The Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC) will be meeting here
in Rome for a week-long conclave from 4 to 9 July, and one
of the agenda points is the final approval of new world-wide
vitamin guidelines that are expected to restrict
availability of nutrient-containing supplements to consumers
the world over. The text of the guidelines was finalized
last November in Germany, by the Codex Committee on
Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses. I will be
reporting from the CAC meeting, attending as part of a
delegation of the National Health Federation, one of the
very few voices that argue the side of consumer freedom of
choice inside the meetings, albeit without a vote.
These types of international regulation are elaborated
without public input and even without the consent of
national parliaments of the participating countries.
Each country entrusts its vote, which will eventually
determine national laws as well, to one person, the head of
the national Codex delegation. And Codex delegations are
typically headed by relatively low level administrative
employees of national health ministries. So, we are having
what amounts to international laws being developed over the
heads of and without input from national legislative
authorities, let alone the public that will face the
consequences. Democratic procedure has been officially
abolished in the name of globalizing the economy and
"removing barriers to trade".
Investigative journalist Peter Byrne introduces his article
The Fate of Vitamins with the following words:
A low-profile organization created by the United Nations is
about to ban global trade of many essential nutrients - and
there may be nothing you can do to stop it...
Peter Byrne, according to his own site, has an uncanny
ability to mine reportable nuggets of graft and corruption
out of mountains of government and corporate records — not
to mention human sources. He knows how to get inside the
soul of self-serving systems — be they created by
left-wingers, neocons, or non-ideologically-inspired
criminals — and find the facts.
At first I was a bit skeptical about that characterization,
but after reading the article, I tend to agree.
Byrne takes us behind the smoke-screens into a world of
corporate globalization. International agencies which
closely co-operate with big pharma and big food are well on
the way to carving up a potentially lucrative health and
foods market and turning it over to its "rightful owners",
the big global players. While not catching all of the
technical details of this complex matter, the insights and
the "big picture" he paints are worth reading even for those
who think they have a pretty good understanding of what is
going on. Here is his article:
The Fate of Vitamins
A low-profile organization created by the United Nations is
about to ban global trade of many essential nutrients—and
there may be nothing you can do to stop it
by Peter Byrne
If you use vitamin and mineral supplements for health, you
might want to fly over to Rome, Italy and crash the July 4-9
meeting of the Codex Alimentarius Commission, a little-known
international body that wields immense power over the global
food market. Should the Codex Commission approve the Draft
Guidelines for Vitamin and Mineral Supplements on its
agenda, 300 of the 420 basic vitamin and mineral products
commonly used by European consumers will be banned from
manufacture and trade inside the European Community.
The ban will seriously impact the export business of
U.S.-based supplement companies and could eventually result
in similar product restrictions being implemented here. The
Codex story has received almost no attention in the
corporate press and media; although badly garbled versions
of the tale zing about in cyberspace, confusing many readers
with conspiracy-laden mixtures of fact and fantasy. Which is
not to blame the authors of these emails, since the Codex
Alimentarius (Latin for "food code") Commission is so
pathologically bureaucratic that its real intentions, and
the probable consequences of its actions, are difficult to
discern when wading through thousands of pages of jargon in
its public reports. For example, it is not true that
over-the-counter vitamins and minerals will be banned in the
United States after August 2005...
There are so many self-interested players in the "L'affair
Codex," that it is nearly impossible to get a straight
answer about what it all means from any single participant.
It is possible to piece together the basic story from public
records, and by listening to what the various interest
groups have to say (with several tons of heavily iodized
salt). The bottom line of the story is that the emerging
Codex regulations on vitamins and mineral supplements have
almost nothing to do with promoting human health, and
everything to do with facilitating the profits of
multinational food and chemical corporations.
The Five Major Codex Players
From the point of view of the American health consumer,
there are five major players: the Codex Commission, the
European Parliament, and the Council of the European Union,
the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, and the
U.S. Food and Drug Administration/U.S. Department of
Agriculture. All of these institutions are involved in
formulating rules and regulations to govern the production
and distribution of food supplements. It is easy to conflate
their separate, but related, institutional efforts. The fate
of food supplements is not dependent upon any one of these
institutions, but upon how they interact as a whole. The
five organizations are working syncretically to transform
the supplements market, not in favor of the consumer, but in
favor of certain multinational corporations that stand to
benefit from the resulting restriction of trade under the
guise of promoting "free trade."
The History of Codex and Their Guidelines
Codex was created in 1962 by the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the U.N. World
Health Organization (WHO) to "harmonize" world food trade.
