Posted on January 11, 2008
The West Australian, January 4, 2008
Here is a helpful and cheery little article sent to me by a friend and correspondent in Western Australia. He knows, as you do, that Genetically Modified (GM) crops are dangerous and that, once mixed with native crops, the foreign, dangerous and untested DNA it inserts into neighboring plants can never be removed from the food supply. Never. Take a look at what the new book “Seeds of Destruction” has to say on the topic. Then please come back here and take a look at this article.
He knows, as do you, that GM crops which “volunteer” (that’s commercial-eze for “invade” or “trespass”) into a farmer’s crop then force the farmer to pay “intellectual property” rights to the owner of the GM DNA (which is patented by the US Patent Office, but not safety tested by the FDA or USDA, or the EPA, for that matter!) He knows, like you, that crops and animals are modified with marker genes which confer resistance to antibiotics and that resistance transfers to the animals and people that eat the crop. He knows that the foreign DNA is not stable in the nucleus: it jumps around from place to place causing totally unexpected and unanticipated impacts. Even when it is stable, it is often indigestible so that instead of being broken down in the GI tract, it passes through cell walls intact causing auto immune problems and being literally woven into the DNA of cells, most especially rapidly dividing ones like your stomach lining, or a fetus’ brain, for example. That DNA is then woven into the genome of its consumer and no one we know has any idea what it does then or 40 years later. DNA, of course, generally causes proteins to be produced. If the proteins have never before been produced, no one knows what they will do now or in the future.
He knows that independent research, which the FDA does not review (but, to be fair, it does not review company safety data, either, before it approves a food for human use) shows that GM foods cause infertility, holes in the GI tract, fetal death and still birth in rats, smaller kidneys and depressed immune function in rat pups which survived (most did not) and a host of other serious problems. He also knows that scientists who dare speak out to even so much as question this technology and the wisdom of using it before it has been shown to be safe are exposed to a vast and well orchestrated disinformation campaign against them and their careers are, literally, not figuratively, over. Their tenure vanishes, so do their job prospects. In fact, I was sitting at the Tiburon CA Health Freedom Leaders meeting which produced the Tiburon Declaration against Forced Vaccination which you and your organization can sign here (https://staging.drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?p=460) when our hostess got a call from an academic who had published an article merely raising questions about GM foods. His academic appointment at a prestigious university was abruptly terminated and he found that he was blackballed. This professor of Organic and Environmental Agriculture whose specialty is rebuilding damaged ecosystems in the cleanest way possible was out of a job and apparently out of luck. You would think, of course, that such a skill base would be huge demand. Not if Monsanto and the others have anything to say. And they do, they do!
It is by now a truism that Big Pharma runs the FDA. You do know, as does our friend in Australia, that Big Agribiz and Big Biotechna are also massively big players on the food scene (and therefore in Codex Alimentarius – the World Food Code). Recall that Monsanto, a pharmaceutical, chemical and GM giant in its own right, but by no means the biggest in the field, has said that it would own the world’s food supply by 2010. Well, it looks like it is about to own Australia’s wheat.
How to stop this? One good way is to shift to a diet comprised TOTALLY of organic food. Protect yourself and the environment. Protect farmers and their ability to stay on their land. Now get active. Disseminate what you learn in these posts to everyone you know. And ask them to join the Health Freedom eAlerts and become informed, activated and disseminators!
And, of course, don’t forget to donate to the Natural Solutions Foundation. Our friend in Australia knows, and you know, too, that the other side has more money than God but that the Natural Solutions Foundation is raising awareness all over the world about these dangerous foods. For example, we will be at the Codex Working Group in Ghana on January 28-30, 2008 in which dozens of countries will try – again – to prevent the US from shipping, and selling, food with any sort of GM food in it they want with absolutely zero identification on the label. That is US policy in the US and, working for the Biotech industry (who actually have a seat on the US delegation at this meeting and others), if the US has anything to say about it, in the whole world.
Other countries are not so sure they like this. Australia is, however, a bone in the tale of the US dog at Codex and happily endorses anything the US wants at Codex. So here is Australia endorsing potentially deadly food.
Then International Decade of Nutrition, a program of the Natural Solutions Foundation, is designed to give farmers the power to stay on their land, grow their crops without chemicals and then feed themselves and their families with enough economic advantage so that they can stay on the land. We will be in several African countries following the Codex meeting to start projects for the International Decade of Nutrition. Not, I can assure you, with GM crops or animals.
Now for the article. Don’t forget to let others know what you already know: they need to know it!
