The weather here in Bonn, Germany has been cold, wet and damp. But the weather inside the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU) turned icy on a couple of fascinating occasions and was so windy on a couple of others that it is hard to understand why the papers did not blow off our desks.
Dr. Grossklaus took his seat rather grandly and presided quietly while the official meet-ers and greet-ers welcomed us to opening session of the 27th session of the CCNFSDU on behalf of this and that group.
The first greeter, from the German government, pointed us toward several interesting items which did not seem to fit completely with the way Dr. Grossklaus saw things. After noting that the next CCNFSDU meeting (2006) next year would be in Thailand, he predicted that, because of our work, Codex will become even more important in the future. Then he said, “As you know, the revision of the standards of the mandates and terms of reference was high on the committee agenda in July.” That refers to the demand by the World Health Organization (WHO) representative on Thursday, July7, 2005 that Codex either redefine the terms of reference (e.g., mandate) of the CCNFSDU and Codex Committee on Food Labeling (CCFL) to include nutrition for health or find another committee, task force or group to do it. No mention was publicly made of these other two options so it looks like “determining whether Codex has relationship to nutrition and, if so, what that relationship is” will be undertaken by the CCNFSDU. General Stubblebine and I are waiting with baited breath to find out if nutrition actually does have a relationship to nutrition and, if so, what it is. Or what Dr. Grossklaus will let it be. You couldn’t tell much about the relationship between Codex and nutrition today except to say that they are having a pretty big spat. WHO appeared to have its hackles up as Dr. G. ignored it repeatedly, but Dr. G. was significantly dismissive and argumentative towards that organization.
During his obviously un-cleared-by-Dr.-Grossklaus speech, the government participant noted that CCNFSDU needed to determine what role the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Strategy for Diet, Physical Exercise and Health was going to play in CCNFSDU and what role CCNFSDU would play in its implementation. You will recall that last July the WHO representative severely chastised Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC) for not making a significant contribution to human health in its 42 years of existence and then, the next day, demanded that Codex participate in implementing the WHO Global Strategy. Dr. Slorach, the CAC Chairman, ended the discussion of both issues peremptorily and there was no further consideration of the topics at that time. He also asked for a document from WHO stating what it wanted Codex to do to bring about this implementation.
So after a couple of greetings from a couple of folks, we got down to business. The WHO representative (names to follow tomorrow when the list comes out) told the CCNFSDU that she would convene an electronic forum to allow people from CCNFSDU to work with WHO to develop a meaningful way to implement the WHO Global Strategy. This sounded reasonable enough to me but the course of this matter was not smooth. There were objections from several people who did not like the agenda item. Dr. Grossklaus put the discussion off in a number of different ways, some bureaucratic and some procedural. Ultimately, he assigned the whole discussion to Agenda Item #10, the last substantive item of the meeting. This had the advantage of serving as a double edged sword: forcing people to race through the other items on the agenda so that there would be no time for the detailed discussion earlier agenda items required and then, at the last part of the schedule there would be insufficient time for the apparently unwelcome WHO Global Strategy discussion.
Several delegates objected to this ploy, including the UK, Consumers International (a Non Governmental Organization) and India who demanded that the important topic of the WHO global strategy be given adequate time. Dr. G. was having none of it! Item 10 he said and item 10 it stayed.
The WHO representative seemed to ignore Dr. G. and gave a detailed history of the WHO Global Strategy, Codex’s involvement and the mechanism for decision making process by CCNFSDU. Dr. G. rudely cut her off and sent the discussion careening into a direction much more to his liking.
But there was a mini-mutiny on Dr. G.’s hands at that moment, it would seem. A rapid-fire free-for-all broke loose in which people were calling out their pet projects and issues with no particular rhyme or reason that we could see:
Norway demanded that the addition of sugar to baby cereal was dangerous and wanted to discuss it right away. Postpone the discussion, said Dr. G, until later.
IOCFA (an infant formula GMO) stridently ordered the Codex regulations to do nothing to hurt the babies. Dr. G. ignored her completely.
