Day 15, May 1, 2008
We are here in Ottawa during a free day when nothing formally related to Codex happens. The Codex Committee on Food Labeling has concluded its work for this year and what happens next is that today, Thursday, is the day that the Codex Secretariat spends preparing a report which will reflect (supposedly) what happened at this meeting. This report will be available tomorrow at 8 AM for everyone to read and then, from 9 AM onwards, the fun starts.
Since the Secretariat has compiled all of the dialogs and proceedings, amendments and corrections (remember, this is a commission that will spend hours fighting over the insertion of a comma – literally) into a draft report, countries and organizations which take exception to what the report says or what it does not say, or how it says it, or the innuendos of the way something was written, or whatever, have the opportunity on Friday, May 2, to go over the report in deep detail. DEEP detail.
Usually, this is simply an exercise in pedantic “place holding” but when the issues are hot and there has been no consensus, despite the assurance by Chair that “I believe we have reached consensus” on the issue, this final session of each meeting gives the participants a final opportunity to play a round of psychological and legal chess by creating a document more to their liking than the discussions may have been or, sometimes, more in keeping with the reality than the report is!
I have spent the day feverishly trying to catch up on emails (I now have 5329 unopened emails in my private email box – none of them spam!) and other issues which require my attention (like laundry!) but have been ignored because of the pressure of events, including reading the huge amount of documentation produced at a Codex meeting. Late in the afternoon, with Canadian Springtime beckoning outside my window, General Bert and I walked over to the market area behind the Rideau Conference Center where the meetings are held each day. There, in a rebuilt market building I saw a group of magnificent hand painted silk blouses, jackets, scarves, etc., in all the colors I love. Alas, unlike the years when I had an income because I was the Medical Director of a successful drug-free medical practice the wonderful textiles were out of reach for me. In years past, I would certainly have bought some of these marvels to take with me. General Bert and I have given up our home, our practice, our income and our personal comfort to become warriors for that most precious of possessions, freedom, specifically, health freedom. And when we have a week like we had this week at this meeting, with real forward movement for a life and death issue like the mandatory labeling of GM food, it is clearly worth it. In case you did not catch it, you might want to take a look at the Press Release that the Natural Solutions Foundation issues about the heavy handed (and, in the end, unwittingly productive for our side) imperial behavior of the US. Here it is: http://www.prweb.com/releases/GM_Labeling/Codex/prweb909004.htm.
This atrocious attitude on the US’ part led to a strong determination of the African countries to develop their own requirements without waiting any longer for Codex to give it to them.
Once other countries start demanding mandatory labeling, we can, too, because our manufacturers will not want to have two labels, one for the US and one for the rest of the world, we will have a much better shot at getting our food labeled, too. Remember, this will be a BIG battle since the corporate friendly FDA has made it clear that they know consumers reject GM food (with good reason!) and will try to keep it from being labeled. That’s the situation now: it is illegal to label food with GM components!
The tide is turning and, if we ride it right, we can ride it in to a safe harbor where our food is clean, safe and labeled! But we have to start now. When the campaign begins, it is essential that we are not hundreds of thousands strong, but millions strong! You know that this is true for every one of our issues – no forced vaccinations, medical privacy, the right to truthful health claims backed by science, the right to know what our food contains and has been exposed to (e.g., pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, irradiation), the right to food that is clean and unadulterated, etc.) – the more of us there are, the more impact we have, not just in a linear motion, but an exponential one!
Therefore, I am asking each person reading this to take a few moments and send an email to your friends, neighbors, contacts, etc, and ask them to visit our website, www.HealthFreedomUSA.org and ask them if they will join the free, secure distribution list for the Health Freedom eAlerts by clicking on the orange tab on the upper right hand corner and filling in your information (https://staging.drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=187).
And while we are on the topic, let’s talk about getting here and to the next place and the next one after that, having the resources to do this work and keep on doing it.
General Bert and I take no salary or compensation of any kind for the work we do. We devote our selves much more than full time to defending your freedom and ours. When there have been short falls, we have made them up so that our reserves, retirement funds, etc., have gone into this battle as well as our skills and capacities. And we have, in fact, built the largest health freedom organization in the world. More than that, we have created alliances inside the US and outside of it to bring about the structural, legislative, awareness and social changes which will defend those freedoms from the massive forces threatening them.
But that is expensive. Let me be frank: this meeting, at which we have been an important part of the forward motion (unintended by the US and its corporate and globalist allies, of course, was one which we would not have been able to attend for you if we had not received, pretty close to the last minute, a generous donation which covered our airfare. Well, a pledge, really, since we have not yet received the money, just the verbal assurance from people we trust that the money would be transferred to us soon enough so that we could pay for this trip. Since the donors are honorable people, we trusted them and bought our air tickets and booked our hotels on the basis of their pledge.