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
Drought-tolerant GM crop trials welcome in WA, says Chance
by Jodie Thomson
Development of genetically modified crops with drought-tolerant properties would be welcomed in WA in order to attract a share of Federal assistance to help farmers copewith climate change, Agricultural Minister Kim Chance said yesterday.
He also signalled that the WA Government’s drought assistance package, which included grants of up to $8000 to affected farmers, could be overhauled and the money poured into development of other plant varieties or farming methods to manage drought.
“We are talking with farmers here in terms of converting the State’s drought assistance to one which actually deals with the longer-term issues,” he said. “I think the cash component of last year’s package was some $7.3 million- you could do an enormous amount of work.”
It follows a revamp in drought-relief payments by the Rudd Government, which would include funding ways to help farmers deal with global warming through using GM crops,changing ploughing methods and specific water management strategies.Mr. Chance said the State Government was supporting drought research progrms such as trials of mustard biofuels crops in the north-eastern Wheatbelt and ploughing techniques.
But research into genetically modified crops, in particularwheat, would be a “nice addition” to those programs already under way and to a joint plant breeding project recently struck with Zhejiang University, the headquarters of the China National Barley Research Centre.
WA was in the last year of its moratorium on coommercial GM crops,due for review at the end of 2008. But Mr. Chance has previously signalled it is unlikely to be lifted until concerns about GM safety and labelling were allayed. GM issues willbe on the agenda when he expects to meet Agriculture Minister Tony Burke this month.
Nationals leader Warren Truss said yesterday farmers had serious concerns about the Federal Government’s drought relief reform.
“the new Rudd Government has confirmed the fears of regional and rural communities around Australia that it will embark on a new bout of slash and burn,” Mr. Truss said.
Health Freedom Requires Healthy Food
The Natural Solutions Foundation is concerned with the quality and health-promoting impact of food, thus our strong opposition to the continuing degradation of the global food supply through Codex and the use of unlabeled and dangerous food components and treatments such as genetically modified foods, pesticides, growth hormones and irradiation. We are also aware that if we are to support a sustainable world and its health needs through healthy and abundant food, we must reclaim food production. For that reason, we have initiated the International Decade of Nutrition (IDN). The premise upon which IDN is based is that we already have enough information, technology and capacity to eliminate world hunger and most world disease. Of course, we do not know everything we will know, but what we know now is sufficient to make these goals an attainable reality using simple, effective and high-impact/low-tech procedures to grow and reclaim food production and help local farmers sustain themselves, their families and their communities with clean, inexpensive and healthy food.
We are currently in discussion with a leading-edge company to provide one of those technologies to a number of pilot projects in the desert, the jungle, temperate climates, etc., to field test a safe, sustainable, and effective method to increase crop yield by as much as 6 times, nutrient density by the same amount, reduce water usage substantially and virtually eliminate crop loss post harvest.
These means will allow subsistence and community-based farmers to stay on their land, feed their communities with the clean, chemical free food they grow, support their families and resist the forces of the industrialization of the world’s food supply: Codex, genetically modified crops and animals, chemical farming and their combined pressure to take away the land and livelihood.
In February of 2008 General Stubblebine and Dr. Laibow will visit African countries to initiate agricultural projects using these high tech options and are in discussion with a Thai NGO for similar pruposes.
Here is what the Financial Post has to say about the new shortage of food caused by the use of farmland for bio fuels:
Forget oil, the new global crisis is food
BMO strategist Donald Coxe warns credit crunch and soaring oil prices will pale in comparison to looming catastrophe
Alia McMullen, Financial Post Published: Friday, January 04, 2008
Corn grows in a farm field near Seneca, Illinois. Rising demand for grain to make fuel, food and livestock feed has helped push the prices of corn and soybeans.Scott Olson/Getty ImagesCorn grows in a farm field near Seneca, Illinois. Rising demand for grain to make fuel, food and livestock feed has helped push the prices of corn and soybeans.
A new crisis is emerging, a global food catastrophe that will reach further and be more crippling than anything the world has ever seen. The credit crunch and the reverberations of soaring oil prices around the world will pale in comparison to what is about to transpire, Donald Coxe, global portfolio strategist at BMO Financial Group said at the Empire Club’s 14th annual investment outlook in Toronto on Thursday.
“It’s not a matter of if, but when,” he warned investors. “It’s going to hit this year hard.”
Mr. Coxe said the sharp rise in raw food prices in the past year will intensify in the next few years amid increased demand for meat and dairy products from the growing middle classes of countries such as China and India as well as heavy demand from the biofuels industry.