The several hundred regular "participants" at Codex meetings
are drawn from the ranks of government regulatory agencies;
food, chemical, and pharmaceutical corporations; industry
trade groups; and non-profit "watchdogs" with various
political agendas. To date, Codex has established 250 sets
of rules regarding the manufacture and distribution of a
variety of foods, from sardines to peanuts to pineapples,
and including food additives and infant formula. (It is
illuminating to learn that Codex has approved the use of
cyclamates and saccharine—artificial sweeteners long banned
in the U.S. as health risks—as well as Monsanto's
aspartame.) After more than a decade of wrangling over
political aims and technical details—far removed from the
public eye—the commission will likely approve the Draft
Guidelines for Vitamin and Mineral Supplements in July.
The Codex guidelines begin: "Most people who have access to
a balanced diet can usually obtain all the nutrients they
require from their normal diet." Vitamin and mineral food
supplements are defined as concentrated forms of nutrients
whose purpose is to supplement the normal diet when the
vitamin and mineral intake from food is insufficient. From
the point of view of universal healthcare, deciding exactly
which nutrients, and how much of each, constitute a "normal"
or a "balanced" diet is a large variable when attempting to
prescribe a single standard across hundreds of dietary
cultures.
But Codex is not about health. The guidelines define the
minimum level of supplement use as 15 percent of the
recommended daily allowance (RDA) suggested by the
manufacturer. Maximum levels of use, or upper safe levels,
are not to be calculated by reference to RDAs, but, and this
is important, by "scientific risk assessment" based on
generally accepted scientific data, taking into
consideration, as appropriate, the varying degrees of
sensitivity of different consumer groups and the daily
intake of vitamins and minerals from other dietary sources.
The key phrase here is "scientific risk assessment." This
investigatory technique is, according to many experts, more
properly reserved for testing safe usage levels for
chemicals and substances known to be inherently toxic or
poisonous, not for evaluating nutrients that are known to be
generally safe as ordinarily ingested. This emphasis in the
guidelines, according to expert critics, closes the door on
the possibility of setting upper safe limits based upon the
benefits of using a particular nutrient. And by setting
upper limits based upon the sensitivity of the most
sensitive group—say, pregnant women who probably should not
use a lot of Vitamin A—the legitimate needs of the rest of
the population for healthy doses of Vitamin A are ignored;
indeed, the masses may be forbidden to use more Vitamin A
than pregnant women, except, perhaps, by a doctor's
prescription. The "safe" upper limit paradigm is further
driven downwards by the admonition that it be reduced in
accord with the amount of, say, Vitamin A obtained from a
normal diet. Under Codex, labels will advise the consumer
not to exceed the maximum daily amount; and that the product
"should be stored out of the reach of young children,"
(replacing a sentence in an earlier draft that required
containers to be child-proof).
The Codex Commission, which is composed of voting
representatives of most of the world's nations, has not yet
set the exact maximum doses for vitamins and mineral
supplements, but it is looking to the European Union
Parliament, and other arms of the FAO/WHO for "scientific
risk assessment" guidance in that regard. And that is
basically all that the Codex guidelines say at this time.
Corporate Participants
It is instructive at this point to take a look at the
American participants at the Codex Commission, i.e. public
and private sector agencies, corporations, and organizations
that actively participate in the commission's deliberations
and wield considerable influence upon issues in which they
are acknowledged to be "expert." Staff from the Dept. of
Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration represent
the official position of the United States at Codex
meetings. They are deeply involved in setting global
standards, as are the staffs of food and drug regulatory
agencies in most industrialized countries. (Codex funds
"scholarships" for representatives from third world
countries, many of which lack any regulatory bodies, but are
still subject to WTO agreements and are affected by Codex
regulations.)
From the corporate sector, official Codex participants
include Amway Corp., Wyeth Pharmaceutical Co., DSM
Nutritional Products, Mead Johnson Nutritionals, Bristol
Myers Squibb Co., Nestle USA, Herbalife International, and a
trade group called the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN).
The latter's Web site features a "Myth vs. Facts" on Codex,
which, to be blunt, is a self-serving spin that underplays
the negative ramifications of the guidelines on mom & pop
supplement businesses. CRN's membership includes Archer
Daniels Midland Co., Cargill Health & Food Technologies,
Bayer Corp., Wyeth Consumer Health, Weider Nutrition
International Inc., Shaklee Corp., Nutraceutical Corp.,
Herbalife International of America, Kemin Foods, General
Nutrition Centers, Inc., Cadbury Adams USA LLC, DSM
Nutritional Products, Eastman Chemical Company, Mingtai
Chemical LLC, and Monsanto Life Sciences Company. (A number
of these corporations have several voices at the meetings,
since representatives of corporate subsidiaries sit
alongside participants from their parent companies. And
corporate-funded lobby groups have separate voices.)