Then IBFAN (another baby feeding NGO) demanded that the WHO Global Strategy on Infant Feeding be implemented, Not a nod from Dr. G.
Consumer International noted that it supported the points made by the previous speakers but that we must discuss advertising and how food is communicated to consumers and so on. And so it went for a while with a lot of topics brought forward and no productive discussion of any of them.
While that was pretty interesting, things heated up quite a bit during the cereal based infant food and gluten-free discussions. Dr. G made statements like, “Our mandate is to determine nutrition claims, not health claims” and “Nutrition labels are not about labeling for health, they are about labeling for trade purposes.”
The big event of the day, far and away, was agenda item
No. 4: Discussion Paper on the Proposals for Additional or Revised Nutrient Reference Values (NRVs) for Labeling Purposes. South Africa had produced a report via an Electronic Working Group which addressed the need to reevaluate the Nutrient Reference Values established by the Helsinki Consultation (September, 1988). The report stated that the “label was a source of nutrition information”, “… based on an amount sufficient to promote optimum health” and “the promotion of better health for the world through optimum nutrient intake, would be in line with the WHO/FAO’s request that Codex, specifically the CCNFSDU and CCFL, implement the WHO Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Exercise and Health”.
Poor Dr. G! He just could not get away from the WHO Global Strategy.
The Discussion Paper segregated people into age, gender and condition groups (e.g., infants, children under 4, pregnant women, etc.) listing a group of 32 vitamins and minerals, noting “initially only vitamins and minerals will be dealt with”.
Dr. Grossklaus was NOT amused. He ripped into the delegate from South Africa viciously. Here is part of what he said before sending the South African delegate back to the drawing board to come up with something he liked better while ranting (verbatim quote:)
“Let’s stick to the basic issues: IT IS ABOUT LABELING, NOT NUTRITION.
The Helsinki paper, the purpose of NRVs as established in the Helsinki paper, was about serving nutrient labeling so that consumers world wide should know about a food containing a significant amount of calcium, not about finding a maximum health value of that nutrient.
….This committee should stick to its original terms of reference. Let us first agree on the general terms for establishing the values for nutrient NRVs.
The [WHO] Global Strategy does not form part of this. Maybe that is not fair, but this is about labeling, not about providing them with optimum food. This is about global trade in products offering vitamins and minerals. That is our mandate. That’s it. This is about trade.”
The South African delegate did not have anything to say.
There were other enlightening moments today, as when Dr. G. (in response to the delegate from Tanzania who called for good listening in the spirit of consensus)
condescendingly made it clear that while it was an African tradition to listen to what everyone had to say he was “not going to take the time to listen to what everyone has to say since I am not wearing my African tie today. I promise I will wear it tomorrow!”
Not a fun day. However, the good news is that we spoke with numerous delegates and discussed with them the fact that our Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline can be passed by their countries, leaving them Codex Compliant so that they avoid the wallop of World Trade Organization (WTO) trade sanctions and allow them to serve the real nutritional needs of their people, instead of, as Dr. G. so eloquently put it, “[making decisions which are] about labeling, not about providing them with optimum food!
What can you do? Ride the freedom mouse: take a few minutes to send a few letters AND send a join in letter on the Citizen Petition to provide strong leadership for protecting our health freedom and assuming an international leadership role in protecting it around the world to end world hunger and promote world health. Our Citizen Petition with the Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline as part of it does all that.
Oh yes, one other thing: please donate generously. Every penny goes for the freedom fight. Join us. Things are just getting interesting.
Come back tomorrow: I’ll let you know what’s cooking.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Laibow
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
On Saturday, November 19, 2005 I attended the Codex Working Group on Infant Formulas which operates as part of the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Food for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU).
It was a fascinating day (if you like watching decision made which will potentially impact negatively on every single child on the planet who is not breast fed. This working group is setting standards which all manufacturers who ship formula internationally must follow AND which those countries unwise enough to pass these regulations as their own domestic laws on infant formula must follow, too.