“The greatest challenge to the world is not US$100 oil; it’s getting enough food so that the new middle class can eat the way our middle class does, and that means we’ve got to expand food output dramatically,” he said.
The impact of tighter food supply is already evident in raw food prices, which have risen 22% in the past year.
Mr. Coxe said in an interview that this surge would begin to show in the prices of consumer foods in the next six months. Consumers already paid 6.5% more for food in the past year.
Wheat prices alone have risen 92% in the past year, and yesterday closed at US$9.45 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade.
At the centre of the imminent food catastrophe is corn – the main staple of the ethanol industry. The price of corn has risen about 44% over the past 15 months, closing at US$4.66 a bushel on the CBOT yesterday – its best finish since June 1996.
This not only impacts the price of food products made using grains, but also the price of meat, with feed prices for livestock also increasing.
“You’re going to have real problems in countries that are food short, because we’re already getting embargoes on food exports from countries, who were trying desperately to sell their stuff before, but now they’re embargoing exports,” he said, citing Russia and India as examples.
“Those who have food are going to have a big edge.”
With 54% of the world’s corn supply grown in America’s mid-west, the U.S. is one of those countries with an edge.
But Mr. Coxe warned U.S. corn exports were in danger of seizing up in about three years if the country continues to subsidize ethanol production. Biofuels are expected to eat up about a third of America’s grain harvest in 2007.
The amount of U.S. grain currently stored for following seasons was the lowest on record, relative to consumption, he said.
“You should be there for it fully-hedged by having access to those stocks that benefit from rising food prices.”
He said there are about two dozen stocks in the world that are going to redefine the world’s food supplies, and “those stocks will have a precious value as we move forward.”
Mr. Coxe said crop yields around the world need to increase to something close to what is achieved in the state of Illinois, which produces over 200 corn bushes an acre compared with an average 30 bushes an acre in the rest of the world.
“That will be done with more fertilizer, with genetically modified seeds, and with advanced machinery and technology,” he said.
November 14, 2007
Today was the final day of deliberations for the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU). Tomorrow is a day off for the delegates who get to slog around in the cold, gray and wet German November (it snowed a bit today, mixing in with the rain for a fun walk back to the meeting hall after lunch!). While the delegates slosh around (or take the guided tour of German underground bunker cities designed for residence during a nuclear war – I kid you not!) the CCNFSDU Secretariat will take the discussion and turn it into a final report. Then delegates get 1.5 hours to examine it and the final session of the meeting is held where there is usually blood on the floor by the time the session is finished as delegates fight to have their positions included in the report if the CCNFSDU power elite does not want them there or fight to correct what their contributions have been altered into.
At the Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC) in Rome this past July, in fact, the Swiss delegation was so peeved about the report and its abuse of their position that they fought comma by comma, word by word, for several hours (overtime, of course) to get things the way they wanted them. So these final sessions are always fraught with numbing tedium interspersed with food fights. The whole thing would be pretty interesting (and occasionally entertaining from an anthropological or political science point of view) if the matter were not so serious and of such consequence to so many people on the global stage. If you have been reading the Natural Solutions Foundation email Health Freedom Alerts (which you can sign up for at www.HealthFreedomUSA.org) or have read, for example, the Codex 7 Point Summary (https://staging.drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=157) you know that Codex is the international Food Code and that it serves not the needs of the needy or even the average consumer, but the multinational interests which profit from industrialization and globalization of the world’s food supply: Big Pharma, Big Chema, Big Biotech, Big Agribiz and Big Medica. Countries, especially the developing ones, mistakenly look to it for a level of safety and technical guidance on which they can base their own food laws and codes, erroneously believing the propaganda it puts out repeating endlessly that the purpose and impact of the Codex is protective and will enhance health and food safety through international trade and domestic regulation.
In fact, of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Codex is dangerous, deceptive and the very unequal playing field of the very rich countries and the multinational corporations whose interests they represent at Codex and elsewhere on the global stage.
Consider India: India is the world’s second largest country with a population of 1.2 billion people. She has a huge land mass and, like many developing countries, has a vast gulf between the affluent and the poor. The affluent include the burgeoning middle class, the obscenely wealthy. ” India’s middle class constituted less than 10% of the population in 1984 and 1985, according to the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER). Since then, it has more than tripled, but is [as of 2001 it was]still less than 20%. [It was projected in 2001 that] India’s individual purchasing power will climb from $2,149 in 1999 to $5,653 per person in 2020 — and to $16,500 in 2040. (Global Currents, http://www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=2195)
But the number of people living in slums in India, Asia’s fourth largest economy, has more than doubled in the past two decades. According to the Indian Junior Minister for Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, Kumari Selja, urban slum dwellers rose from 27.9 million in 1981 to 61.8 million in 2001 – the latest census data available.