CRN had this to say about the Draft Guidelines—which it
helped to write and of which it approves: "We in the
industry have long maintained that maximum levels set by
Codex or governments for contents of vitamins and minerals
in supplements should be based solely and completely on
safety, not on nutritional policy in general or the RDA in
particular." It is instructive that the chemical
formulations for naturally-occurring vitamins and minerals
are not patentable, unlike pharmaceutical formulas. And the
supplement market is huge—$16 billion a year in the U.S.
alone. Its easy to presume that pharmaceutical, chemical,
and agricultural concerns are working to grab market share
through the back door: Codex.
Public Interest Groups
On the other side of the corporate interest equation, in
theory, is the Washington D.C.-based Center for Science in
the Public Interest, which along with sister non-profits
from Japan and the United Kingdom has official status in the
Codex proceedings. CSPI is funded by social engineering
projects such as the Rockefeller Family Fund, John Merck
Fund, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. A spin-off
from Ralph Nader's public interest organization, CSPI claims
that Vitamin A, Vitamin D, and Vitamin B6 cause a host of
horrible diseases. The non-profit, which is a quote mill for
The New York Times reporters, pooh-poohs the common
understanding that a variety of foods and supplements are
healthy, such as soy, Vitamin C, antioxidants, and dietary
fiber. To back-up its ultra-precaution, CSPI refers to
media-ballyhooed studies of antioxidants and Vitamins A & E
which purport to show that these substances are bad for
health. (Experts at Harvard Medical School and Tufts
University say that these studies are deeply flawed, largely
because they were focused upon particular at-risk sub
groups, and did not take the needs of general populations
into account.)
CSPI's stance supporting restrictive standards for vitamin
and minerals undercuts the usefulness of an otherwise fine
environmentalist tool, the Precautionary Principle, by
taking the position that since a vitamin could cause harm to
relatively small groups of people if improperly used, it is
permissible to ban it universally, regardless of its obvious
and well-documented benefits for millions of people.
Further complicating the mix of opinion massaging the medium
is the Hoover Institution, which has taken the position that
Codex regulations hurt "free trade," (a loosely defined, if
politically useful concept that is most often employed to
justify the expansionist agendas of monopoly corporations).
And the Center for Consumer Freedom, a restaurant trade
association set up to counter "food police lies" about the
dangers of tobacco, olestra, trans fats, and obesity, frames
Codex as the "global food cop." Neither of these two
organizations participate in Codex.
Institute of Medicine
And then there is the Institute of Medicine (IOM), a quasi
governmental body based in Washington D.C. that performs
scientific studies on spec from government and private
companies. It is under U.S. government contract to develop
standards for vitamins and minerals that reflect the
standards being considered by Codex. From the point of view
of the scientific establishment, IOM is no lightweight; it
is very influential at the FDA, and inside the Codex/WTO
complex.
A series of IMO studies over the past half-decade assert
that high-fat diets lead to obesity and heart disease; that
omega-3 fatty acids and linoleic acid are good for health;
and that there is no safe level of consumption of trans
fatty acids. (Codex regulations, on the other hand, allow
for trans fats in food, and consider meat to be a source of
dietary fiber!) A 2000 IOM report found that Vitamins C and
E and the mineral selenium are health-positive, but that
ceilings should be set on their usage. IOM believes that
antioxidants can be beneficial. It suggests daily intakes of
75 milligrams of Vitamin C (upper level 2,000 milligrams);
22 IU of natural Vitamin E from food (upper level 1,500 IU
of a synthetic variety); 55 micrograms of selenium, (upper
level 400 micrograms). Beta Carotene supplementation, IOM
says, should only be used to prevent Vitamin A deficiency.
Pregnant women should take B vitamins, such as folate and
choline to prevent neural tube defects. IOM posits that most
Americans get sufficient Vitamin B12 in their food, except
for people over 50 who should use supplements. IOM says
there is promising evidence that B vitamins play a role in
reducing cardiovascular disease, cancer, and psychiatric
disorders. The Institute recommends upper levels of B6 at
100 milligrams per day; folic acid at 1,000 micrograms; and
being wary of the rest of the B vitamins.
