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Vitamin consumers world wide were burned in Bonn Germany at this year's meeting of the UN Codex Alimentarius Commission's Committee on Nutrition and Foods For Special Dietary Use where the agenda item on vitamins and minerals, which had been blocked from moving for 8 years, just "advanced" from step 3 to the pivotal Step 5.
(Codex Rules allow for implementation at Step 6 if there is unanimous agreement on an agenda item, otherwise, it can take as many as 8 steps to win approval.)
What is most distressing to me about this situation is that misleading reports have been sent out by Simon Petman of controlled opposition group "IADSA", by CRN ("Council for Responsible Nutrition") and by others (see below), who would have us all believe that a "victory" for vitamin consumers was "achieved" at this years meeting (because a move to impose RDA potency levels was scrapped in favor of using less draconian, but equally unscientific "Safe Upper Levels" as determined by supposedly "scientific" risk assessment- when all we've just seen unfold was a classic "bait and switch" con game- a perfect illustration of the Hegelian Dialectic: thesis + antithesis = synthesis..... that is, FIRST, the Cartel creates the problem (threat of restricting things to RDA levels), in order to create a desired public reaction (FEAR), THEN the Cartel ushers in an alleged "Solution" to this problem by conning people into getting behind supposed "Safe Upper Levels" (eg 35 mg on niacin) even though this "scientific risk assessment" scheme is A) Pharmaceutically funded, B) Unscientific, C) Biased. [ Evidence: See http://www.iahf.com NAS Paper and Rebuttal.]
It wasn't legal for Dr.Beth Yetley of the FDA to put the biased, pharmaceutically funded paper "A Risk Assessment Model for Establishing Safe Upper Levels for Nutrients" on the table at Codex in 1998, but she did so ANYWAY safe in the knowledge that the Pharma Spin Machine has the power to rig any Congressional Oversight hearing at which her illegal actions might be exposed.
Although she was told by several members of Congress NOT to put this paper on the table at Codex [ See their letters at http://www.iahf.com under "Letters from Congress", she did so ANYWAY, and on March 20, 2001, an Oversight Hearing on Codex where this crime might have been exposed, was whitewashed. I wasn't allowed to testify, and neither were any of my witnesses including Richard Malter, PhD, whose scholarly rebuttal to the National Academy of Sciences "risk assessment" paper was published in the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, Second Quarter 2000, Volume 15, Number 2 (see it along with the NAS paper which openly states that it was funded by pharmaceutical interests at http://www.iahf.com under NAS Paper and Rebuttal]
The Codex meeting where the vitamin agenda item "advanced" just occurred from November 3- 7 in Bonn. IAHF did not attend, having been permanently banned from attending meetings of the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Use by Jurgen Kundke, who was the Press Officer for the German Bgvv (FDA) in 1998, the year I angered Herr Grossklaus, the Nazi Chair of the Meeting by videotaping the first half hour of the meeting (til they forced me to stop videotaping) and by posting the videotape in the Media Section at http://www.iahf.com where vitamin consumers world wide can see how non transparent the UN Scam known as "Codex" really is. On the videotape you can see Grossklaus's assistant tap him on the shoulder and whisper in his ear as he points up at me in the upper deck of the Conference room in Berlin where I was videotaping from the US Delegation where I was an observer.
You can see everyone in the room look up at me as discussions ensued spurred by Grossklaus who wanted the Pharma stooges amonst the different national delegations to back up his contention that videotaping "must be prohibited" at Codex meetings. Several did, and the most vehement of them was the Canadian Codex rep, Dr.Margeret Cheney who hates my guts because prior to the Codex meeting in Bonn in '96 I blew the whistle on a corrupt Canadian Codex motion to create a negative, or "no trade" list for herbs, which threatened to ban the sale of a lot of safe herbs world wide. Canadian consumers flooded Ottawa with complaints about the Canadian "no trade" list for herbs in '96, and in '97 Canadian consumers voted with their feet against Health Canada to overturn onerous domestic regulations, which Health Canada and the Cartel ignored on June 18, 2000 when Canada was harmonized to Australian law- (via "assistance" from Australian traitor Val Johanson, more below.)