India regularly asks for help from Codex, and particularly the CCNFSDU, which deals with food for special dietary uses, on setting standards for cereal based foods for children who are starving and seriously underweight. India, supported by many African and Asian countries, including, for example, Benin and Thailand, repeatedly states that the problem there is not reducing calories for children’s food (which occupies CCNFSDU’s focus when it deals with items like how to implement the World Health Organization’s much neglected Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health (http://www.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA57/A57_R17-en.pdf)
but finding internationally acceptable ways to increase the calories, protein and other nutrients available to save the lives of their millions of starving children.
Year after year this concern is raised by India when the Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC), Codex Committee on Food Labeling (CCFL) and CCNFSDU deal with calorie and sugar restriction in foods for infants and children (and decide, year after year, not to do the right thing. Sugar is left in baby food and weaning foods despite its health risks (including habituation for its young consumers), dangerous additives are permitted (like dangerous artificial colors, preservatives, artificial sweeteners which cause brain cancer, for example, and mono sodium glutamate). And year after year, nothing happens to help India set international standards to protect its starving children from supposedly calorie and protein enhanced foods which are, in fact, neither or which do not provide necessary nutrients, calories, protein, etc.
Consider: There are 146 million children in the developing world under the age of 5 who are underweight and more than half of them live in South Asia. Out of these 146 million babies, toddlers and preschoolers (assuming that they might some day go to school), 106 million of these dangerously underweight children live in 10 countries and 57 million of these starving children live in India Undernutition, according to the World Health Organization Report (2002) if the underlying cause of 60% of all deaths in children under 5 years of age (this figure was endorsed by Lancet in 2003). And, of course, the UNICEF publication “Progress for Children, a Report Card on Nutrition, No. 4, May 2006” says definitively that “the world must alter its priorities in order to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of reducing child under nutrition by half in 2015”. By the way, I believe firmly that the international organizations like UNICEF, WHO, FAO organizations are deeply flawed and, at some upper stratum, may be directly involved in highly dangerous social culling policies. But, like Codex, they are composed primarily of armies of good men and women doing good work, or trying to, while, unlike Codex, they often produce highly useful and informative documentation of the problems which the world faces.
One of the tricks that Codex uses is to create meaningless standards on the basis that they pertain “to the general population”, not to any single group in order to make sure that the apparent underlying goal of mandating under nutrition for the global population (while proclaiming just the opposite, of course) is achieved. If you recall that Codex functions as, in essence, a pharmaceutical and chemical marketing strategy, and that healthy people do not buy many drugs, this makes good sense. That is why, in our opinion, nutrients are restricted as if they were toxins (through phony science like “Risk Assessment” and the types and levels of available nutrients (such as the European-banned boron and vanadium which Dr. Grossklaus, who lives in Europe, admitted that he is taking to help heal his bone injury) to levels so low that they cannot aid anyone’s health very much but do make sure that people are good customers for Big Pharma and Industrialized Illness Care (IIC).
There has been an ongoing struggle in CCNFSDU to introduce meaningful nutritional levels through the adoption of Nutrient Reference Values (NRVs) which would tell consumers all over the world how much of each nutrient, micro or macro nutrient, they should aim for. At least that was the intent of South Africa’s years long work on the topic. You may remember that in 2005, at the CCNFSDU meeting in Bonn, Germany, when the South African Delegate attempted to present the results of a several-year long Working Group to establish these NRVs “to promote optimum health” she was rudely and stunningly cut off by Dr. Grossklaus with these memorable words: “Codex is not about health. Codex is about trade. It would be nice if Codex could provide nutrient levels for health, but it is about trade, not health!” He then refused to allow her to proceed with her report (on which she and the other members of the Working Group had been working for years and instructed her to go back and redo the NRVs and bring them back next year! South Africa declined and Korea took over. During the presentation and discussion of the NRVs this year, Korea did not rouse the ire of the Chairman since it dutifully presented the principles, not the content, of the NRV standard. BUT the NRVs were declared to be “for the general population” and “for labeling purposes only, not for health or intake guidance”.