On the one hand, IOM has a higher regard for the health
benefits of supplements than does Codex officialdom, which
is focused upon risk. On the other hand, IOM is tending in
the opposite direction of many knowledgeable health
practitioners who typically recommend larger doses. For
example, the medical doctors and nutritionists staffing
Santa Rosa, California-based Farmacopia suggest, based on
numerous studies and years of practice, a daily Vitamin C
intake of 500-1,000 milligrams; Vitamin E intake of 400-800
IU; Vitamin A intake of 2,500-5,000 IU; Beta Carotene at 15
milligrams; and regular doses of the B vitamins, depending
on need. Farmacopia's well-researched protocols spell out
possible dangers from overdosing, such as nausea, diarrhea,
and fingernail loss. However, they do not throw out entire
nutrient groups, or suggest upper limit doses for whole
populations based upon possible dangers to the most at-risk
groups.
In reality, IOM's protocols are closer to Farmacopia's than
to the more restrictive protocols supported by the
ultra-precautionary forces at the Codex Commission. And this
is, in part, because the IOM studies were funded by many of
the same multinational corporations that are monitoring the
Codex deliberations to make sure that government and
non-profit bureaucrats do not go too far and end up
liquidating the marketability of their supplement products.
The IOM studies referred to above were funded not just by
the U.S. Dept. Health and Human Services, but also by a
variety of companies with varying degrees of interest in
influencing Codex to set dose limits favorable to their
respective business plans. These include Daiichi Fine
Chemicals Inc., Kemin Foods Inc., M&M/Mars, Mead Johnson
Nutrition Group, Nabisco Foods Group, Roche Vitamins Inc.,
U.S. Borax, and Weider Nutrition Group. The FDA, as we shall
see, is now moving in the opposite direction of the
less-restrictive IOM recommendations. It funded a new IOM
study, the results of which reflect that sea-change in
supplement policy.
Codex is nothing if not complicated. Its deliberations are
fraught with competition and collusion by profit-driven
companies and the non-profits that they fund to promote
particular ideologies to justify particular business aims.
Everybody at Codex is focused on grabbing the brass ring: as
much market control as they can pinch off for themselves and
their allies by tailoring the standards to fit their
marketing needs. At stake in all the studies, discussions,
political games, legal maneuvers, and media manipulation is
nothing less than the determination of which vitamins and
minerals end up on the "positive list," i.e. an exclusive
list of approved dietary substances that spells life and
death for any number of global product lines.
The Positive List
On April 5, 2005, the Alliance for Natural Health, an
association of health food manufacturers and distributors in
the United Kingdom announced a victory before the European
Court of Justice in Luxembourg in the form of an opinion by
Advocate General Geelhoed. The opinion will probably be
adopted by the full court in June. The Alliance's victory,
however, is likely to prove minor and temporary.
Here is the gist of the case. As of August 2005, dietary
supplements in the European Union will be regulated by the
Food Supplement Directive approved by the European
Parliament and the Council of the European Union in June
2002. The directive calls for regulating vitamins and
minerals by establishing a "positive list," which, in its
current incarnation, includes 13 vitamin forms and 15
mineral forms. Nutrients not on the list will be banned from
being sold in the EU. The approved substances are broken
down by chemical composition, favoring synthetic compounds
of natural forms, according to the Alliance for Natural
Health. Substances not on the list include several forms of
Vitamin C, natural forms of folic acid, certain
antioxidants, and a range of minerals including boron,
vanadium, silicon, mixed tocopherols, tocotrienols, sulphur,
chelated/plant derived forms and natural forms of Vitamin E
and selenium. Based on the positive list, the EU directive
will effectively ban 300 of the 420 forms of vitamins and
minerals present in 5,000 products currently on the UK
market.
In response to the Alliance's lawsuit, the judge recommended
invalidating the EU directive, but he upheld the concept of
using a positive list to shape international markets, and he
urged EU officials to correct what amounts to technical
glitches in the wording of the directive, so that the
positive list can be effectuated this summer.
Will the Existence of the Positive List Affect the American
Market?
Undoubtedly, and here is how. First, in and of itself, the
positive list will prohibit the importation of excluded
substances and products into European Community markets.
Second, the list is sure to be incorporated into the Codex
guidelines for vitamins and minerals. That is because Codex
is mandated to look to "accepted international standards" to
determine which substances are allowed and not allowed and
at what doses. It is widely accepted by informed observers
that Codex will adopt the EU directive's positive list as
its own standard, since there is no other internationally
accepted standard.
In order for a nutrient substance to be added to the
positive list, a comprehensive risk-assessment study must be
performed, with favorable results submitted to the Office of
the EU Communities by July 12, 2005. Even then, it can only
remain on the positive list until 2009. These expensive
scientific studies can only be undertaken by governments or
corporations with deep pockets. In sum, the EU directive
will likely destroy any European health supplement business
which produces or sells commonly accepted vitamin and
mineral products.