This constant worry about where the money is going to come from to keep your freedoms – and ours – protected diverts energy and time from the battle which needs to be waged. Many of you are generous supporters, giving what you can give and giving it more and more through a recurring donation. We appreciate your support enormously and it is the only reason that we can do what we are doing. The larger the list, the more effective we are at getting heard. And the larger the list, the more effective we are at raising the funds to make all of this possible. Very simple, very elegant, very real.
If you are already a supporter making a regular recurring donation, THANK YOU! If you are an occasional donor, thank you, as well, and won’t you consider making another donation today or turning your occasional donations into a recurring one. And if you are one of the folks who has not given your financial support, large or small, to the Natural Solutions Foundation, now is the time. Click here (https://staging.drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=189) to make sure that the most powerful voice in health freedom, yours, is there to speak for you in effective and on-going ways!
I cannot think of many times in which such an effective battle for freedom has been waged by so few with so few resources with such high impact. Keep it going! Please! Donate generously. Oh, did I mention that all of your donations are tax deductible? They are! Act now for us all!
Day 16, May 2, 2008
Travel day today, but first I attended as much of the Report session of the CCFL as I could. The draft reports are distributed at 8 AM and then the discussion starts at 9 AM. This time, when the discussion of Agenda Item No. 5, Labeling of GM foods, began, there was blood on the floor. Although the rule is that no new information or discussion can take place and that this process is only to assure accuracy in the final report when there is a hotly contested area of debate, this is another fertile ground for getting things to read the way you want them to read.
The amount of backing and forthing, corrections and dissections this topic aroused was remarkable, just remarkable. There was a prolonged discussion in which the exact wording of a sentence about how the co-chairs of the Ghana Working Group on labeling of GM foods had presented their reports which went on for close to an hour. And it went on and on and on and on.
Finally, I had to leave because we had to catch a plane (I had allowed several hours extra to make sure that we would be present for the full report session, never imagining that it could possibly take as long as it did!). Three hours later, we learned from another delegate who also was leaving to make a plane that the discussion was still stuck on the same section!
Although this seems absurd, the reality is that it is very, very good news for our side.
After all, it means that people are not being bullied. Of course, the US was fighting for every comma, period, jot and tittle of territory it could find to make sure that the strength of the pro-GM labeling folks was mitigated. But our side was doing a good job of playing the same game to mitigate the US position to prevent labeling, as it does so effectively in the US.
More to follow!
Now we are flying to New York to take a plane very early in the morning to Panama. We will hook up with Ralph Fucetola, one of our trustees, and with Tyson Phillips, a member of our team, to fly to Panama for a meeting with people interested in becoming participants in the demonstration project there. If you are interested in that project, which is part of the Natural Solutions Foundation’s International Decade of Nutrition, visit www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org.
Day 17, May 3, 2008
We left JFK (New York) at 6:31 AM (which meant we had to be there at 4:30 AM – YUCK!) and arrived in Panama at about 10:35 AM. We took a taxi to the Country Inn and Suites Hotel and learned, to our pleasure, that our reservations were being honored. This has not always been the case here, I can tell you! So we took our bags up to the rooms and started planning for this week coming in which people will be gathering who are interested in the Santa Clara project.
After we got settled in, we met with our Panamanian lawyer and had a very good meeting lasting several hours in which we asked all of our unanswered questions and got knowledgeable and useful answers. We are very much encouraged about how this project can be put together from the legal and regulatory point of view.
This was a lunch meeting that went on for several hours so none of us were particularly hungry. But all of us were desperately tired and wound up wishing we were asleep long before we were!
We could not go to sleep, however, because we were in the midst of a very interesting meeting shortly after the first one ended. We met with an architect who is VERY concerned over organic and natural issues and is highly supportive of our project. She works for the Government and knows exactly whom we need to talk to and what we need to do. That is great news. Even better news is that she feels that the project as we see it is exactly in line with what the Panamanian Government wants to encourage and that we will not have any difficulty with setting it up from the regulatory point of view.
The Panamanian Government will conduct the Environmental Impact Statement we need and she suggested that we should work with Panamanian Universities to get a great deal of what we need done. We had not thought of that but were very grateful for her suggestions. We will certainly stay in touch with her! Good meeting. By the time it was over, though, all of us were moving through a fog of fatigue which we could barely see through. My bed was sweet to lie in!
Day 18, May 4, 2008
Tyson, General Bert, Ralph and I spent the entire day conferencing on Natural Solutions Foundation issues until Tyson suggested, wisely, that we needed a handbook for the people coming down for the Santa Clara Project. We realized that he was right and set to work to produce one. (Members of the NSF-Panama Forum can see it under “Files” in electronic format). We raced off to the nearest mall to get copies made and bound and got back just in time to meet with two of the people who had come to Panama for the gathering, had dinner with them and then raced back to do the Sunday Conference Call for the Santa Clara Project.