Via my articles and public speaking I generated a firestorm of opposition in Canada and world wide to the Canadian motion, and at the '96 meeting in Bonn, Cheney attempted to side step the grass roots via a criminal motion which shifted herbs out of Codex over to a secret committee at the World Health Organization to which the grass roots has zero access. Cheney's criminal motion was illegally seconded (in complete violation of US law) by Dr.Beth Yetley of the US FDA, (the US Codex Rep), but on March 20, 2001, with direct assistance from the pharmaceutically dominated NNFA, an oversight hearing on Codex was whitewashed and Yetley was allowed to skate- she wasn't asked any hard questions, I wasn't allowed to testify, and none of my witnesses were allowed to testify, so the truth did not come out.
Due to my whistle blowing efforts, I was banned from the US Codex Delegation by Dr.Scarbrough, US Codex Chairman, upon the urging of Dr.Beth Yetley of the FDA, who has God like powers to ban anyone from the delegation if they attempt to oppose the pharmaceutical agenda which is so obvious at these UN meetings which go diametrically against every tenet of representative government on which America was founded. Yetley is not an elected official, she is an unelected bureaucrat. All of the National Reps at Codex meetings are unelected bureaucrats, and what needs to happen is consumers must turn out in sufficient numbers to shut this meeting down, Seattle style like in the anti WTO protest in '99 where protestors clogged the streets, totally disrupting the WTO meeting.
There is nothing honest, scientific, or fair about how Codex operates. Its a form of "high drama" in which everything that takes place inside a Codex meeting was determined well in advance of the meeting taking place, and it is pointless for us to even attend because everything that happens is decided well in advance via a combination of email, phone calls, and side meetings. NGO groups such as the National Health Federation which waste their time, and people's hard earned money to attend Codex meetings are just being used to give the meetings an undeserved air of "legitimacy", even though their voice has no weight and is ignored.
WHAT JUST HAPPENED AT CODEX & WHY THERE WAS NO "VICTORY" (WHAT WE MUST DO IS AT THE END SO KEEP READING!!)
A very strange email was sent to me that maybe some of you have also seen. It is titled: "South Africa Breaks Ranks in Codex Nutrition Committee) (see the whole article, with my ongoing comments below it.) It is not in the least desirable to push a final codex vitamin standard through to completion, yet this article endorses that view. Whoever wrote the article fails to grasp that we need a white paper about supposed "scientific risk assessment" on supplements generated by the Australian government (which just banned 1600 safe dietary supplements under false pretenses) about like we need a hole in the head.
We don't NEED so called "safe upper levels" imposed on already safe dietary supplements, what we NEED is to shut this meeting down via Seattle scaled protests, and we need to start shutting down drug companies by voting with our feet against any politician, anywhere in the world, who seeks to limit what we can and cannot ingest into OUR BODIES.)
There is no "victory" at Codex when health freedom groups mindless allign themselves with the pharma dominated CRN, and its positions. (See CRN's proclamation of Codex "victory" at http://www.crnusa.org/shellnr110403.html When a trade association whose membership includes Bayer, BASF, and Pfizer announces a "victory" at Codex over vitamins, you can be CERTAIN that something is "rotten in Denmark."
To refresh your memories, CRN publicly announced their intention to harmonize American dietary supplement laws to the mindless dictates emerging in the EU via this press release of the Dietary Supplement Working Group of the Trans Atlantic Business Dialogue in 2000 [ See US and EU Leaders Agree on Principles to Harmonize Dietary Supplement Regulations http://www.crnusa.org/shellnr112000.html
South Africa breaks ranks at Codex Nutrition Committee
The discussions around a proposed guideline for food supplements by the Committee for Nutrition and special dietary foods of the international standard setting body called Codex Alimentarius, have taken a most interesting turn this year.
Population reference intakes (RDAs) were abandoned as a measure for determining upper level dosages of vitamins and minerals in supplements, substituted by scientific risk analysis as the method of choice for assuring protection of consumer health.
The change seems to have been brought about principally by continued pressure of consumer avocacy groups for free access to vital nutrients (The National Health Federation, Friends of Freedom, La Leva di Archimede, HONERI, and many others) as well as to protests against Codex organized by Dr. Mathias Rath, the proponent of a new vision for health, cellular medicine.
Codex Nutrition Committee meets in Bonn
3 November 2003
SOUTH AFRICA JOLTS THE MEETING
In what is widely seen as a surprising development, South Africa has pushed the discussion on a new guideline for supplements in this year's meeting of the Codex Nutrition Committee (CCNFSDU) a long way towards acceptance of nutrition's vital role in health and disease prevention.
