Crusador Interviews Scott Tips, President & General Counsel For The National Health Federation

The NHF has been actively fighting to protect the health freedoms of all Americans for over fifty years. When it comes to the subject of CODEX ALIMENTARIUS and the standards and regulations they are trying to implement on an international level, Scott Tips stands out as the lead spokesman to present us with straight-forward, truthful facts. Tips is not just a bystander, he actually attends the Codex meetings as a delegate through the NHF, which has official INGO status to attend and speak out at the meetings.

Tips has just released a new book titled “CODEX ALIMENTARIUS – GLOBAL FOOD IMPERIALISM” which I consider to be one of the most authoritative works in print on the subject of Codex. There has been a ton of misinformation deliberately published about Codex and its potential effects on our dietary supplement and health rights and it’s a breath of fresh air to see a real expert on the subject finally put something in print that the laymen can grasp and understand. If you want to cut through the clutter and get straight answers with a clear path to where Codex is ultimately going, Scott’s new book is an absolute must read.

Crusador: Thanks for your time, Scott. You do an excellent job of cutting through the clutter of the Codex confusion to let people know where the rubber meets the road. Tell our readers why you just published this new book and why you feel these issues are so important to the health freedom message here in this country and around the world?

Thanks, Greg. The idea to publish this book came to me about two years ago. I put this book together because it occurred to me that there were a lot of articles being written about the CODEX ALIMENTARIUS Commission and its various committees, and the impact that these committees were having, and will continue to have on our health freedom, especially the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods For Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU) that meets annually in Germany.

The idea behind the book was to gather some of the most important articles written about Codex, some as far back as 1994 and 1996, and put them in book form so a reader who wants to understand Codex could go to this one source and have it all there. In the process of doing this, other articles have been written up as well and included in the book. It’s a way for anyone who wants to be educated on the CODEX ALIMENTARIUS process to be educated, and to actually tap into the thoughts and the thinking of the various people who were there and took part in the meetings and made observations at the time. It’s very current thinking.

Crusador: Where does Codex stand at the moment?

Back in 2004, the Codex committee that I mentioned adopted a framework of standards to be applied to dietary supplements. It’s called the Codex Vitamin and Mineral Food Supplement Guidelines. This was done over NHF’s objections and the South African delegates’ objections. It’s important to know, though, that this was just a framework. They set in place some of the basic rules, but what’s entirely missing from this framework are the maximum upper permitted levels for the vitamins and nutrients that they will regulate. This is in the process of still being determined. It’s one reason why the NHF just went to the most recent German Codex meeting last month and took part in the process of this risk assessment, both the working group and the committee that deal with that, in order to have some impact and influence on where these maximum upper permitted levels are set – the MUPL’s. The chairman at this meeting, Dr. Rolf Grossklaus, announced that he expected that these levels will be in place by no later than the year 2013. It was interesting to hear his timetable on that.

In the meantime, the NHF has been making great inroads in arguing our scientific case for either, in one instance, not even setting these limits at all or, in the other, just setting them so high that they won’t have any impact on the American market.

Crusador: Do you feel that the 2013 date is accurate or is it sooner than that based on the formation of the North American Union and our national sovereignty getting destroyed?

My own personal belief is that the accurate date is somewhere in between 2011 and 2013. I’ve been going to these meetings for a real long time and I can see the pace at which they proceed. It’s possible that it could be accelerated and it has happened, but at the rate they’re going it will be about 2011 at the absolute earliest.

Crusador: How does the European Union, NAFTA, CAFTA, the FTAA, and the already-birthing North American Union figure into this overall scheme with Codex?

That’s an excellent question. The big picture is really a simple one. In creating this global framework, which is to create regional blocks and then join them together because it’s much easier than joining all these countries of the world together in one fell swoop, they are creating structures on parallel tracks. One of the structures that deals with food and health issues is the Codex track. This is not co-equal with say the North American Union, the European Union and the like in the sense that it’s not an equivalent structure, rather it’s a scientific structure that has certain guidelines and standards that the European Union, North American Union and other regional blocks would then refer to. In doing so, it helps strengthen the ties of unification – hence globalization among these regional blocks of which the European Union was first. The North American Union is meant to be the second. We already see a nascent Asian Union and African Union growing.

Crusador: I’d like to touch on the situation with this Trilateral Cooperation Charter (TCC) that involves Health Canada, the Mexican FDA and the U.S. FDA. All three countries are presently working through the TCC and functioning as though a North American Union were in place. They are actively working to harmonize the food, drug and dietary regulations for all three countries. How does this tie into Codex?