The ability to demonstrate and teach sustainable agriculture and to create a community around that agriculture is an important part of the concept of reclaiming the production of food and the Natural Solutions Foundation is proud to be creating this community as part of its health freedom work. Interested? Send an email to Ralph Fucetola at ralph.fucetola@usa.net with “PANAMA” as the subject line and ask for an invitation to the NSF-Panama Forum. We’ll send an invitation and you can join the discussion to become a part of this amazing project.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedomUSA.org
www.Organics4U.org
The US outdid itself at this Codex meeting. It actually bullied another country into withdrawing its submission because the paper South Africa submitted in favor of Mandatory GM Labeling was so strong and under cut the US position that no labeling should ever be permitted. South Africa is a sovereign nation, with its own concerns, laws and issues, but it was forced by US bullying to rescind its submission because of the international tantrum that the US threw. Read about it here (http://www.prweb.com/releases/GM_Labeling/Codex/prweb909004.htm).
The US DOES NOT want anyone to know if there is GM food in what they are eating under any circumstances. Once the US became aware of South Africa’s paper (apparently before it was generally available to the rest of the meeting), they jumped all over them electronically. This was a major affront to national sovereignty, African and the concept that Codex is anything but a mouth piece for the multinational corporations which the US represents! Africa, however, decided that they have had enough!
Although I am very sorry for the personal and national humiliation which South Africa has been subjected to by the outrageous hubris and imperialism demonstrated by the US, the US may actually have done the world an unintended favor. Their behavior appears to have galvanized the African nations, who have been demanding that Codex supply them with Mandatory GM Labeling for over 15 years, and now see that Codex is not going to do that for them so they will have to do it for themselves. Swaziland, Kenya, Ghana, Egypt, Cameroon, Sudan, Nigeria, South Africa and a host of other African countries came together to express their determination to emerge from CCFL with progress at this meeting for a Codex requirement for Mandatory GM Labeling of foods. South Africa’s submission was part of the discussion.
Once the Agenda item came forward, however, Mama Duck US and her usual band of ducklings following right behind (Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc.) quacked the same old song: These items are safe because they have been exposed to extensive safety testing (not true – see Attachment II of our Press Release (http://www.prweb.com/releases/GM_Labeling/Codex/prweb909004.htm) to read the FDA’s official position refusing to consider or conduct any safety testing of GM products), that Codex is not about consumer health and safety anyway (not true – see the first Codex mandate (http://www.codexalimentarius.net/web/index_en.jsp), that this issue has already been on the floor for many years and no forward progress was possible so it should be dropped (not true – see the report of the Oslo and Ghana Working Groups (Click on CX/FL 08/36/8 on web page http://www.codexalimentarius.net/web/current.jsp?lang=en) to see the proposals which emerged for forward movement on this issue).
The African nations were unanimous in their support for mandatory labeling. Japan, EU, Switzerland, Norway and other countries once again stated their commitments to Mandatory GM labeling. The CCFL discussion concluded with an agreement to scrap previous labeling documents which were at an early stage of the approval process and instead substitute an appendix contained in the report of the meeting in Ghana on this issue. Although this is a very weak document as it stands now, it does offer the opportunity to keep working on the issue and was thus opposed by the US. This strategy was nonetheless adopted by the CCFL.
Astonishingly, the next morning, AFTER the discussion was completed, the South African paper was withdrawn on the direction of the South African government because of the extra procedural shenanigans of the US through its pressure on South Africa!
That over reaching act of economic imperialism may be the beginning of the end for unlabeled GM foods and crops! The pro-labeling nations of Africa – all of them – were SO incensed that they called another meeting again and determined that they would create their own requirements and adopt them en bloc with, or without, the permission of the Codex Alimentarius Commission! The Natural Solutions Foundation has been asked to continue to provide technical and scientific support, which we will, of course, be very happy to do, as you may imagine.
We are deeply gratified that our work of the past 3 years in Africa and at Codex urging solidarity is coming to fruition. We believe that this change could spread throughout Codex. Apparently, so does the US which has been telling delegates not to speak to us! Imagine! The US has nothing better to do than warn pro-health delegations off listening to us. Could we imagine a better confirmation that what we are doing is having an impact?
Of course, we continue to need your support to make this happen. Please make a tax deductible recurring donation (https://staging.drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=189) to keep health freedom moving forward. Natural Solutions Foundation is the most effective voice of health freedom and it speaks for you.
Thanks for your help and support!
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.Organics4U.org
Day 13, April 29, 2008
Today was a day that could, ultimately, turn out to have changed the course of Codex and perhaps the history of the world. And we owe that to South Africa’s courage and determination. You can read the story here (http://www.prweb.com/releases/GM_Labeling/Codex/prweb909004.htm)
Virtually every one of the African nations has a policy of extreme caution, or downright rejection of unlabeled GM organisms. So does Norway, Japan, Russia, and the entire 27 countries of the EU. And with good reason. Look at the second attachment to the press release above for a quick compendium of horrors associated with GM food. Then consider why, here in the US, of course, our policies are so corporate friendly that we support them to the death (perhaps ours) while we eat unlabeled GM food.
A good deal of the rest of the world is quite convinced that IF you allow GM food, you MUST label it.