Here’s what that means:
NRVs will be listed on every package of food in international trade (and in domestically compliant countries). Consumers will see that this food provides x percent of their daily requirement of a particular nutrient and will, quite naturally, assume that this requirement applies to them. What they will not know is that the amount of the nutrient has nothing at all to do with their needs as a healthy man or woman, a pregnant woman, a man with HIV, a post menopausal woman, a 4 year old child, etc. They will not know that the NRV is derived from a process which took assumptions about a mythical ‘average expectable global diet’ without any reference to genetic, gender, environmental, health status or other specifics and set those values so low that, through the process of Risk Assessment, the nutrient in question might keep an average expectable global body alive, but certainly will not support health under any stress at all, let alone “optimal health”.
In the ladies room, while washing our hands side by side I spoke to the African delegate who invited me to mail her my comments before each meeting so that she could speak them since I cannot and the only “Health Freedom” observer group admitted by Codex does not do so either. I took the opportunity of clean hands and a quite room to say the following to her:
“Could you please explain to me”, I said, how it works that health claims for foods are strongly discouraged because, as stated earlier today in the meeting, ‘health claims on foods give the consumer the false impression that those foods confer a nutritional benefit'” [False? that’s why the claim is there: to tell the consumer that the food confers a nutritional benefit – REL] “but NRVs, which every consumer in the world will assume pertains to them when they read the food label, are to be derived from an amalgam of population statistics, where they exist, or from ‘probabalistic statistics’ [I swear: that is the term of art here in Codex for making up data! -REL] and ‘corrected’ by Risk Assessment to make sure that the nutrient levels do not exceed some mythical ‘Upper Safe Level’ which does not promote health?” She looked at me for a long time and then slowly said, “It doesn’t work. That makes no sense at all. I had never thought about it before!” Then we got into a long discussion about the real game of Codex and I handed her our updated Nutricide DVD (https://staging.drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=156) with the added section on how the “Codex Two Step Process” works to allow countries to protect themselves from the deadly and irrational standards and guidelines of Codex and from the World Trade Organization’s trade sanctions. I also gave her a hard copy of the Codex eBook (https://staging.drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=220)which shows how the Codex Two Step Process can be applied, in this case to the deadly Vitamin and Mineral Guideline (ratified by Codex July 4, 2005, Rome). So Codex is about trade, health claims would give people the idea that certain foods were good for them so must not be allowed without significant scientific agreement, (a standard which foods, which are safe, cannot meet and which the US FDA does not require drugs, which are dangerous, to meet) and NRVs are for labeling only and are derived from somebody’s guess about what the global average expectable person might need without any intent to provide health information or guidance.
Whew! What did the CCNFSDU body do? It fought over whether these NRVs should be produced for vitamins and minerals including global average expectable children from 6 to 36 months or just for global average expectable adults. The compromise was to produce a request for New Work that would go to the CAC and then the new NRVs, the ones that do not promote health but trade, would be produced for adults, following which, years and years down the road, they would also be produced for global average expectable children from 6 to 36 months. Consumers can rest assured that trade, if not their health, will someday be
enhanced by having meaningless information on the labels of their prepared food. What a way to go, Codex. Protecting the health of consumers, as mandated by your mandate:
The main purposes of this Programme are protecting health of the consumers and ensuring fair trade practices in the food trade, and promoting coordination of all food standards work undertaken by international governmental and non-governmental organizations.
http://www.codexalimentarius.net/web/index_en.jsp
Maybe tomorrow we can talk about the proud announcement of the Chair of the Codex Committee on Food Labeling (CCFL), Dr. Ann McKenzie, that the CCFL’s contribution to the implementation of the WHO Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health (which CCFL and CCNFSDU have been mandated to implement) was to set up a committee to standardize the names of foods internationally! Now that should certainly make a difference to the folks in the world dying from a contaminated food supply rich in sugar and saturated fats, artificial flavors, colors and pesticides, veterinary drugs and so forth, don’t you think?
We could also talk about the fact that, not to be outdone, despite lots of what seemed to me like snide and contemptuous references to the Global Strategy during the meeting (and at last night’s pleasant social event for delegates) by the Dr. Grossklaus, the CCNFSDU decided that it had already fulfilled its requirement to implement the Global Strategy since they had sent a letter on the topic last year!
What support for the needs of the developing world! But, then, most of them are pretty poor and have no money to buy drugs. Do you think…….? You don’t suppose……?