It ties in because it’s all part of this global harmonization process. A lot of the people who say that Codex is not a problem think that the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) will protect us. What they don’t see is this is a huge end run around DSHEA that currently protects American supplement consumers. This is in my new book by the way in an article that I wrote titled “The Maginot Mentality.” There’s a huge end run around DSHEA and part of it is this Trilateral Cooperation Charter.

Just look at the health fraud definition that the working group of this TCC uses. The health fraud, they say, may include the following and I’m quoting from a document right in front of me:

The false, deceptive or misleading promotion, advertisement, distribution, sale, possession for sale or offering for sale of products or provision of services intended for human use that are represented as being safe and/or effective to diagnose, prevent, cure, treat or mitigate disease or other conditions, . . .

This document goes on but here’s the key final part that’s important to note:

. . . to rehabilitate patients or to provide a beneficial effect on health.

That definition of health fraud then would include every single vitamin and mineral supplement that is sold in the U.S. today, and beyond that as well as other things such as amino acids and light that do have a beneficial effect on health. What they’re doing in essence is they’re defining “providing a beneficial effect on health” as health fraud. How could that possibly be? That’s the most absurd definition I’ve ever heard and yet that’s the one that the Trilateral Cooperation Charter and its agencies that work under its umbrella are implementing in their joint task-force actions against various “health fraud perpetrators.”

Crusador: What you’re talking about will occur long before Codex regulations become finalized. This is not something that will happen down the road. It’s happening right now. Our FDA even has a website outlining the mission of the TCC (http://www.fda.gov/oia/charter.html). Do you see the TCC threat as an even bigger threat than Codex?

It probably is, and no one is saying that Codex is the only and ultimate threat. Codex is just one of many threats and it’s one we’re addressing at the National Health Federation level, but having said that, you are right. The TCC is a more immediate threat and it’s one that needs to be addressed by people as well.

One of the things you have highlighted quite correctly Greg, and that is the need to take action against the formation of a North American Union. A lot of what needs to be done and this has been said by others and I do agree with it is that we need to fight to strengthen this country and make sure that our freedoms – both health and other ones – are protected here against these kinds of encroachments. You see it all the time on many different fronts and we need to take action to prevent it.

Crusador: With the recent passage of the FDA Reauthorization Act, our Congress and Senate have pretty much shown conclusively that they are not going to do anything to protect our health freedoms. I’m a little bit more pessimistic on trying to protect our freedoms because we don’t have anyone in Washington outside of Ron Paul and a few others that aren’t getting kick backs from Big Pharma who will even stand up and do anything to defend our health freedoms. I see that as the real dilemma we face. Just look at this Presidential election. There is no candidate except for Ron Paul who will do a thing to stop our nation from being merged into a North American Union or will work to get us out of all these criminal international organizations.

That is so true. Personally – and I can’t do it on behalf of NHF because of our organization’s nonprofit status – I support Ron Paul and have for more than a decade because I consider him to be my Congressman. I don’t care what district I’m in. The one who speaks for me in the halls of Congress is Ron Paul. I’m glad to hear you mention his name too. The hardest part for him is getting the Republican nomination. If he gets the nomination there’s no doubt in my mind that he’d win the presidency. He’s just got to get over that first major hurdle to win.

But you’re right, it’s a pessimistic time. What can one do? I think the most that can be done is to do what we’ve always said. Politicians don’t see the light they just feel the heat. So we need coordinated letter-writing campaigns to get these Congressmen and Congresswomen to feel the heat. That’s probably our biggest hope.

Crusador: Your book on Codex in my opinion is a must read for anyone that is concerned about the subject of Codex and health freedom. I’d like you to touch on a few other highlights to entice our readers to obtain a copy.

Basically the main thing is that it shows the structure of Codex and how it operates so someone will understand what takes place and how it all comes together. The importance of this book is that instead of having a dry recitation of this and that, what you have are people who were there at the time, on the spot, and eye-witnessing all of this, with little personal stories that get interwoven as well. With the book you get the feeling that you were actually there attending the meetings with descriptions of the rooms, descriptions of the people, with things that happened and events. The book is constructed in such a way that one doesn’t have to read it from start to finish. You can skip around. You can get a feeling for what Codex is truly like; and if there’s an article that’s more technical and you aren’t a technical person, then you can skip those articles and just read those with a more general approach. On the other hand, if you are a technical person and you like technical details, then those kind of pieces are in there as well. It’s really like a travel guide through the Codex process and through the various committee meetings that have happened over the last ten to eleven years.

Crusador: Thank you for your time, Scott. I look forward to doing a lot of work with you in the future helping to defend our health freedoms.

Thank you, Greg. You’re doing an excellent job through Crusador keeping people informed.

CODEX ALIMENTARIUS - GLOBAL FOOD IMPERIALISM 16.00