South Africa put her excellent paper in to Codex today. http://www.prweb.com/releases/GM_Labeling/Codex/prweb909004.htm. This paper lists several compelling reasons that Codex MUST have mandatory labeling of GM foods, unlike the US which prohibits any mention of GM ingredients. You can read her excellent paper as the first attachment in this press release:
Early in the day, at 8 AM, the African nations met to work out their policy on this issue. There was total agreement that they would stand united against the US policy of unlabeled GM foods and united for a policy of mandatory labeling. After all, they said, we do not have the laboratory capacity to test these foods at our border and labeling is the only way we can have some protection from them and give our consumers the choices they need and deserve.
But the US does not play fair – it plays big. Read on.
Day 14, April 30, 2008
South Africa withdrew its document, CRD 21 today at the start of the meeting. How did that happen? Where did the sovereign rights of another country to express its views if they differ from those of another country? How about the fact that Codex is not supposedly about one country bullying all the others to get what they, and they alone, want?
Pshaw! Of course it is. At least up until now. On issue after issue after issue, that is EXACTLY what Codex is about. For the past 3 1/3 years, General Bert and I have been traveling the world to deliver the Codex Two Step (http://youtube.com/watch?v=6QNg3MD6BxM&feature=PlayList&p=BF9BBB69479D44EC&index=5)
and the message that only by uniting and standing together can the developing world protect its food, its health and its people – to say nothing of its freedom.
This process took another step forward today when the African countries, having had a meeting yesterday in which each one declared that they are adamantly determined to have mandatory labeling on GM foods held yet another meeting this afternoon. This one was to say, “Let the US say what it wishes, Africa WILL have mandatory GM labeling. And we will do it by determining what is important to us and adopting it en bloc, all of us!
Sweet fresh wind blowing! Sweet words! Of course the Natural Solutions Foundation will provide its support, scientific and technical capacities. Of course, with your tax deductible support (https://staging.drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=189), we will be at Codex in Geneva to help move that process forward. Of course, being here is critical to the forward motion of the process. There is no possible way we can have the impact we are having unless we are here and on the home turf of the countries involved to meet their decision makers, stay abreast of their developments, etc. And the ONLY way we can do that is with your generous participation through, 1. Donations (https://staging.drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=189) and 2. your joining the ranks of the Mouse Warriors.
To do that, you need to make sure that you are on the Health Freedom eAlerts distribution list (https://staging.drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=187) and enlist as many people as you can to get involved as well. That last item, enlisting other people, is absolutely key since each person taking our action steps adds strength to that voice we are raising to speak truth to power!
Speaking of speaking truth to power, this evening I did a 1 hour radio show hosted by Steve Shenk. We’ll be putting up the link shortly! Watch for it.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthStrategy.org
www.Organics4U.org
Day 7, April 23, 2008
This morning we met with Dr. Col. Denis Mikode, Beninese Codex Contact Point and asked if there was some way that he would be able to go to Codex if the Natural Solutions Foundation paid for his trip. He clearly was moved that we cared so much about the ability of Africa to determine its own future in relationship to Genetically Modified foods but, alas, was not able to get either a Government Mandate for the meeting on such short notice or a Canadian visa. For that, he would have had to go to Ghana for the visa and, if it failed, come home or, if he should succeed, would be able to continue. Of course, there were no airplane tickets for him at that point, etc.
We told him that we would take care of all that but he felt that the only way Benin could be represented was if a miracle occurred. Long story short: no miracle on that one.
Later that day we got ourselves packed and set off for the airport to make the grueling flight from Cotonou to Paris to Newark to Ottawa – all in economy seats. General Stubblebine is well over 6′ tall. Tyson hovers right around 6′. I am merely uncomfortable: they are really, really uncomfortable on these long haul flights.
While we were waiting in the Cotonou airport, Tyson got talking with a fellow whom, when we staggered off the airplane to spend 6.5 hours in the Paris airport at 6 AM, he decided to wait for on the jet way. Tyson introduced us to Jeff, a semi-nomadic Environmental Engineer who had just finished a solo 3 month bike trip through West Africa. JEFF DOES NOT SPEAK FRENCH!
Tyson and Jeff were going to take the train to Paris and asked if General Stubblebine and I wanted to come. Of course I wanted to come! It was a magnificent Spring day and we got out of the subway (“Metro”) directly opposite Notre Dame Cathedral as the bells were chiming and the clear sky provided a backdrop of perfect cerulean. Jeff led us on a stroll down the boulevards and streets until we came to a perfectly charming side walk cafe (with heaters – it was a tad nippy so early in the day) and we had double espressos and the most perfect croissants I have ever tasted.
But the best part of the feast and ramble was Jeff. He is a lovely, earth-sensitive free spirit who, like so many other exceptional people, is very interested in the Panama project. One of his specialties is environmental impact studies! Perhaps, if all goes well, he will be able to do some or all of the environmental impact statement required by the Panamanian Government before we build the actual project!
