IAHF Webmaster: Codex Emergency, Breaking News, Whats New, USA & All Countries
IAHF List:
To defend against CODEX HARM-ONIZATION I am flying to Washington DC on Tuesday June 7th in an effort to kill CAFTA (The Central American Free Trade Agreement) which is expected to have a MARKUP VOTE in the Senate on June 14th & STILL NEED EMERGENCY DONATIONS for this urgent lobbying trip!!
See paypal button at http://www.iahf.com (on top of scrollbar inside site) or please send your donation to: IAHF 556 Boundary Bay Rd., Point Roberts, WA 98281
WHAT YOU CAN DO & WHY YOUR HELP IS URGENTLY NEEDED:
URGENT ALERT: ACT WEEK OF JUNE 6th AND WEEK of JUNE 13th
Vitamin consumers: Two Important Legislative Actions You Must Take This Week and Next to Defend Your Access to Dietary Supplements !!
1. H J Res 27 which gets us out of the WTO will go to the House Floor on Tuesday, June 6th. Congressman Paul urges vitamin consumer's support for this bill. The form letter below explains why. Please call your congressman via the US Capital Switchboard at 202-225-3121 and ask to be connected to your congressman's office. If you aren't sure of his or her name, give the operator your zipcode and they'll tell you, then connect you.
When you are connected, urge your congressman to COSPONSOR House Joint Resolution 27 which would get us out of the WTO. Also tell them to oppose CAFTA and the FTAA
Tell them you're concerned about the threat the WTO, and CAFTA pose to US sovereignty, to the worsening trade deficit, and to your access to dietary supplements. Ask for your congressman's fax number or email address and fax or email the form letter (SEE BELOW) in to them. Add your own comments if you want. For additional information, please read the article below the form letter.
2. A "Markup" Hearing will be held on CAFTA (Central American Free Trade Agreement) in the Senate Finance Committee http://finance.senate.gov/ on June 14th. CAFTA & the Free Trade Area of the Americas threaten our sovereignty, including The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act which provides us access to dietary supplements. CAFTA + FTAA threaten harmonization of DSHEA to restrictive international Codex regulations.
First a bill is voted on in committee, then if it passes in committee, it goes to the floor of the Senate (or House). A bill must pass both the senate and house before it goes to the President to be signed into law (or vetoed). Bush is "testing the waters" on CAFTA on June 14th in this markup vote. Its very important we sent Congress a strong message in defense of our sovereignty and against CAFTA/FTAA.
Each member of the Senate Finance Committee has a website via which you can send email.
Please email the form letter to them via these sites: and also lob your message in by calling them via the Capital Switchboard at 202-225-3121
If you are from their state, be especially sure to tell them that and please alert your friends and family!!
REPUBLICANS
Senator Grassley, Iowa, Chair of Committee http://www.senate.gov/%7Egrassley/
Senator Hatch, Utah http://hatch.senate.gov/
Senator Lott, Mississippi http://lott.senate.gov/
Senator Snowe, Maine http://snowe.senate.gov/
Senator Kyl, Arizona http://kyl.senate.gov/
Senator Thomas, Wyoming http://www.senate.gov/%7Ethomas/
Senator Santorum, Pennsylvania http://santorum.senate.gov/public/
Senator Frist, Tennessee http://frist.senate.gov/
Senator Smith, Oregon http://www.senate.gov/%7Egsmith/
Senator Bunning, Kentucky http://bunning.senate.gov/
Senator Crapo, Idaho http://www.senate.gov/%7Ecrapo/
DEMOCRATS
Senator Baucus, Montana http://www.senate.gov/~baucus/
Senator Rockefeller, W.Virginia http://www.senate.gov/~rockefeller/
Senator Conrad, N.Dakota http://www.senate.gov/~conrad/
Senator Jeffords, Vermont http://www.senate.gov/~jeffords/
Senator Bingaman, New Mexico http://bingaman.senate.gov/
Senator Kerry, Massachusetts http://kerry.senate.gov/
Senator Lincoln, Arkansas http://lincoln.senate.gov/
Senator Wyden, Oregon http://wyden.senate.gov/
Senator Schumer, New York http://www.senate.gov/%7Eschumer/
NO TO CAFTA/FTAA/WTO!!YES to H J Res 27
US Dietary Supplement Laws Threatened By Globalization!!
To: Senators____________________________
And Congressman ______________________________
The WTO, NAFTA, CAFTA and FTAA trade agreements all contain the SPS (Sanitary Phytosanitary Measures) agreement. Article 3 of SPS states:
"To harmonize sanitary and phytosanitary measures on as wide a basis as possible, Members SHALL base their food safety measures on international standards, guidelines or recommendations."
This makes the supposedly "voluntary" Codex Alimentarius standard for vitamins and minerals MANDATORY for all WTO member nations.
