toxicity levels are ever published on
drugs. They are assumed and were protected by a conspiracy of silence until

Johns Hopkins Medical School published the data on this carnage in 2003 (see
Dean below).

Codex's effort to save us all from supposedly dangerous food supplements, by
requiring their (non-existent) toxicity levels, is a determined backlash
against the turn medical science took starting with Linus Pauling, Abram Hoffer,
Carl Pfeiffer and Roger Williams in the 1950's.
They established the concepts of bio-individuality in absorption and
detoxification, high-dose essential nutrients as disease curing, and
environmental toxins acting as nutrient depleting.

Today, we have a flood of evidence showing that drugs have a very limited
usefulness and that high-dose nutrients can do anything better than drugs can.

The pharmaceutical industry is anything but slow-witted, and good business
practice dictates outfoxing the competition ? one way or another - to secure
the market. If this Directive is not stopped, there will be only one medical
world: the pharmaceutical world.

When this Codex project began in 2001, some 180 million protest letters
reached their office, but Codex doesn't give up on protecting us. Now the fight
is
on in each country,because Codex is now our problem as well.

South Africa announced on January 17th that it will not follow the
foods-as-drugs Directive. Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang stated
her country disagrees with the "false dichotomy between natural and
allopathic medicine, a division fostered by the need to make money from
patented drugs through discrediting the use of natural products." At the
November Codex meeting the South African delegate, Dr. Antoinette Booyzen (a
naturopath and medical doctor) stood firm on rejecting the Directive's
notion that supplements don't treat, prevent or cure, but the Codex
chairman, who is routinely supported by the EU delegate commanding 25 votes,
simply stonewalled all opposition, even the World Health Organization's
report entitled Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Disease. Since
chronic disease is the source of Big Pharma's wealth (see my book), the last
thing Codex wants is prevention.

Dr. Dean described how India's delegate, who represents one third of the
human race with one vote, objected to the Codex and EU-promoted baby formulas
containing chemicals that cause brain-destroying inflammation in
susceptible babies. He was ignored. When he insisted on debate, he was
removed from the room. Naturally, India is mounting it's resistance to
Codex, the EU Directive, the WTO and all the rest of the regulatory alphabet
soup.

Despite Bush the Bizarro in the White House, the US has bill H.R. 4004 before
Congress, sponsored by Republican Congressman Ron Paul from Texas.
Known as the Health Freedom Bill, it is an anti-Codex, anti-harmonization
bill that would ensure supplements to remain foods available according to
individual choice.

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons expressed their
opposition to Codex by formally adopting on December 10th last year a resolution
"supporting freedom for patients and physicians to choose natural remedies".

The Dietary Supplement Education Alliance presented recently before Congress
an extensive analysis of the effect of supplements taken on the basis of
individual choice. Their data showed that supporting such health freedom would
save
the government a minimum of US 15 billion annually.

Doctors' associations also prepared a superb rebuttal to the reports Codex
relies on.

One of the most important tools is available for free to the health activist
on www.garynull.com where you can download the entire available mainstream
scientific information on all vitamins and minerals up to 2003. This material
was
assembled with Dr. Carolyn Dean's assistance specifically to counteract
Codex's tobacco science.

In the UK, physicians practicing natural medicine have been equally active.
They are supported by many members of the House of Lords and the Royal
Family who subscribe to homeopathy.

Tony Blair's pro-Codex policy was attacked publicly by his wife's personal
trainer, who supervises the Blairs' supplement regime; she accused the Blairs of
hypocrisy and urged Britons not to vote for him.

In Canada we have an utterly unique opportunity to save freedom of choice by
supporting Bill C-420 which is going into second reading in Parliament in
early March. By that time MPs Dr. James Lunney and Dr.Colin Carrie need to
show the government that their bill is supported by Canadians ? just as we
did a few years ago with more than a million letters.

At that time, Health Canada was poised to place all 60,000 natural products
into the drug category. This immense protest resulted in a promise
to establish a "third category". Without debate or public knowledge , all
natural products were simply moved into the drug category January 1, 2004.
Outraged by this treachery, MP Dr.J. Lunney launched bill C-420 which
would change the definition of food and drugs such as to achieve what
that publicly supported "third category" would have done. Now we have a
minority government and a chance to win. The simple fact is that if our
supplements are defined, in law, as foods, Codex has no jurisdiction.

So, what can you do?

First: Go to my website www.kospublishing.com , scroll down to Make A
Difference , go to "CODEX Action Canada".
A letter for our Minister of Health and detailed instructions are provided,
with the addresses and e-mails of the relevant MPs. You may write your own
letter, of course.
For a hard copy 519-927-1049.

It demands (summary below):

1. Support Bill C ?420, which is coming up for second reading in March.

2. Take the necessary steps to implement the CAUT recommendations by Canada's
university teachers (i.e. stop Health Canada from doing Big Pharma's
bidding).

3. Initiate a "Truth Commission" composed of medical, toxicology, and
research experts with no ties to the pharmaceutical industry, charged to
investigate the validity and reliability of the research of every drug in
the current Compendium of Pharmaceuticals and Specialties (CPS)

4. Amend the regulatory requirements of Health Canada such that, beginning
with the 2005 edition of the CPS, every drug therein must show its toxicity
level in addition to potential adverse effects.

5. Support the Minister's call for compulsory adverse event reports on drugs.

Second: Become a member for $ 25 annually of Friends of Freedom
International.

Download membership form and information on Bill C-420 from my website, or
call me for a hard copy. They handle the most important current legal actions
against Health Canada.

If everyone of the 50,000 readers of this article were to act now, Canadians
would ensure their right to freedom of choice in medicine. In a
minority-government, Bill C-420 is certain to pass with public support, and the
pending law
suits against Health Canada's high-handed attack on vitamin and supplements
could be won. Instead of having your (tax) money support the pharmaceutical
industry, this would be certain support for Life and Health.

Sources:

On Codex and the EU Directive :
www.friendsoffreedom.org and www.alliance-natural-health.org

For international treaties affecting supplements www.citizen.org

M. Angell, The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive us And What
To Do About It, Random House, 2004

J. Bakan, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power,
Viking, 2004

H. Ferrie, Dispatches from the War Zone of Environmental Health, Kos 2004

H. Foster, What Really Causes AIDS, Trafford 2002

S. & H. Hickey, PhDs, The Ridiculous Dietary Allowance (available at LULU)

S. Rampton & J. Stauber, Trust Us, We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates

Science and Gambles With Your Future, Tarcher-Putnam, 2001

http://gyxe.com/depression/17-731-life-under-codex-read.shtml


   

   



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