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
November 10, 2007
I am writing this at 7:15 AM in my room at the Steigenberger Hotel, Bad Neuenahr, Germany. General Stubblebine and I were in San Francisco three days ago in a week-long meeting with our film makers for the new DVD on Health Freedom and the Codex Agenda. We have worked out a powerful and dynamic way of telling the story which is accurate, comprehensive, action-oriented and compelling film and we are all really excited. Stay tuned for more about that in another post, but you can be sure that it will be well worth seeing and sharing! Of course, we are asking for your support to make this film. Instead of getting investors involved, this is a film by popular demand created with popular support – yours! Your donation will help us reach the $150,000 goal. (https://staging.drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=189)Donations to allow us to make this video (and all donations are tax deductible, by the way) of $100 or more will be acknowledged in the final version of the film.
The Natural Solutions Foundation is attending the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU) this week. There are two initial workshops which we will also attend. The first, a Working Group on Gluten – Free Foods will take place today (in just a few hours) and the second will take place tomorrow on “Risk Analysis”. Every day the US has a meeting for Americans attending Codex and we will be attending those, too.
The meeting itself has a fixed agenda which is sometimes adhered to and sometimes not. In our observations, it is rigidly adhered to when that serves the intent of the Codex Committee and, most especially, the rather astonishingly dictatorial Chair of CCNFSDU, Dr. Rolf Grossklaus, MD, the man who declared in 2003 that “Nutrients are not relevant to human health!”. That is, I believe, a rather astonishing position for a physician with a specialty in Nutritional Medicine! Even more astonishing, of course, is his insistence that Codex treat nutrients like dangerous industrial toxins and subject them to “Risk Assessment”, a technique taken directly from toxicology in which the maximum doses of poisons to which humans can be exposed without discernible change is determined, cut by a “safety margin” (usually by dividing the highest dose that produced no changes by 100) and then declared to be a safe Maximum Permissible Upper Limit or MPUL for human exposure. Perhaps the fact that Dr. Grossklaus is the Chairman of the Board of a German company called bFR (which specializes in Risk Assessment of toxins, or, in this case, supposed toxins) and that he just might have a vested financial interest in making every known nutrient into something which must be tested, perhaps by his own company, just might have some impact on his insistence, with potentially deadly consequences, that nutrients are toxins. Hmmm. What do you think? Just perhaps?
This, a wildly inappropriate system for nutrient doses, is the very system that Dr. Grossklaus has been so very enthusiastic in driving Codex to in its determination of upper limits for nutrients. Upper limits for nutrients? Oh, yes, that violates US law since nutrients are, in our legal system, considered to be foods under the 1994 Dietary Supplements Health and Education Act (DSHEA). Under DSHEA, importantly, those very foods are generally considered to be safe since foods are generally considered to be safe and they ARE foods. Hmmm. What about the fact that the US FDA announced that it would ‘ “HARMonize” US food standards and regulation to International Standards even if not complete’ (which is bureaucratic talk for “Codex”)? Yes, indeed, what about it? We are asking people who have grave reservations about this illegal “HARMonization” to sign the Natural Solutions Foundation Citizens Petition, (https://staging.drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=184) a legal challenge to this illegal stand by the corporate-compromised FDA.
CCNFSDU has a number of other activities besides setting upper limits on nutrition (not legal in the US, remember, but enthusiastically endorsed and supported by the FDA here at the meetings and at home). It is interesting to note that at many Codex meetings people from the FDA serve as the Delegate representing the US. (There is only one Delegate per country but they are supported by advisers from their country). Often the US Delegate at this meeting and at a number of others is Dr. Barbara Schneeman, Head of the Office of Dietary Supplements of the FDA. She is a pleasant lady who acts against the interests of makers and takers of Dietary Supplements at every turn, as far as I can see. For example, by moving the deadly and restrictive Vitamin and Mineral Guideline (ratified July 4, 2005, Rome, Italy) forward in CCNFSDU, she is setting up a situation in which the US must have, I kid you not, a “Nutrient Risk Manager” (!) who will determine the maximum dose available for any nutrient permitted in the US (!) as long as that maximum dose is NOT more than 15% higher than the dose of the nutrient found in unprocessed food (of course, that includes food grown in demineralized soils). Hmmm. Where is that FDA bread buttered? Could it be by the Big Pharma through their impact on every aspect of FDA policy whether it is for food or drugs? Consider the wisdom of divesting the FDA of its responsibilities for the regulation of food, a policy which the Natural Solutions Foundation is presenting to Congress in our Congressional Education program.
CCNFSDU also sets standards for infant formula and foods for other special groups. It was at this same committee last November that the Natural Solutions Foundation played such a pivotal role in blocking the US’s determined efforts to include fluoride (which even the American Dental Association now admits babies under 1 year should NEVER be exposed to) as a permitted additive to infant formula for healthy babies. With the help of our African and Asian health-friendly allies we kept baby formula safe from this deadly additive – except for sick babies, of course, which Dr. Schneeman made sure would be exposed to fluoride by a last minute maneuver as the meeting was closing!