Then Tyson reluctantly got back on the train to return to the airport and find General Stubblebine buried under our hand luggage, all of which we left with him. About 6 hours after we started out, we were back in Charles de Gaulle airport, ready to take off on the next leg of our trip.
That was not only a delightful break, but some sort of a forward propulsion in the coming-together of the Santa Clara Project (www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org).
Day 8, April 24, 2008
MMMMMMRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR That’s the sound of an airplane engine humming for 7 hours. When we landed in Newark Airport we had been traveling for two days and we were not finished yet! But our good friends Nicholas and Marie drove to the airport, took us to their nearby home, fed us a wonderful homemade dinner and took us back to the airport again JUST in time to make our plane to Ottawa.
We got there, found our bags and bought round trip tickets on the hotel shuttle which took us to the front door of the lovely bed and breakfast we like to stay in here in Ottawa when we attend the CCFL (Codex Committee on Food Labeling) meetings. Then sleep.
Day 9, April 25, 2008
Finding an Apple repair store in a city we do not know without a car to get to the store (my brand new computer was going black for longer and longer and finally I could not turn it on when it was off or off when it was on: time to consult the computer doctors!). Eventually we succeeded, found a place for dinner and crashed.
Day 10, April 26, 2008
Today the pre-CCFL meeting started. The activity today is a workshop deciding, once again, how the World Health Organization’s Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Exercise (GS) was to be implemented by Codex. This strong document (not perfect, it is true, but strong) was presented to the Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC) in 2005 as something which the WOULD implement and the way it was to be implemented was left to the Codex Committee of Food Labeling (CCFL) and the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU) to decide. Strategies were to be presented to the CAC on a strict time line.
The foot dragging and shenanigans to avoid doing this have been mind boggling and I have reported on them since the first time CCNFSDU’s Dr. Grossklaus moved the agenda item on the to the very end of the meeting and made any meaningful discussion impossible (2005). Since then, things have not gotten a whole lot better and the implementation so far comes down to endless argument over which nutrients should be labeled and which should not be and how they should be represented.
Now, labeling in important to consumers and does, in fact, contribute to reformulation of products (“What? You put THAT in something you expect me to eat?”) and in risk assessment and post market surveillance (“Everyone who ate lot number 27449X2 of the product got sick and 42% of them had to be hospitalized.”) and are thus good things.
But labeling will not, in my opinion, take care of the serious concerns which caused the GS to come into existence: preventing the non communicable diseases of UNDERNUTRITION.
The Codex strategy of considering all nutrients as toxins which need to be limited – limited! – through the process of Risk Assessment as if nutreints, and not terrifyingly high levels of pesticides or anti-nutrients caused by genetic modification of plants and animals, free radicals caused by irradiation of food and all the other dangers to which Codex blithely exposes us WITHOUT LABELING OF ANY KIND were a danger to human kind!
Outrage in my words? Yes, outrage. While diddling with Nutrient Labels for years on end (important though they be), nutrients are being taken off the shelves in the EU, threatened in Canada through a terrible bill and LIMITED as if they were risks through Codex all over the world. Make no mistake: the US will be next, again, if we do not do something about it before it happens so we are not fighting a rear guard action.
Recall for a moment the disastrous FDA Guidance whose comment period ended on April 30 last year. The FDA proposed to make all nutrients and objects used for health purposes unlabeled drugs and devices. That would mean that healthful foods like cherry juice (the first subject of their attack) could not be used with a health intent or the FDA would classify it as an untested drug.
The FDA provided no website for your comments. They told the Natural Solutions Foundation that snail mail was not tallied. The Receiver of Dockets gave us her personal email and so 588,000 people were able to use our web site to access the only working email address available to tell the FDA to back off in no uncertain terms. Well, only about 198,000 people actually got their message through because our site was constantly being hacked and attacked at that time. Even with “only” 198,000 voices, the roar was deafening: the FDA backed off, at least for the time being.
The WHO/FAO, parent organizations of Codex, makes the point in its document on the cause and prevention of chronic degenerative diseases: they ARE the diseases of UNDER nutrition. The number of people who die from over nutrition is so small as to be equivalent to zero. The number of people who die from under nutrition is in the billions:
Cardiovascular disease including stroke, diabetes and obesity are diseases of under nutrition. They are preventable through nutrition, which includes supplements. They are the major killers of the industrialized and, as it moves toward our disastrous diet of prepared and degraded food, the developing world. (Of course, properly used drugs are the other major killer of those unlucky enough to be able to afford them!)
So what is Codex planning? Nutrient Reference Values, upper limits beyond which nutrition may not go, are being established even as we speak. Just as the solution of Congress in dealing with a totally failed FDA was to throw much more money at it in the last session of Congress with S. 1082. So Codex wants to treat the chronic degenerative preventable diseases of under nutrition by restricting nutrition. Logical? Not at all. But that’s what passes for Codex logic!
So half way through the meeting I was pretty well disgusted and saying to myself that we needed a miracle to deal with Agenda Item 5, labeling of GM Foods, when I turned around and there was our miracle, Antoinette Booyzen, the Delegate from South Africa.
