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Ellyn
Joined: 16 Jul 2000
Posts: 4458
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CODEX ACTION ALERT--TELL A FRIEND--SEND A LETTER!!
 Thu Jun 30, 2005 8:13 am
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http://www.fourwinds10.com/news/06-health/D-holistic/2005/06D-06-29-05-codex-action-alert.html
CODEX ACTION ALERT--TELL A FRIEND--SEND A LETTER!!
From: dcinelli1@yahoo.com
[ I refer you to our News and Information Section 6D for more articles on CODEX. Please do go to www.citizens.org and send out a letter. PHB ]
Dear Natural Health Leader,
Thank you for sending a letter to the head of the U.S. Codex delegation. Because of your action, the pressure is mounting to keep the international trade of vitamins, herbs, and minerals open and free. We have already sent over 22,000 letters to Dr. Scarborough and our members of Congress, telling them to apply the principles of our law, DSHEA, to international dietary supplement standards.
Now it's time for one last push.
The next meeting of the Codex Alimentarius Commission is less than two weeks away, on July 11th, and we need to make sure that the will of the American people is fresh in the minds of the U.S. delegation. That's why we need you to tell your friends and family about our action alert.
Tell a friend. Forward this email to your colleagues, family and friends with a note urging them to take action. We've made it easy to send a message. It only takes 60 seconds to protect our health rights -simply visit www.citizens.org or >>click here to send a letter today!
Word of mouth is the most powerful way for you to spread the word about Codex. Please take the time to tell as many people as possible. With a strong, united voice we can insure that the trade of vitamins, herbs, and minerals stays open and vibrant.
Thank you,
Patrick McGrath
Associate Director
Citizens for Health
612-879-7583
pmcgrath@citizens.org |
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KNOW-THIS
Joined: 14 Jul 2003
Posts: 3694
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Thu Jun 30, 2005 8:54 am
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I sent the e-mail. This is an important cause to me. I take plenty of herbs, vitamins and supplements and I haven't seen a doctor in years. I couldn't feel any better or healthier. I guess that's the problem, they don't want us to be in good health because only sick people without alternatives spend money on drugs. That's why they wish to eliminate those alternatives. This ploy is without a doubt being pushed by the pharma industry just like the battle to keep people from buying cheaper medicine from Canada.
_________________
"You find me offensive? I find you offensive, for finding me offensive" |
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Ellyn
Joined: 16 Jul 2000
Posts: 4458
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Thu Jun 30, 2005 9:27 pm
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I couldn't agree with you more, KNOW-THIS, and there is more and more information coming out daily which backs up exactly what you are saying. |
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Ellyn
Joined: 16 Jul 2000
Posts: 4458
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| NEWSFLASH! READ THE LATEST ON CODEX FROM ROME
Wed Jul 06, 2005 6:36 am
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NEWSFLASH! READ THE LATEST ON CODEX FROM ROME
http://www.citizens.org//priorities/codex/romeupdate.cfm
>>July 5 >>July 4 >>July 3
July 5
“The Struggle Begins”
by James S. Turner, Esq., Board Chair, Citizens for Health
Rome, July 4, 2005: “The struggle has just begun.” With these words, one dietary supplement activist expressed the outrage and resolve that dietary supplement activists present at the Codex Commission meeting feel about the Commission’s limiting of the international dietary supplement market to supplement products restricted by safety factors as if they were toxic chemicals.
Consumer activists present at the Rome meeting shared post-vote impressions at an informal ad hoc meeting during the FAO Deputy Director-General’s evening reception. On a balcony overlooking the Circus Maximus and the Roman Forum, the small band of activists wondered why no government or business official evaluated the effect of the Codex guidelines on the goal of ending world hunger. In the FAO world headquarters building, which proudly proclaims the organization’s mission as contributing to “an expanding world economy and ending world hunger,” it does not appear that world hunger ever appeared as a subject matter in the written or spoken argument for the vitamin and mineral guidelines that narrow the world economy in nutrient supplements. Correcting this oversight appeared as one goal of consumer activists reviewing the Codex supplement guidelines vote.
Activists also pointed out that the toxic chemical standard included in the guidelines, which severely limits consumer access to dietary supplements, replaces consumer choice with government fiat about which nutrients a consumer can consume, and creates a one-size-fits-all rejection of biochemical individuality, must now be developed by international food safety regulators. Their forums and procedures currently appear no more open to consumer/citizen input than the Codex processes, but they are calling for comments, holding meetings and in fact face an impossible task. Activists intend to exploit each of these opportunities to create a world-wide standard for trade in dietary supplements that will expand the world market in supplements and advance the goal of ending world hunger. The fifty years of USregulation of dietary supplements that culminated in the passage of the US Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 presents a road map and creates a regulatory regimen that the international regulators need to follow if they are to contribute to rather than retard world health.
