The Codex Alimentarius Commission was created in 1963 by FAO and WHO to develop food standards, guidelines and related texts such as codes of practice under the Joint FAO/WHO Food Standards Program. Its stated main purposes of this Program 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.
The propaganda may be trying to propagate that Codex Alimentarius is all about “consumer protection” but looking at the its stated purposes it is obvious that it wants to exert itself whether by control of some form or through guidelines to extend its tentacles to ensure fair trade and practices in the food trade as well as to promote coordination of all food standards and includes whether your papadams must be crispy or soft. Codex is set to govern every aspect and standard of every food! Next they may want to create guidelines on curries and how curries might be spiced.
Codex has come on into scene on the pretext to sound like a noble trumpet to promote consumer protection. Like a cloud that rises from the horizon, it is creating a soft gulag, much of it through definitions. It was created as a “trade commission” that is growing to promote itself to regulate, and thus control every aspect of how food and nutritional supplements are produced and sold to the consumer. It does not easily dawn on people and governments that it has absolutely nothing to do with freedom of health or “consumer protection”. Conversely, careful examination reveals that Codex may be working against these sacrosanct issues in human society and national economies. Governments must reexamine the garb worn by Codex and the cloak under which it operates and its modus operandi.
The knowledgeable consumers in markets around the world are going back to nature to prevent the deterioration of health and are looking to push their productive middle-age as far as possible into the 70s or 80s. More and more people are going back to nature for preventive medicine and are beginning to enjoy clinical nutrition as an effective therapy that applies natural phytochemicals, natural antioxidants and bioavailable minerals from food sources to reverse health problems and disease states to restore health. More and more people are becoming aware that the mammalian biological system is akin to the L-form biochemistry that generates the natural antioxidants and vitamins in edible plants and herbs and they work within the L-form biochemistry of humans and animals while drugs are toxic to this biochemical system and can be disruptive to the healthy biochemical pathways in the system. Hence, the numerous side-effects and suppression of the immune system in humans and animals by the free radicals that are produced by drug metabolism in mammalian cells. Now, there is a quiet and exciting interest in the possibility of nano-bitechnology and biologics in treating disease conditions, including degenerative conditions, infections (bacterial, viral and protozoal), allergies, biochelation od very very fine (VVF) particles that stick onto cell surfaces, improve the function of the natural antioxidant system that converts hydrogen peroxide into water and oxygen to relief oxidative stress and improve the biochemistry relating to nitric oxide production et etc. This is a meaningful shift away from toxic and chemical based treatments.
The drug companies see this momentum picking up and turning into the main market over time. Instead of taking the plunge into research into integrative medicine and natural medicine, which is the opportunity in the health business, they want to confront it in a sinister way with definitions and regulatory framework to control the use and application of food based health supplements by controlling “food” and its production and how it is to be consumed.
The Road Traffic Act defines animals as “traffic” but does not require them to display road tax discs. The law is an ass that can be made to do different things, not necessarily all that are intelligent or that serve the interest of justice. It is the ass in the law that is being employed by Codex to do its sinister work. So, food can be defined in ways including in its result in producing a physiologic beneficial to make it a drug and hence it can be controlled and regulated. Already, Codex is using the wrong methods to classify nutrients as toxins and uses “Risk Assessment” to set ultra low so-called “safe upper limits” for them.
Risk Assessment is a branch of Toxicology, the science for assessing toxins whereas the proper science for assessing nutrients is biochemistry to measure amounts that yield in the proper rate of elimination of hydrogen peroxide produced by cells during metabolism and under oxidative stress, or the amounts of a broad range of antioxidants required to prevent the formation of secondary radicals such as the hydroxyl radical or prevent the formation of the highly reactive oxidant called the peroxynitrite formed by the reaction between nitric oxide and excess oxygen free radicals, or for healthy gut function, or for improving cell function, for example. In any case, any excess nutrients obtained by the body, say by eating fruits are stored by the body. The body has a system of storing antioxidants and minerals from organic sources that can be brought out of this system when they are needed, as in the case of the sudden increased activity or when there is a need to produce antibodies or repair proteins or prevent oxidative damage to molecules in the body. Also, excess L-vitamin store in lung cells is maintained in a reservoir that under an activation triggered in response to lung infection and oxidative stress in the lungs, it enters biochemical pathways that either prevent oxidative damage or promotes “oxidative burst” against pathogens effectively.