Antoinette is fearless and knows nutrition and Codex very, very well. She fights tirelessly for what is right, regardless of what the politics might be. In fact, for her decade of dedication to optimal health and what is good for people, not profits, the Natural Solutions Foundation awarded Ms. Booyzen with the coveted Linus Pauling Health Freedom heroes Award in 2006.
I knew that we could rely on Ms. Booyzen to use her position as a National Delegate to further the good of the world’s eaters if she could, not the position of the world masters.
Day 10, April 27, 2008
After a good deal of highly pleasurable reunion talk (our emails have been interfered with so being in contact has been very difficult) we started to talk about GM labeling in South Africa and Africa. We talked and talked and talked and the net result was a South African paper demanding, for a variety of reasons, mandatory labeling of all GM foods.
Day 11, April 28, 2008
Today was the first day of the Codex meeting and we sat through the requisite speeches of welcoming telling us what a great bunch of people we were and how important our would would be to the world. Now, you can take that two ways: either the meeting’s lack of action would have a huge impact on the world through degraded food standards, degraded food and degraded health or 2., that if Codex actually did something positive, it would have a huge impact on human health.
However they meant it, the droning banality started in the morning and continued on and on and on and on.
By today, Monday at 1 PM, Antoinette has put her paper on compulsory mandatory labeling in as a Conference Room Document. You can read her document here (http://www.prweb.com/releases/GM_Labeling/Codex/prweb909004.htm):
There was a reception in the evening where we could lobby, if we wanted to, for mandatory GM labeling, which would likely come up tomorrow. We decided to skip it, though, since we were all so tired and we know that the food served there is exactly what we would put in our bodies: in fact, food served at the receptions is a perfect example of why we cannot let Codex run the food world!
Stay tuned!
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.Organics4U.org
Songhai, Porto Novo, Benin
Day 3, April 19, 2008
We landed today in Cotonou, the capital of Benin and the shoving began: African airports are like airports everywhere, but worse. Everyone apparently needs to be first, whether there is any point to being first or not.
I don’t need to be first and neither do General Stubblebine or Tyson, so we were pretty close to last – last off the airplane, last through customs, last to get a baggage cart, last to get our luggage.
Tyson, however, was nearly the first of our party to get vaccinated! I am strongly averse to vaccination and, to my mind, the more you study any one particular vaccine, the more you NEVER want to take that preparation. That is certainly the case with Yellow Fever Vaccine. Although many countries in Africa require proof of vaccination against this devastating disease (unnecessary, really, for people who have access to good health, Vitamin C and silver solutions) for entry. Bert, Tyson and I were able to produce exemption letters for our visas and secured our visas for Benin without any difficulty.
I had forgotten that, once you clear passport control and get your entry stamp in Benin, there are two guys in (what once were) white coats asking to see your Yellow Fever Vaccination card with a valid stamp on it. We speak English. They speak French. The possibility of communication was nill to none. Gen. Stubblebine and I tried the words for “Exemption letter†in as many ways as we could think of. We failed miserably. Finally, ready to go home, I suppose, since we were close to the last people on the plane, the two vaccine police men gave up in exasperation and waved their hands, shouting, “Go! Go!†and waving us through the door.
Tyson, however, was separated from us and was not so lucky. Before he knew what had happened, he was sitting in the Health Officer’s Office being asked in French for something (he does not speak French). He, too, kept saying that he had an exemption letter (from me, in fact!) but there seemed to be no uptake on that. He looked up from getting out the letter from his papers and saw that the Health Officer was bending over a refrigerator from which he took a vial and a syringe. “No! NO!” Tyson said and waved his letter of exemption around (probably a little wildly – I know that is the way I would have waved mine!). The man got out a yellow International Vaccination Card, stamped it and said, in perfect English, “Give me 10 Euros [ Approximately $16 US].
Tyson gave him the Euros and the man waved him out of the office WITH a vaccination card but WITHOUT the vaccination!
Once we got through the pushing and shoving at the luggage conveyor, we exited past a Beninese guard who checked every single one of our luggage tags to make sure they matched the numbers on our luggage. With all the people ahead of us, can you imagine how long that took?
Finally we exited the baggage area only to realize that the customs people were opening every suit case of every traveler. I stopped dead and looked around in utter dismay: It was already 9:45 PM and we were clearly going to be here for hours. For some reason (I have no idea what it might have been), the customs official nearest to me looked up, saw me and said, again, “Go! Go!” and we made our way out into the crowd waiting to greet their friends and relatives, associates and colleagues. There was a gentleman in a brilliant and distinctive African suit waving a very welcome “Songhai” sign. We clustered around him and he led us to the van he had brought to pick us up from Songhai.
Because our plane had not come in the night before, his two hour round trip to the airport (and the fuel which is so important in this very poor country) was wasted. He was, however, gracious and helpful nonetheless.