Now it is time for me to go get dressed to attend the Workshop on Gluten – Foods as your eyes and ears. More to come. Please let everyone on your list know the health freedom battle is raging both at home and internationally and that the Natural Solutions Foundation is in it protecting your health, your freedom and your right to make the health choices you want for yourself and your loved ones. Ask them to sign up for our Health Freedom Alerts (and help financially, too!) at www.HealthFreedomUSA.org.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
Are Science and the Biotech Industry Sleeping in the Same Bed?
By Jeffrey M. Smith, author of Seeds of Deception
One day in April 1998, Professor Phillip James walked into the office of Arpad
Pusztai and placed a large stack of documents on his desk . The documents were
submissions from biotech companies seeking approval of their GM soy, corn, and
tomatoes. He called in Arpad’s wife Susan from the adjoining office. James was
the director of the Rowett Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland, Europe’s leading
nutritional research facility.
He told the Pusztais, both senior scientists there, that the British
agriculture minister was meeting with European ministers in Brussels to vote
on genetically modified (GM) foods, and he wanted a scientific opinion on
them.
Arpad Pusztai looked at the stack-nearly 700 pages-then back at James. He was
confident that his director and the other eleven scientists on the committee
that approves GM foods for the UK were far too busy to actually read these
studies.
The Pusztais, however, had worked for more than two years on a UK government
grant, leading a 20-member research team to design the ideal testing protocol
for evaluating GM foods. They also conducted safety tests on a new variety of
GM potatoes intended for commercialization.
The Pusztais were therefore among the most qualified scientists in the world
to evaluate the papers James had just given them. Arpad asked how much time
they had. “Two and a half hours,” said James. They quickly got to work,
focusing on the design and the data.
Arpad was shocked at what he discovered. The research was incredibly poor. He
described it as superficial, flimsy, and just plain bad science. Reading those
studies was a turning point in the life of this very pro-biotech scientist.
Arpad was the leading researcher in his field, with more than 300 articles and
12 books to his credit. Based on his reputation and experience, the government
had awarded him the GM research grant over 27 competing applicants.
As a man of integrity, accustomed to thorough and rigorous science, Arpad
expected the same from others. But he realized that the approach taken by
biotech industry scientists was diametrically opposed to his own. “I was doing
safety studies,” he said. “They were doing as little as possible to get their
products to market as quickly as possible.”
Abominable Scientific Methods Ignored
Pusztai called the minister and told him that although he wasn’t expecting to
have such a strong opinion after only two and a half hours, there was
definitely not enough information to declare the foods safe for humans.
But the minister responded, “I don’t know why you are telling me this,
Professor James has already accepted it.” It had already been on the market
for two years.
Months later, Arpad had another shock. Young rats fed a genetically engineered
potato developed extensive health problems. Some had smaller, less developed
brains, livers, and testicles, and also partial atrophy of the liver. Some
suffered damaged immune systems and organ damage. And there was excessive cell
growth in the stomach and intestines.
The potato was engineered to produce its own insecticide, but the insecticide
itself was not the cause of these problems. In fact, other rats that had eaten
natural potatoes that were spiked with the insecticide fared much better.
Thus, since the insecticide was not the cause of the poor health of the GM-fed
rats, it was almost certainly the process of genetically modifying the
potatoes that was the culprit.
Arpad realized that if his potatoes had been subjected to the same superficial
industry studies he had reviewed, the potatoes would have been approved. The
organ damage, cell growth, immune functions, and so on, would be undetected.
More worrisome was the fact that the soy, corn, and tomatoes that were
approved were not tested for these potential problems. And they were created
with the same process that Arpad used to engineer his potatoes.
The Cost of Speaking Out
With permission from his director, Arpad accepted an invitation to be
interviewed on television and express his concerns about GM food. For two days
he was a hero at his institute.
Then, on a Tuesday afternoon, two phone calls from the prime minister’s office
were allegedly forwarded through the institute’s receptionist to the director.
On Wednesday morning, Phillip James fired Arpad after 35 years and silenced
him with threats of a lawsuit. His 20-member research team was dismantled and
the UK government abandoned its plans for long-term safety study requirements
for GM foods. The Rowett Institute then issued several statements trashing
Arpad and his research in an apparent attempt to protect the biotech
industry.