Here is the highlight of the day:
Dr. Barbara Schneeman, Director of the Dietary Supplements Department of the FDA urged the Working Group to allow fructose in baby formula. Now that is quite fascinating, really, because our own FDA prohibited the use of fructose in the beverage supply of the US because it was high in empty calories, and likely to bring about preventable diabetes, obesity (and with it cancer and cardiovascular disease) and a host of other ill health effects, especially in children and adolescents. Manufacturers, whose bottom line is the bottom line, protested and forced the FDA to abandon its health-protective stance by allowing fructose (also known by names such as “high fructose corn syrup”) into the food supply BECAUSE CODEX ALLOWS FRUCTOSE.
So the FDA knows full well that fructose is associated with a decline in health associated with an increase in obesity and diabetes. Remember, the US is battling an epidemic of juvenile and adult obesity and another [related] one of juvenile and adult diabetes, both preventable disorders.
So why would Dr. Schneeman argue for the inclusion of this health-degrading substance in baby formula? Babies need about 670 calories per 100 grams of formula, according to the working group (older and younger babies do not seem to get special nutritional recognition: perhaps they figure that older babies will just tank up on more fluid in order to get more of what they need). How many of those calories should be from empty, dangerous, insulin-spiking sweeteners for which there is no nutritional requirement whatsoever?
And how many of those calories should be for something that teaches babies to demand sweet foods despite the fact that the perfect baby food, breast milk, does not have fructose in it?
Oh, yes, the fructose generally comes from corn. And, oh, yes, the corn is generally genetically modified (GM). And, oh, yes, the genetically modified corn and anything made from it does not have to be tested for safety before it is released into the food supply. Of course, the Working Group on Infant Formula has already approved GM soy for use in infant formula. The recent study Russian study showing that over 55% of rat pups whose mothers were fed GM soy died after failing to gain weight properly should suggest some caution to a truly “science based” process such as Codex claims to be.
Tragically, it would appear that the only science upon which Codex is based in the science of International Banking.
What can you do about it? Several things. Go to www.HealthFreedomUSA.org and take the following steps:
• Join the Citizen Petition (a legal challenge to the US government policy on Codex. (Do not be misled by those who mistakenly believe its purpose is to “persuade” government bureaucrats since whether they are persuaded or not is irrelevant to the legal process set in motion by the Citizen Petition. The more people who do so, the stronger our case before Congress.
• Tell Congress that you want a Congressional Briefing on Codex and tell them that you want Dr. Rima E. Laibow, MD, Medical Director of the Natural Solutions Foundation, to help them organize the briefing.
• Write to Congress to support and oppose the bills that will determine your health freedom by using our email engine. Let Congress know that your health and health freedom is important to you!
• Use any (or all) of several methods to support the critical work of the Natural Solutions Foundation
o Do your personal and holiday shopping at www.EatSafeEatSmart.com, your source for GM-free, organic personal products, snacks, foods and products. Every purchase helps to support the Natural Solutions Foundation
o Send your unwanted treasures and collectables (each worth at least $30) to us at the Dump Fund: take the item(s) to any common carrier (Federal Express, UPS, DHL, etc.), (you can have them pack it or do it yourself) and ship it to the D.U.M.P. Fund, at: NSF, 297 Passaic Avenue, Fairfield, NJ 07004. Questions? Email us at infor@dumpfund.org. You will get a letter for the sale price of your tax deductible donation for your records.
o Make a donation to us by visiting www.HealthFreedomUSA.org/donate.shtml/.
You can be sure we will keep you posted during the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Food for Special Dietary Uses this next week. We’ll keep you posted on everything Dr. Grossklaus, the “Dr. Strangelove of Nutrition” does and says.
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
What do the American Academy of Environmental Medicine, the National Association of Nutrition Professionals, BioRenew and Freedom Club USA have in common?
Each organization has taken a bold step that you can take, too. Each one of them has endorsed
-the Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline which when ratified, will overturn the deadly impact of the Codex Vitamin and Mineral Guideline.