When we got to Songhai Center about an hour later, we were greeted in this oasis of plenty and prosperity in the middle of want and hardship by Father Godfrey Nzamjou, the man whose inspiration lives and breaths in Songhai. Although the restaurant closes at 10, he and his staff had kept it open for us (how different from Paris!) and we had an hour or so to converse and orient ourselves.
We were led to a modern building with suites and bedroom, each with a shower and private bath.
The next day, we toured the compound in the morning and saw the ingenuity, love and tenderness, yes, tenderness with which this land has been turned from a desert into a Garden, perhaps a Garden of Eden. Today, in a world where food riots are becoming more commonplace daily, the fertility which has been coaxed from the land is an urgent lesson for possibilities and a call to action. The Panama Santa Clara Project will follow the Songhai model for farming without waste or pollution. Imagine what we can do with land that is so abundantly fertile!
The heat was truly ferocious and about 11:00AM we retired indoors because anywhere outside was impossibly hot. We had more excellent food, all grown here, and waited for Fr. Godfrey to come back to us for more discussion.
Around 4 PM he arrived and said, “OK. Now you know what we have at Songhai. What are you looking for?” We spoke at depth and at length and videotaped the discussion. I think it is important that you see that and will mount it as soon as we have enough bandwidth to make that possible. It was a wonderful conversation in which we expounded on our dream and Fr. Godfrey said that this was what he had been waiting for.
We agreed that we must support each other’s work and he reaffirmed that he will, without a doubt, come to Panama to set up the design for the zero emissions farm complete with bio-digester and bio-gas for fuel independence as well as power independence. Fr. Godfrey is the proud “papa” of the largest bio-gas facility in Africa. Cheap, easy and clean, bio-gas can heat our water, run our generators, pump our liquids, grind our grains, etc. And we will learn from a master!
But Songhai is much more than just a fuel independent system. Please take a moment when the tape is mounted to watch it and capture the shared dream of this world leader whose Center is a recognized United National Center Excellence in Africa.
After more chat and dinner (outstanding, of course), Tyson, General Bert and I set to working through the immense number of details for our community in Panama, the Santa Clara ARC, with the clear understanding that what we are doing now is highly preliminary since the community will ultimately make these decisions for itself.
That took us late into the night and we fell asleep quite exhausted. Oh, by the way, there was still no internet connection.
Day 4, April 20, 2008
Today was our “BIG DAY” at Songhai Center. Father Godfrey is immensely busy and he agreed to give us most of a full day to discuss our plans and possible working together in considerable detail – that is a large part of why we came.
We began with breakfast at 8 AM in the restaurant which serves about 200 meals per day to visitors. All food served here is grown here or on other Songhai Centers so everything is not only fresh, but free of pesticides and all other types of synthetic, chemical additives. It is wonderful knowing that every bite was grown by the labor of people who love the land and understand how to nurture it so it can nurture them. We are very eager to replicate that loving relationship between our food and our selves as we come to create the farm and farm school which will be a core activity of the Santa Clara ARC.
We took a tour of the facility including the foundry, the kiln, the fields, the food processing areas, the store, the animal sheds, the fish pond, the composing area, the bio gas facility, etc., etc. All of this amazing integrated farming has been created here in the total absence of fertile soil. Fr. Godfrey told us that he had worked 15 years of the 20 that he has been here to create this astonishing fertility. We start in Panama with astonishingly fertile land!
Songhai’s rich productivity daily feeds 1500 people (300 workers and their families, which average 5 people), about 100 students who are in training, typically for 18 months, and the 200 guests who come to the African and Western restaurants. I think it is an easy leap to conclude that our fertile farm will be producing much more than we members of the community, guests and health center clients can consume so it is reasonable to expect that one center of profit for the Santa Clara ARC will be the distribution and sale of outstanding food!
Because of the intense heat, everything stops for several hours during the middle of the day. Everything, that is, except lunch. We wove our way from shade spot to shade spot to the restaurant for lunch and much talk about what we have seen. Tyson is a black smith/iron worker so he was particularly fascinated by learning what he needs to know to make the bio gas apparatus and by the machines which Songhai designs and makes on site.
Later, Fr. Godfrey came to where we are staying, where there is, mercifully, air conditioning and we started to talk together. I asked him how many other groups like ours had come to set up sister facilities as we are doing.
Tyson had the foresight to set up a video camera to film this discussion and it was a great decision. The video is not compatible with my computer so we have to download it to a disc and upload it that way. Clearly we do not have the opportunity here in Songhai, but we will do so shortly.
The upshot of the discussion was that we are what Fr. Godfrey has been waiting for as a partner community! We will bring our experience in order to work toward sister health centers in Parakou, Benin and Santa Clara, Panama. He will use his experience to make Santa Clara a full zero emissions facility farming center and school.
Meanwhile, we had missed our appointment with Col. Mikode, the Codex Contact Point for Benin because we arrived more than a full day late. This delay winds up having significant impact on Codex. Read on.
Dinner, then more intense discussion and off to bed.