The activists gathering at the FAO reception will hold further meetings while in Rome, with the intention of exploring strategies that can turn the adoption of a flawed supplement standard into the first step for creating world wide access to all the dietary supplement products necessary for advancing the health of each consumer who desires them. Thus the struggle begins.
JULY 4
Codex Commission Adopts Supplement Guideline
Rome July 4 2005: The Codex Alementarius Commission, consisting of 85 of 171 country members (one short of a quorum) assembled in Rome today adopted without objection the restrictive Vitamins and Minerals Guidelines recommended by its Nutrition and Food for Special Dietary Foods Committee. While expected the action disappointed American dietary supplement consumer group representatives and observers resent. Attorney Scott Tips of the National Health Federation made a last minute plea to return, for technical and substantive reasons, the guideline to its authoring committee. His plea fell on deaf ears. No country objected to adoption of the guideline.
Mr. Tips was followed by a representative for the International Alliance of Dietary/Food Supplement Associations (IADSA) refuting concerns about the guidelines and seeking approval from the Commission for "ten years of concerted effort" to bring the guideline to fruition.
Industry representatives from the Council for Responsible Nutrition and other trade groups appeared elated and on their way to partying.
Consumer representatives in attendance at the Rome Codex session announced that they will meet to prepare strategies for continuing the battle to maintain worldwide access to all currently available dietary supplements products and to remove the barriers to innovation they see created by the adopted guideline. More action will follow.
Jim Turner
JULY 3
Codex Commission Executive Committee Endorses
Restrictive Vitamin-Mineral Guidelines
by James S. Turner, Esq., Board Chair, Citizens for Health
Rome, July 3, 2005. Dr. Ed Scarbrough, US Codex Office administrator and administrative leader of the US Delegation to the 28th session of the Codex Alimentarius Commission, today told the delegation at its pre-meeting session that the Codex Commission Executive Committee had endorsed the vitamin and mineral guidelines recommended to it for adoption by its Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU). The endorsed guidelines call for upper intake limits based on toxic chemical risk assessment, prohibit health claims for foods, and urge consumers to restrict their intake of nutrients to the foods they eat. The endorsement of the guidelines by the Executive Committee virtually ensures their adoption by the full Commission at its July 4 meeting.
Dr. Scarbrough commented on Chinese and other Asian country desires to have greater flexibility, based on unique dietary habits, to add other categories than vitamins and minerals to the guidelines, and Australia’s “perennial” desire to restrict the guidelines to countries that treat vitamins and minerals only as foods. These arguments, he reported, did not move the Codex Executive Committee away from endorsing the guidelines. Nor did Canada’s lack of support for the guidelines. Canadaargued that “given the differences in diets, food supplies, attitudes, and consumption patterns around the world, such guidelines were best left to national governments.” This argument failed to move the Executive Committee to recommend delay or rejection of the guidelines. In the opinion of the Canadian government, the guidelines will not apply to Canadabecause it regulates vitamin and minerals supplements as “natural health products, not as foods.”
Dr. Scarbrough also reported Executive Committee recommendations that, going forward, the Codex nutrition committee (CCNFSDU) consider how it can contribute to the World Health Organization Global Strategy for Diet Exercise and Health, and that more study be undertaken on the role of nutrition in Codex and the relationship of Codex to other international bodies. Dr. Scarbrough also reported a serious Executive Committee discussion about a consultant’s report on the future of Codex. Several countries, Mexicoand Brazilamong them, desire clearer rules on the consensus process used by Codex to make decision. Some observers believe that the current consensus rules favor Europe and the USand marginalize the interests of developing countries. There is a movement to switch away from consensus to voting. The opponents of this move say it would create combative factions and politicize the Codex process.
The delegation meeting, attended by forty delegation members and observers, took place at the trendy Hotel 47 (www.fortysevenhotel.com) at 47 Via Petroselli, Rome, just one block away from Circus Maximus, the site of Rome’s contribution to Live 8 Roma (http://www.live8live.com/theconcerts/index.shtml), singer Bob Geldof’s effort to use global music performances to focus world attention on hunger and poverty in Africa. Several of the dietary supplement consumer group representatives attending the delegation meeting felt strongly that Codex could contribute most effectively to ending world hunger and poverty by adopting less restrictive vitamin and mineral guidelines. This issue will have to be debated after the Commission meeting. The meeting agenda and consensus process allows time only to adopt or delay the guidelines or send them back to committee with no serious discussion. The Executive Committee endorsement makes adoption of the vitamin and mineral guidelines all but inevitable.