These endorsements are extremely important and I urge you to read the Citizen Petition, the Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline (we’ve provided a marked up copy so you can easily see the difference between the Codex guideline, which mandates under-nutrition, and our Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline“>Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline, which pushes for optimal nutrition).
Here’s the strategy: If countries are not Codex compliant (that is, their domestic laws do not match Codex regulations), they will loose in the World Trade Organization Dispute Resolution process if another country accuses them of creating a barrier to trade by violating a Codex guideline, standard or regulation. If they loose, the penalties are enormous: trade sanctions can run several hundred million dollars per year or more until the country caves in. Not only that, the sanctions are imposed on any economic sector it pleases by the prevailing country. If the two countries are competitors in, say, electronics, although the dispute was about, for example, turkey breasts, the sanctions could be applied to that contested electronics industry to do the most economic harm to the loosing country.
Is it any wonder, then, that the nations of the world are racing to adopt the Codex standards as fast as possible, despite the terrible impact it will have on health and longevity?
Our Codex working group, was greatly assisted by two brilliant and dedicated lawyers, Jim Turner and Jim Fucetola examined just what makes a country compliant and came up with a unique and powerful approach: we have created the first of a series of Revised Codex documents which, when adopted by a country, keeps the country in Codex compliance but stands the destructive impact of the Codex version on its head. In other words, the Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline extends the principles of DSHEA world-wide and makes them the global strategy, rather than a localized American anomaly. The impact on world hunger and disease will be staggeringly positive.
I urge you to read and compare the Codex Vitamin and Mineral Guideline, which is based on the premise that nutrients are toxins, and our Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline, which states that biochemical individuality is crucial for optimal nutrition and that individual requirements vary widely and must be permitted. Countries which are not tied to the Pharmaceutical Death Apparatus (the real PH D A) are searching for a way to protect their people and avoid the enormous sums of penalty money the WTO keeps nations in line with. Adoption of the Revised VMG allows them to do just that.
Other Revised Codex standards, etc. will follow.
Public support gives this strategy “legs” as they say in Congress, in two ways
1. Every person who signs the join-in letter counts as 13,000 constituents in the mind of Congress. So although you may believe that your voice has no weight or meaning, it is not true. Hundreds of thousands of letters will send a clear message to Congress: these people are serious and their health freedom is a serious concern to them. I’d best listen up! Remember, this is not a simple grocery store petition. This is a serious legal challenge to the United States Government position and policy on Codex.
2. Endorsements by individuals though joining the legal challenge known as the Citizen Petition or by organizations which pass resolutions of support for the Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline tells Congress here at home and countries friendly to health freedom that there is a movement which has power and strategic thinking behind it with which they can safely align themselves.
Can Codex counter attack? Of course they can. Will they? Probably. But with a growing constituency of support both at home and abroad, the terrible damage done by mandating chronic under-nturition world-wide is averted. The Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline does that.
General Stubblebine and I are leaving later today to attend the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses in Bonn, Germany.
You can bet that we will be following up with the people we met in Rome who, when asked if they understood what using Risk Assessment would mean to their pregnant women, their elderly, their cancer rates, etc., did not. We explained that Risk Assessment is a discipline of toxicology designed to determine doses so low that they have no discernable impact on humans. We further pointed out that Codex has declared nutrients to be toxins and treats them as such. They quickly saw, when it was presented that way, that the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline has nothing to do with promoting health but everything to do with promoting widespread illness with its resultant dependence on expensive, dangerous and ineffective drugs to treat the chronic degenerative diseases of under-nutrition. And then, to a man or woman, they asked for help.
The Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline is the first part of that help. We need public support to generate Congressional support. We need Congressional Support to generate international support.
So please, get active, get your groups active (churches, coops, ladies clubs, student clubs, professional clubs, all are welcome!)
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
Up for some good news? The Eat Safe, Eat Smart Buy-Cott (what to buy, not what not to buy!) is nearly ready. Your source of GMO-free, organic products with just a click is nearly hear. We have a great selection of products from chocolate to deodorant for you to chose from. This site is meant to please you so we are taking the unusual step of asking you to help us put the finishing touches on it.