Eventually Arpad was invited to speak before Parliament, his gag order lifted,
and his research published in the prestigious Lancet.
Despite his work being cut off in the middle, his rat study remains the most
in-depth animal feeding safety study ever published on GM foods. Tragically,
no similar studies have yet been applied to the GM foods on the market. No one
is monitoring to see if the organs, immune system, and cells of humans eating
GM foods are being similarly influenced.
Arpad has since been commissioned to review all published animal feeding
studies on GM foods. There are only about a dozen. In his paper, published as
a chapter in the book Food Safety, he reported consistent shortcomings in
industry-sponsored research. Their poor designs allow significant problems to
go unnoticed. When problems were identified, they were not followed up.
Arpad and his wife have made presentations on GM foods around the world. In
2001, they appeared before New Zealand’s Royal Commission of Inquiry on
Genetic Modification, where the sentiments and experience of several other
presenters echoed their own.
Are Science and Commerce ‘Sleeping in the Same Bed’?
Parliament member Sue Kedgley testified: “Personally I have been contacted by
telephone and e-mail by a number of scientists who have serious concerns about
aspects of the research that is taking place… and the increasingly close
ties that are developing between science and commerce, but who are convinced
that if they express these fears publicly, even at such a Commission… or
even if they asked the awkward and difficult questions, they will be eased out
of their institution.”
Mae-Wan Ho, a biophysicist and geneticist, told the Commission that the
scientific evidence on GM foods “simply did not support the claims… that the
technology is precise and safe.” Ho has endured numerous attacks for her
opinions, including being hounded out of her position at the UK’s Open
University.
Epidemiologist Judy Carman testified that the few animal feeding studies on GM
foods are too short to adequately test for cancer or for problems in
offspring. Further, they are not evaluating “biochemistry, immunology, tissue
pathology, gut function, liver function, and kidney function.” Carman, who has
investigated outbreaks of disease, said that health problems associated with
GM foods might be impossible to track in the human population, or take decades
to discover.
Carman is repeatedly attacked for her critical stance. One pro-GM scientist
threatened disciplinary action through her Vice-Chancellor. Another circulated
a defamatory letter to government and university officials in October 2004,
alleging that Carman was unethical and that her work was similar to
“inaccurate
anti-vaccine scaremongering [that] kills people.”
Geneticist Michael Antoniou, who works on human gene therapy, told the New
Zealand Commission, “genetic engineering technology, as it’s being applied in
agriculture now, [is] based on the understanding of genetics we had 15 years
ago, about genes being isolated little units that work independently of each
other.” He explained that genes actually “work as an integrated whole of
families.”
Falling on (More) Deaf Ears in the UK and Around the World
In 2003, Antoniou represented non-governmental organizations on the UK’s
supposedly balanced GM Science Review Panel that was part of the nationwide
“GM Nation?” public debate. He was shocked to find scientists there still
supporting obsolete theories of gene independence. Some even claimed that the
order of genes in the DNA was entirely irrelevant. Antoniou was outnumbered by
eleven scientists representing either the biotech industry or appointed by the
pro-biotech UK government. His well-supported arguments fell on deaf ears.
Since the debate, new studies have further verified Antoniou’s position by
showing that genes are not randomly located along the DNA, but clustered into
groups with related functions.
Virologist Terje Traavik testified that GM crops “might be the basis for real
ecological and health catastrophes.” Three years later, in a February 2004
meeting with delegates to the UN biosafety protocol conference, Traavik
presented preliminary evidence from three studies which might fulfill his
earlier prediction.
a.. Philippinos living next to a GM cornfield developed serious symptoms
while the corn was pollinating.
b.. Promoters-genetic material routinely inserted into GM crops-were found
to transfer to rat organs after a single transgenic meal. Key safety
assumptions about genetically engineered viruses were overturned, calling into
question the safety of using these viruses as vaccines.
Traavik, naturally, was attacked.
Biologist Phil Regal told the Commission, “I think the people who boost
genetic engineering are going to have to do a mea culpa and ask for
forgiveness, like the Pope did on the inquisition; you know, ‘we made a
mistake, let’s start over.'”
Sue Kedgley had another idea. She said, “I would recommend that perhaps we
could set up human clinical trials using volunteers of genetically engineered
scientists and their families, because. they are so convinced of the safety of
the products that they are creating. they would very readily volunteer to
become part of a human clinical trial.”
(C) Jeffrey Smith, 2004
Not eager to eat GM foods? At least 70% of all prepared foods in the US have GM components. Organic foods, on the other hand, do not. Eat organic. It’s cheap compared to disease.