James S. Turner, partner in Swankin and Turner, a 32 year old Washington DC law firm is a Private Sector Advisor to the US Codex Delegation on behalf of Citizens for Health and Citizens for Health supporter NOW Foods.
To learn more about Codex, visit Codex Fact Sheet |
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Ellyn
Joined: 16 Jul 2000
Posts: 4458
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| CODEX Will Override DSHEA---Urgent Action!!!
Wed Jul 06, 2005 7:36 am
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CODEX Will Override DSHEA---Urgent Action!!!
http://www.fourwinds10.com/news/06-health/D-holistic/2005/06D-07-05-02-CODEX-will-override-DSHEA-urgent-action.html
From: beabernhausen@yahoo.com
NATIONAL HEALTH FEDERATION - A NOT-FOR-PROFIT HEALTH ORGANIZATION
July 2, 2005
URGENT ALERT !! ACT NOW!!
YOUR HEALTH FREEDOM IS BEING THREATENED
CAFTA VOTE - 1 WEEK AWAY
WE MUST NOT ALLOW CAFTA AND CODEX TO OVERRIDE DSHEA
The Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) Treaty will require the U.S., a member of the World Trade Organization, to revise our food laws and regulations based on Codex decisions. CAFTA would force harmonization of our dietary supplements and regulations to international standards, overriding the DSHEA Act of 1994.
The Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and the even-broader Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) are both modelled after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). These agreements are typical bureaucratic monstrosities of “managed” trade that masquerade as free trade and would expand NAFTA to include first Central America and then the rest of the Americas in an economic “union.” True free trade would take a few pages of written text to enact (“eliminate these barriers to trade and these tariffs,” etc.); all three of these agreements encompass thousands of pages of bureaucratic textual garbage sprinkled liberally with rules, regulations, and special-interest benefits.
Buried in the language of CAFTA is Section 6 that would require of all its members that they form a Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary (SPS) committee for the purpose of insuring ongoing harmonization under the terms of the SPS Agreement in the World Trade Organization (WTO). You can find that text at the following website:
http://www.ustr.gov/Trade_Agreements/Bilateral/CAFTA/CAFTA-DR_Final_Texts/Section_Index.html.
If you then look at Article 3 of the WTO’s SPS Agreement, you will read the following words: "To harmonize sanitary and phytosanitary measures on as wide a basis as possible, Members shall base their food safety measures on international standards, guidelines or recommendations." (emphasis added) And as you all know by now, Codex sets the international standards for food safety including vitamins & minerals.
So, CAFTA, which is set for a vote in the House of Representatives when they reconvene July 11th, 2005, is another critical link by which health-freedom haters hope to bypass the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 and obligate the United States and Canada by treaty to harmonize to the harshly restrictive Codex vitamin-and-mineral standards. They cannot be allowed to succeed, and we at the NHF completely oppose these two treaties that would put a knife in the back of our health freedoms.
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~CAFTA has already passed the Senate in a 54 to 45 vote on July 1st, 2005.
~Legislators have just recessed for one week, reconvening July 11, 2005.
~IMPORTANT- For House consideration, when they return, the Senate Bill 1307 (click here to view bill), ratifying CAFTA, can be voted on without going to committee. It is on the House calendar and may be brought up at any time.
*********************
ONLY ONE WEEK TO ACT. CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVES. URGE THEM TO VOTE AGAINST CAFTA NOW.
YOUR LETTERS WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE. THE VOTING IN THE HOUSE WILL BE CLOSE. WE HAVE ONE WEEK TO FLOOD THEIR OFFICES WITH CAFTA OPPOSITION LETTERS.
PLEASE JOIN IN THIS EFFORT AND CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVES.
Contact any member of the House of Representatives via http://www.house.gov/writerep/
Click here for Petition Opposition Letter:
http://capwiz.com/jbs/mail/oneclick_compose/?alertid=5769006
P.O. Box 688, Monrovia, CA 91017 USA ~ 1 (626) 357-2181 ~ Fax 1 (626) 303-0642
Website: www.thenhf.com E-mail: contact-us@thenhf.com
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