The South African proposal includes reference to deficiency diseases, but it goes beyond that, stating that "[b]ecause foods contain many substances that promote health and prevent chronic diseases, people should therefore be encouraged to select a healthy diet and supplement this diet with those nutrients for which the intake from the diet is insufficient to meet the requirements necessary for the prevention of chronic diseases and/or for the promotion of health beyond the demands of preventing micronutrient deficiencies."
The proposal was supported by the National Health Federation, a non-governmental organization representing consumers and by the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a US-based supplements industry group.
Anyone familiar with nutrition and the use of supplements in prevention and health promotion would not doubt that indeed supplements can play an important role in prevention and optimal health, but for the EU health authorities the earth still seems to be flat. The European Union's "observer" at Codex, Basil Mathioudakis, denied the obvious saying that foods really have nothing to do with the prevention of disease!
Yet the Nutrition Committee's delegates had received - in the same session - a copy of a FAO/World Health Organisation publication titled: "Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases", which clearly indicates the fact that diet and nutrition DO have something to do with prevention. What are we to think? Could this simply be incompetence or is the European bueraucracy dominated by other, unspoken interests in matters of nutrition and health?
In any case, after being reminded of the obvious contradiction, the committee's Chairman, German professor of nutrition Rolf Grossklaus, decided to ignore the rather innovative proposal from South Africa and stay with the old preamble, "in order to avoid conflict", not without having said that according to the law, only medicines may treat, heal or prevent illness. One might wonder why nutrition is considered to be so inferior to medicine in keeping us healthy.
ENTER SCIENTIFIC RISK ANALYSIS
A highly significant paper prepared by Australia introduced the concept of scientific risk analysis for evaluating the safety of supplements. Risk analysis consists of three components: risk assessment, risk management and risk communication. Each step has its own expertise and the separation of risk assessment from successive decisions on how to manage and communicate risks, guarantees a more impartial, scientific approach than current methods.
Scientific risk analysis has gained prominence within the last decade or so. It was developed to study and mitigate the effects of toxic chemicals and other damaging external factors on health. The application of this technology to the risks of nutrients implies a slightly different approach, as nutrients are generally beneficial and in many cases are indispensable to life. Therefore, applying risk analysis to nutrients, both ends of the scale have to be considered. There is a risk in "too little" just as there may be risks in "too much". These opposing ends of the scale need to be balanced and an optimal range of nutrient intake should be established, excluding risks from deficiency as well as from a potentially damaging oversupply.
Following the recommendations of Australia, the Committee acknowledged the relevance of risk analysis to its work and established a working group to elaborate specific guidelines on risk analysis, to be applied within its area of responsibility. The paper prepared by Australia, as well as other documents prepared for the Codex Nutrition Committee meeting, can be found on this page. (Risk analysis is number 10 of the agenda.)
POPULATION REFERENCE INTAKES IRRELEVANT FOR DOSAGE LIMITS
Another positive development from this year's Nutrition Committee meeting is the elimination of the "RDA option" in determining possible dosage limits for vitamin and mineral supplements. Until this year's meeting, the draft guideline contained (in point 3.2.2) an option that "the maximum level of each vitamin and/or mineral contained in a vitamin and mineral supplement per daily portion of consumption as suggested by the manufacturer should not exceed 100% of the recommended daily intake as determined by FAO/WHO."
The recommended daily amounts (RDAs or RDIs) are reference values for whole populations and have really little to do with individual nutrient needs, which can vary widely from one person to another, and even in one and the same person, they vary with different life situations and with external influences such as pollution, radiation, climate.
The Nutrition Committee agreed that, with Australia's proposal on risk analysis, the levels of RDA, set to ensure a minimum supply of vital nutrients to avoid deficiencies, should not be used to determine maximum dosages for vitamins and minerals in food supplements. Instead, limitations of dosages should be based on upper safe levels set by scientific risk assessment, taking into account the intake from other sources, such as our daily food intake.
This is a significant advance over previous discussions, where RDAs were considered by a number of countries as the way to protect consumers against a "vitamin oversupply".
WHOEVER WROTE THIS ARTICLE ABOUT SOUTH AFRICA BREAKING RANKS IS FAILING TO SEE THE BIG PICTURE
I don't yet know who wrote this article, but judging from the title, it might have been written by Anthony Reese from HONERI http://www.honeri.org
in South Africa, as he did attend this year's meeting. Or it may have been written by Josef Hasslberger from La Leva di Archimede http://www.laleva.cc whose site it was posted on, as he also attended this years meeting.