Passage of CAFTA and FTAA would broaden and deepen the scope of the SPS agreement, forcing harmonization of not only our dietary supplement laws to mindless international standards, but it would lead to the creation of a supranational body similar to the EU in our hemisphere, and we oppose this clear threat to US sovereignty.
When the draft text of CAFTA was first made available on January 28th, 2004 the Governors of all 50 States discovered that they were bound by the 2,400 page agreement- being specifically listed in chapter 9. A third have since rescinded their support of CAFTA.
Last fall, a WTO tribunal outlawed Utah's ban on gambling, opening the door to millions of dollars in penalties against all states with anti-gambling restrictions. Antigua had charged that Utah's ban on gambling violated America's obligation not to discriminate against foreigners providing "recreational services."
CAFTA includes hundreds of pages of grants of vague authority to foreign tribunals. It wouldn't take long for an activist foreign judge to read his own interpretation into language such as the SPS agreement and force changes to US laws including the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act.
In addition to these concerns, NAFTA never lived up to the numerous promises made about it, and our Trade Deficit is worse now than ever, contributing to the weakening of the dollar. There is no reason to expect CAFTA or FTAA do anything more than to FURTHER this negative trend, and lead to the destruction of our nation, and our economy.
WTO tribunals have ruled against the USA in 42 out of 48 cases, many of which were very costly to our economy. I therefore ask you to vote NO on CAFTA and on FTAA, and YES on H J Res 27 which removes the US from the WTO.
Signed________________________________
Address____________________________________________________ City_________________________________State____Zip____________
SAVE OUR SUPPLEMENTS!! NO TO CAFTA/FTAA!!
US Dietary Supplement Laws Threatened By Globalization!!
By John C. Hammell, President
International Advocates for Health Freedom
I remember when NAFTA was rammed at high speed through Congress in 1993. The Hill was crawling with multinational corporate lobbyists who covered it like ants devouring a lump of sugar. They poured out of chauffer driven limos wearing their Gucci shoes, Rolex watches and Brooks Brothers Suits and were ushered directly in to the inner sanctum of Senator's offices. Simultaneously, lobbyists representing the grass roots (myself included) had to wait a half hour just to get 5 minutes with a congressional aide whose job is to be polite and to pretend to care about what WE want.
At the time numerous press reports documented deals -- many unrelated to NAFTA -- that the Clinton Administration had made with individual Members of Congress and groups of Members to obtain their votes to pass NAFTA.
The legacy of broken promises on NAFTA performance: NAFTA threatened the safety of the nation's food supply, undermined the nation's environmental regulations, and subverted American democracy while it cost the U.S. good jobs.
Twelve years after passage of NAFTA, the world's ruling elite are attempting to pull ANOTHER FAST ONE ON US as they seek to expand NAFTA to Central American via CAFTA, and throughout our whole hemisphere via FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas.)
VITAMIN/HERB CONSUMERS MUST HELP STOP CAFTA & FTAA---HERE IS WHY
CAFTA will have a FAST TRACK vote in either May or June of this year. It is ESSENTIAL that vitamin consumers take the action recommended in the form letter at the end of this article, and to get copies of both to every health food store in your area so that more people can take action!
NAFTA contains language called the SPS (Sanitary Phytosanitary Measures) Agreement. This agreement is found verbatim in both the WTO trade agreement and in NAFTA, which CAFTA and FTAA threaten to expand hemisphere wide, thus broadening and deepening its scope.
Through the SPS agreement, every nation on earth is required to "harm-onize" its dietary supplement laws to the mindlessly restrictive international trade standard which (barring a miracle) will be ratified between July 4-9th at the 28th General Session of the UN's Codex Alimentarius Commission in Rome.
(Harmony is a beautiful thing when it comes to music, but its NOT a good thing to make all the laws the same all over the world and to have these laws made by unelected bureaucrats who are accountable to no one except the multinational corporations that control them.)
WHY YOU HAVEN'T HEARD ABOUT THIS THREAT
IN YOUR LOCAL HEALTH FOOD STORE
Many of you are probably stunned to read this article. Many remember the drive to pass the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 when we flooded Congress with the largest volume of mail in the HISTORY of Congress to protect our access to dietary supplements, and to allow health claims to be made about them, so I'm sure you must wonder why the health food stores aren't telling you to spring into action again. The reason why is that they belong to a trade association (NNFA) which has actively pulled the wool over their eyes on this issue by telling them what they want to hear (that it's a non issue, and don't worry, "we're handling it.")
LED TO THE CLIFF FROM WITHIN
All of the vitamin trade associations worldwide are being controlled from the top-down by pharmaceutical interests, including NNFA. The larger companies are dominating the trade associations, and all they care about is grabbing increased market share (even if this comes at the expense of consumers because they have to water down what they're allowed to sell.)