Just go to www.EatSafeEatSmart.com and take a look at the site. Then tell me at info@healthfreedomusa.org what you like and what you don’t like about it. Let me know if there is something we forgot or a whole product line you love and feel should be there. Tell us if the format works for you and tell us what doesn’t work for you.
We’ll change it and make it right so you can have a site which offers you the best in Safe, Smart food and products!
Thanks in advance for your input!
Oh, yes. One other thing: Please go to our website and sign the Citizens Petition. Even if you signed before, since it has been revised and now contains the Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline, we invite you to sign again and get everyone you know on board. Thanks.
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Five days is not much time to see results when you change your diet. So the remarkable study by Chensheng Lu of Emory University in Atlanta is all the more astounding. Lu and his colleagues recruited 23 families in suburban Seattle which had children between 3 and 11 years old and showed that in just 5 days on organic foods, the levels of deadly pesticides in the children dropped so low they were undetectable! Prior to the study, all of the children ate conventionally grown and produced food (that includes produce with 5 number codes on the little tags that begin with either a “4” [grown with pesticides] or “8” [genetically modified]).
The study consisted of 5 days during which the 23 test families and their children, between 3 and 11 years old, substituted organic fruits, vegetables, fruit juices, cereals and pastas for conventional ones. The families made the same meals that they would have with conventional foods and followed the same dietary habits, just substituting the organic foods supplied by Lu and his team.
The results showed that in those 5 short days, the levels of two dangerous organophosphate pesticides became undetectable in the children’s urine. Parents collected two daily urine samples from their children to allow researchers to see what the impact of the change in diet was on the pesticide levels. Both before and after the test period, when they were eating conventional food, the pesticides were detectalbe in the children’s urine.
The researchers were interested in the levels of two dangerous organophosphate pesticides routinely used in food, called “malithion” and “chlorpyrophos” which are, unfortunately, legal in this country for use on conventional food crops. Organophosphates have numerous well established, serious negative impacts on health including profound and often irreversible neurological, psychological, immunological and skin problems. Malathion, for example, is neurotoxic: “The main target of malathion toxicity in children is the nervous system, the same as in adults.
So when children were given a rest from pesticides for just 5 days, their bodies were able to detoxify and get rid of those dangerous chemicals. Perhaps it would take adults longer, since these toxins build up in fats, but doesn’t it seem reasonable to cut down the toxic burden of your body when you know that the toxins are poisonous, nerve poisons, in fact?
Is organic food worth the approximately 25% price premium? You tell me: what is your Central Nervous System worth? How about your child’s (or your mother’s or your brother’s) brain and nerves? And given that the cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and other epidemics which are making us so sick and killing us so rapidly are primarily the result of toxins in the food supply and environment, doesn’t it seem reasonable to eat as much clean, safe, smart food as possible? Think of what you will save on medication and hospital co-pays later on!
Of course, that means that the organic food supply must be worth spending that extra money on. We pushed back the degraded organic standards shamefully being pushed by the major corporate interests in the Organic Trade Association last week. The OTA wanted a rider attached to the Agricultural Spending Bill which would have allowed many, many contaminants in the organic food supply with no notification to consumers about what they were buying or consuming. Our letters and those of other activists succeeded, with the help of Sen. Patrick Leahey of Vermont, in putting the matter before the Secretary of Agriculture “for further study”. Let’s help with that study: write a quick letter to your Congressional delegation and let them know how important maintaining organic standards is to you.
And take a suggestion from a doctor who knows what the health impact of organophosphate pesticides is: spend the extra money on organic food. It’s your life, your body, your health and your choice! Do it before there’s a diagnosis of cancer, heart disease, dementia, seizures, etc. in your family. Prevention really is the best medicine. And if there is already a health problem for you or a loved one, going organic will make things better by lowering the toxic burden the body has to struggle with.
Watch for our new website, www.EatSmartEatSafe.info to help you make those healthy choices!
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director