I consider Anthony and Josef to be allies in this battle and my purpose here is NOT to run them down over this if either of them wrote this article, but I do urge them (and all of you) to engage your minds so as to CLEARLY SEE what is REALLY going on here.
The Cartel knows they couldn't push RDA levels down our throats at Codex, so they employed CRN, a controlled opposition group to usher in a Hegelian "solution" to the threat of regulation that they generated, but its the direction they wanted to push us in ALL ALONG. Problem, REACTION, "SOLUTION".
Let me make one thing perfectly clear: High dose niacin saved my life. There is nothing "scienfic" about imposing a 35 mg "Safe Upper Level" on niacin, just as FLUORIDE is not an "essential nutrient" (its a deadly toxin and no one should ingest it.) Yet in their "infinite wisdom" the pharma dominated National Academy of Sciences which got this scam rolling at the request of the criminal FDA, have decided that we can't have more than 35 mg of niacin as a "safe dose."
I called the National Academy of Sciences when I first read their biased paper back in '98 and asked them how they had arrived at this "UL" for niacin, and they responded by saying "Some sensitive people experience the niacin flush at doses as low as 35 mg. At higher doses its a drug and must be regulated as such." To which I responded indignantly, "So WHAT??? Niacin is not a "drug", its defined under the law that you're attempting to repeal via global harmonization to be a NUTRIENT, and you just don't want people using it as a vasodilator, you want people to use patented Rx drugs for that purpose, and you also don't want people using it for the treatment of schizophrenia or for any other purpose because it cuts into the sale of patented Rx drugs.
So, since you claim to be honest and objective, why don't you give me the CVs of all the authors of your paper "A Risk Assessment Model for Establishing Safe Upper Levels for Nutrients" so I can see what pharmaceutical research grants they've received over the years?
They refused, and also refused to provide me with the raw data behind this paper. By law, they're not required to provide this information because NAS is a non profit organization, they're not part of the government, so they're not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
This paper never underwent a public comments period, but FDA argues that it "never had to" because it wasn't used to determine their policy on US soil "only their position at a UN meeting."
Congress is letting them get away with this, and will CONTINUE to let them get away with it unless you join me as a whistleblower and complain loudly that we're being set up by the FDA to lose in a future WTO Trade Dispute on the Codex vitamin issue.
WHAT YOU MUST DO:
1. Make an immediate donation to the Alliance for Natural Health http://www.alliance-natural-health.org for their lawsuit to overturn the EU Food Supplement Directive.
Unless overturned, the EU Food Supplement Directive will be used to shape future events at Codex which are clearly intended to ban consumer access to supplements globally.
2. Make an immediate donation to IAHF to help us bring this urgent message on the road to the American and Canadian people and to consumers world wide.
Your donations will help turn IAHF into a membership organization, via which we can serve you better. IAHF 556 Boundary Bay Rd. Point Roberts Washington, 98281 USA
Consumers are buying in to pharma generated spin, and even some of our best health freedom fighters are unfortunately buying into this spin. IAHF can help you chart a course out of this swamp.
Someone suggested that I employ a healthy dose of "Nobless Oblige" when writing this article, but there is just no way I could be that diplomatic. I'm originally from New Jersey, and where I come from, we call a spade a spade. I'm not going to sugar coat anything, I'm giving you the plain unvarnished truth. If anyone is offended in any way by this article, theres nothing I can do about it. I'm trying to defend my life and the lives of others. We did not just have a "victory" at Codex, we got our butts kicked. The only "victory" we could ever have at Codex would be if we could shut the meeting down Seattle style via a demonstration large enough to keep it from taking place. All it is is a form of "high drama" and you can't change Codex inside a Codex meeting, you can only change Codex INDIRECTLY via such means as the ANH lawsuit, so please don't lose site of this fact.
Questions? Please let me know.
John C. Hammell, President
International Advocates for Health Freedom
556 Boundary Bay Rd.
Point Roberts, WA 98281 USA
800-333-2553 N.America
360-945-0352 World
jham@iahf.com
International Advocates for Health Freedom
POB 10632 Blacksburg VA 24062 USA
http://www.iahf.com; http://iadsa-exposed.tripod.com
800-333-2553 N.America
540-961-0476 World 