Codex has used the ass in the law, very cleverly to control the amount of nutrients people may consume which is on the ultra-low side. So, who then shall take legal liability arising from malnutrition and oxidative stress related to or directly attributable to such ultra-low level doses? If you take the ass out of the law, then the law transforms itself into an intelligent and logical tool that say that Codex shall bear such legal liability and damage to health. The doctrine of law is clear in that if you control or control by some frame then you shall take responsibility and legal liability for its effects.
Codex has empowered and set itself to curb and destroy the natural vitamin and antioxidant business and by extension the prospects of health based on such nutrients. One of these standards was ratified and approved in July 2005. It is the destructive code of Codex Alimentarius called the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline (VMG). The VMG can ban all high potency and clinically effective vitamins & minerals. For example, Vitamin C would be restricted to only a few milligrams per dose. Other nutrients, such as amino acids, will also come under its control and threat. That will help to wipe out clinical nutrition which will be a major victory for Big Pharma. Next will be the field of biologics.
There was much grass-roots action in the US that managed to organize into a major force to bring about legal protection of the American people and give then health freedom. Now the US has a, act, a legal tool for health freedom in the form of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), passed in 1994 after the massive grass-roots action. DSHEA scientifically classifies nutritional supplements as food and prevents dosage restrictions. As Codex unscientifically classifies them as toxins and sets ultra-low doses its VMG violates US law.
India and China have many scientists and researchers working on the plants and herbs used in their traditional medicinal systems that is yielding interesting scientific information about what works in different situations in healing and more importantly information about how to formulate using biomolecules from various plants and herbs to improve health or treat disease conditions including cholesterol and blood sugar lowering formulations as well as those conditions associated with or caused by inflammatory changes in tissues. Will these nations, when they wake up it, allow Codex to extend its tentacles in their health systems and affect their progress in research? Will nations with large biodiversities like Brazil allow Codex to grow and promote itself in the way it is doing now? Will Japan and Taiwan with their advances in biotechnology and organic farming allow Codex to dictate to them what is food and how much nutrients to eat daily?
The World Health Organization (WHO) is the directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations system. Its responsibility within that system is to improve public health setting norms and standards, articulating evidence-based policy options, providing technical support to countries and monitoring and assessing health trends. As a body in the UN it is responsible for providing leadership on global health matters and claims to be responsible for shaping the health research agenda. The latter should be shaped by the nations themselves and by the people in their respective societies under the umbrella of freedom for health to improve health with WHO providing the inputs when consulted or by way of dissemination of expert views and findings. It must be said now, that unfortunately, taking ultra-low doses of natural antioxidants does not fall in the way of improving public health as it can be detrimental to health as is the case in many communities in the underdeveloped world that suffers from malnutrition and nutritional deficiencies even in people in the developing world and developed societies.
Under its General Rules, the main agenda of the Food and Agriculture Office (FAO) is the review of the state of food and agriculture and of the programs of Member Nations and Associate Members. It has a concern pertaining to the responsibility for food safety managed by agencies in member nations and an interest in the strategy for the protection of human health from food borne disease.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the only global international organization dealing with the rules of trade between nations. At its heart are the WTO agreements, negotiated and signed by the bulk of the world’s trading nations and ratified in their parliaments. The goal is to help producers of goods and services, exporters, and importers conduct their business. Naturally, the agreements and commitments do not apply to non-members.
On the other hand, people need to organize grass-root action to define drugs in its proper way so that they cannot be positioned as safe enough to sound like health supplements and they cannot be referred to as medicines save only as drugs of chemical origin and there must be provisions of law to code for the right to know of their toxicities before they are allowed to enter the human biological system. Also the law must require all chemicals in food be stated on the labels. It is more important for such education and grass-root action. That CODEX I will support but will the FAO and WHO? Codex is a waste of funds.
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