Day 5, April 21, 2008
Today we started the day with meeting for about an hour during breakfast with Fr. Godfrey. By the way, Songhai makes its own delicious yogurt. After about an hour, he had other things to do before heading off to Nigeria to meet with government officials there to replicate the Songhai model there. There are also two people from separate projects doing similar things in Nigeria. One is, like Gen. Stubblebine, a General.
Sometime later, Col. Mikode and Pascal, the head of the Benin Horticultural Research Station came to see us. They had good news and bad news for us.
The good news was that they had prepared a budget and program for the agricultural project using magnets to treat the water used to grow plants. Preliminary results suggest significant increases in crop yield, nutrient density, plant vigor and significant decreases in water utilization. Given the rapidly worsening shortage of food in the word due to climate change and diversion of food crop acreage to biofuels (which cost at least 29% more energy than they produce so the bargain is a very, very bad one for the planet, its carbon balance and its people) the ability to increase yield and nutritional value, while eliminating all requirements for pesticides and other chemicals, is a very important asset. Equally important, perhaps, is the reduction in water usage to get stronger and more vigorous plants.
I had been perplexed by the fact that nothing was happening with the agricultural magnet project – nothing. I had designed a simple (and, I hope, elegant) design which would test the hypotheses of increased crop yield, increased nutrient density, increased plant vigor and decreased water usage but they require actually being carried out to show anything. I could not understand it when I got an email saying that the project was postponed until they got the money to carry it out.
When Pascal presented me with the document outlining the costs, I nearly fell off my chair. Instead of 6 test beds, there were 33. Instead of raised beds edged with scrap lumber of corrugated tin or sand bags, they were asking for 4.2 metric tons of concrete, thousands of bricks, etc.
It was clear that we needed to talk!
The next interesting meeting was a telephonic one with Dr. Koura, who was supposed to serve as the Beninese delegate to the Codex Committee On Food Labeling next week in Ottawa. She had informed the Codex Contact Point, Col. Mikode, that she would not be funded by the WHO Trust Fund at 11 PM on Saturday evening but that email was not read until 9 AM Monday morning (yesterday). That means that Benin will not have a voice at this important Codex meeting where the initiative begun by the African nations at the meeting in Ghana in February this year to demand labeling of Genetically Modified Organisms was pushed forward so impressively.
I asked our Natural Solutions Foundation Trustees if we should not host (i.e., pay for) the Beninese delegate to make sure that there was a strong voice from this country at the Codex meeting. We quickly agreed and the next thing we needed to do was convince Dr. Kora and the Beninese government that this was a good idea.
Col. Mikode had no problem with it and said that if Dr. Koura was willing, so was he.
Day 6, April 22, 2008
Early this morning Tyson, General Stubblebine and I set off with a translator to visit Pascal at the Horticultural Research Station to find out what had gone wrong with the Agricultural Magnet project and retrieve 20 pairs for use here at Songhai.
Because we had a translator with us this time, as opposed to the last time we talked with Pascal, we discovered what the problem was: Language difficulties led to Pascal believeing that since we had identified 11 potential crops for the experiment, he would need to conduct the experiment with 3 beds of each crop. The undertaking would be huge and he wanted to build structures to make it possible. I explained that we wanted to choose 2 crops from the 11 and Pascal heaved a huge sigh of relief. We walked out to the fields to see where the projects would take place and Pascal has already applied the magnets to a buried rigid water pipe in preparation for our visit. Once we got the miscommunication out of the way, it became clear that a real project using amaranth and tomatoes would be carried out and carried out well.
We are eager to get those results and the results from the Songhai application. It is our hope that the results are robust enough that we can begin to change agricultural practices in many places in the world. It is essential, the Natural Solutions Foundation believes, to reclaim food production, eliminating pesticides and other dangerous chemicals, and making ti clear that the best crop yield is produced by natural means, not by GM crops. Dr. Koura, on the other hand, when we finally did get together this afternoon, was not so sure it was a good idea. She had “turned off” the process by telling her bosses that she was not, after all, going and was adamantly reluctant to tell them that she could now go under our sponsorship.
We tried every which-a-way to Sunday to persuade her, but she was not movable. We got ready to write to the US and UN Ambassadors from Benin to see if they could provide a person to attend the meetings (it is much easier to get a Canadian visa from the US) when we got a piece of very bad news, indeed.
This information makes us think that we are seeing a pattern: The Ugandan Codex delegate had taken the ball into his own hands and arranged an African strategy session on GM labeling the day before the CCFL meeting was to begin. He is a credentialed delegate from a member nation. Canada denied him a visa twice.
The strategy of the power brokers is clear: fix it so the opposition cannot show up and then claim that the process is legitimate. That is pretty much the same as arresting the opposition and claiming that your election was democratic (or counting the votes on a programmable electronic voting machine with a predetermined outcome, for that matter!)The Codex process is far from legitimate. Our Trustees have just spent an extended period on the phone working out our next strategic moves to deal with this new tactic.
More to follow.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.Organics4U.org