These companies take the view that they're big enough to weather any storm, and they don't care what they're allowed to sell, as long as they drive their smaller competitors under in order to please investors.
Through a slick disinformation campaign, they've been conning their members into believing that Codex "only threatens to impact our international sales, not US (or Canadian) domestic law."
They would have their member companies and health food stores totally ignore the awful reality of globalization as is undeniably occurring via the effort to ram CAFTA and the FTAA down our throats.
What they want is "approved once, approved everywhere" so that they don't have to manufacture different products to suit different countries regulatory requirements. They want to have one product line with one set of labels that can be sold in any country on earth (even if this severely limits what consumers are allowed to buy.)
CRN (Council for Responsible Nutrition) is a vitamin trade association that has numerous pharmaceutical members including Monsanto, Bayer, BASF, Pfizer, Wyeth, and Cargill (among others). Numerous network marketing vitamin companies including Mannatech, Shaklee, Herbalife, GNLD, and Nuskin are also members. How these vitamin companies in CRN could not consider it to be a gross conflict of interest that these multinational drug companies belong to their trade association is almost beyond belief.
CRN would have its members believe that a great "victory" was won at Codex because a move to base allowable potency levels at RDA's was scrapped in favor of (so called) "scientific risk assessment." While this sounds great on the surface, the devil is in the details. CRN members are being told that the "end point" of this "risk assessment" are numbers called "safe upper levels" which don't look much different from currently allowable potency levels in the USA.
What they're not telling us is that these "SULs" are only a STARTING POINT for the full risk assessment, and once they subtract junk science derived "nutrient risk factors", and junk science derived numbers from some mythical "average diet" they arrive at a set of numbers which in some cases are even LOWER than RDAs. Only the German Federal Institute of Risk Assessment has done the full math required in the fine print:
http://www.alliance-natural-health.org/_docs/ANHWebsiteDoc_145.doc
As you can see, Codex is moving in the direction of the following allowable "Maximum Safe Permitted Levels" B-1: 1.3 mg, B-2: 4.5 mg, B-6: 5.4 mg, Vitamin E: 15 mg, B-3 (Niacin) 17 mg, Vitamin C: 250 mg. This is ALL we'll be allowed to have access to unless we DEFEND AMERICA by STOPPING CAFTA & FTAA.
WHAT HAPPENED IN THE UK WILL HAPPEN IN THE US
UNLESS WE FIGHT BACK!!
In the UK, when over a million vitamin consumers signed petitions opposing the harmonization of their liberal vitamin laws to a mindlessly restrictive EU Food Supplement Directive, the ruling Labor Party told them to "get lost." Their attitude was that the UK is a member of the EU, and they were bound and determined to harmonize to EU law REGARDLESS of what anyone wanted (!!!)
Currently a pitched battle is waging on the European health freedom front as the Alliance for Natural Health http://www.alliance-natural-health.org awaits the outcome of a lawsuit that could set things right for consumers in the EU if the European Court of Justice's decision goes their way in June.
Meanwhile, CODEX looms large
IN JULY
and what happens in the EU could determine the future course of things at Codex which has an intentionally incremental agenda that's designed to be very challenging to stop because its being phased in very gradually in the hope of not provoking a public backlash
IAHF FIRST TO ALERT THE WORLD TO THIS THREAT IN 1996
I first called the Codex vitamin issue to global attention in 1996 via an article in Life Extension Magazine. From the word go, the FDA and the pharma dominated vitamin trade associations have been doing massive spin against my message, and now, against the message of all of our allies in the hope of sneaking their genocide agenda past sleeping people.
Sadly, unless far more people spring into action, they will succeed, but I am optimistic that we CAN KILL CAFTA and FTAA and protect our access to dietary supplements!!
PLEASE: Take the simple action called for in the attached INFO SHEET, and pass it on!
For additional information please see the following article and call it to the attention of your local health food stores along with this one:
WHO SAYS WHATEVER HAPPENS AT CODEX DOES NOT AFFECT US LAW AND WHY DO THEY SAY IT? http://www.thelawloft.com/Freedom/050125_us_law.htm
CAFTA is in political trouble. It CAN be killed, and the FTAA along with it. Killing CAFTA and the FTAA is the best way to stop US dietary supplement laws from being harmonized to international Codex standards. We MUST kill CAFTA/FTAA to protect the USA from being forced in to a global totalitarian state run by collectivists who think they have the right to dictate what we can and cannot ingest into OUR BODIES!!
Along with sending the form letter below, please also urge congressional support for
H J Res 27 which would get us out of the WTO. Call your members of congress on both issues via the US Capital Switchboard at 202-225-3121.
PLEASE FORWARD THIS ALERT & DONATE TO IAHF TO HELP WITH OUR LOBBYING EFFORT!!
---address below---