As for upper limit doses, the Codex Commission is looking to
adopt the specifications of a study conducted by the FAO/WHO
and various parties, including the Alliance for Natural
Health. The study will set upper limit supplement dosage
levels in the near future; and those standards, which will
be based upon risk-assessment values, not health benefits,
will be incorporated into the Codex Alimentarius
regulations.
What does this mean for American consumers? Last year, the
IOM, under contract with the FDA, issued a report called the
Proposed Framework for Evaluation of Dietary Supplements.
The report shifts IOM's previous focus upon health benefits
to focus on scientific risk assessment. As in the Codex
Guidelines, and the EU directive, IOM's report calls for
safety issues to be considered as if there are no health
benefits attached to the use of a vitamin or mineral.
Furthermore, it recommends a method of setting maximum doses
that may end up separating out ordinary usage (at relatively
low levels) from prescriptive use (i.e., only medical
professionals will be authorized to prescribe supplements
above certain dosages in the course of medical
interventions). And, as does Codex, the IOM report
recommends putting the burden of supplying safety data upon
industry—a strategy that has been proven not to work—see
Merck's murderous mendacity about Vioxx.
The Argument for Codex
The FDA and several large US manufacturers, like DSM
Nutritional Products, and Herbalife International, argue
that the EU positive list directive and its doppelganger,
the Codex guidelines, will not affect the ability of
American consumers to use high doses of any supplement they
wish to consume because the Codex guidelines and the EU
directive are more restrictive than the Dietary Supplement
Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA); and the FDA is not
adopting the positive list and its presumed low dosage
standards, per se. In other words, American consumers will
still be able to import European supplements because those
products will be lower dosed than the current unlimited
dosage levels allowed in the U.S. However, American
supplement manufacturers and distributors will be locked out
of the European regional markets, and the local markets of
any country that adopts the Codex standards in order to
benefit from trade with Europe.
Let us not forget that the same American corporations that
sit on the Codex Commission as participants also wield
tremendous power within the FDA and Congress. Above all,
these corporations want access to—and exclusive control
of—existing and emerging markets. For DSM Nutrition, for
example, the Codex restrictions bring multiple benefits.
They kill off small competitors, for all the reasons listed
above, and also facilitate the development of two-tiered
supplement products, a low dose vitamin for over the counter
purchase, and a high dose, more expensive item for
prescriptive use. Supplement users stuck in a
Codex-controlled market will no longer be able to legally
supply themselves with nutrients and doses of their own
choosing; rather, they will be captive to the monopolies.
In March, the FDA observed that, "The absence of
science-based Codex guidelines [in America] could adversely
affect the ability of U.S. manufacturers to compete in the
marketplace." This is true because the trade ministries of
countries that adopt the Codex standards will repel non-Codexed
products. But what the FDA did not say is that European
supplement companies will no longer be able to compete in
the U.S. market, because their products will be inferior to
American products by fiat. And that phenomenon, under the
WTO treaties that prohibit a government from "artificially"
restricting "free trade," could hypothetically be construed
to mean that our relatively loose FDA regulations "unfairly"
restrict the ability of European producers to export to the
American market, potentially forcing, under the WTO
treaties, Congress to adopt Codex standards to facilitate
"free trade." Whether or not it falls out like that, it is
clear the FDA is moving under its own steam toward cloning
the emerging Codex standards, which it helped to develop as
a leading participant in commission deliberations.
A Brief Summary
To sum up so far: the Codex Commission is mostly composed of
corporate officials from the agribusiness, pharmaceutical,
and chemical industries, and government officials that
"regulate" those industries (often after or before working
for those same privately-owned industries). Codex is poised
to adopt a "scientific risk assessment standard" for
evaluating vitamins and mineral food supplements. Due to the
use of that method of analysis, as opposed to a
"risk-benefit" analysis method, the Codex standard will
likely incorporate the positive list of the EU directive. It
may adopt upper dosage limits that are lower than RDA doses
currently available in ordinary supplements. (Higher doses
may later be regulated as prescription-only drugs.) In
Europe, hundreds of relatively small supplement
manufacturers and distributors fear that the new Codex
restrictions will annihilate their businesses—leaving the
field open to corporations that can afford the expense of
having proprietary, synthetic supplements added to the
positive list through 2009, long enough, perhaps, to ensure
domination of a drastically reshaped market.
The Codex restrictions ensure that the quantity and quality
of supplements that can be imported by the European market
from America will diminish. But in the U.S. there is a
government-corporate propaganda campaign dedicated to
assuring American consumers and small supplement producers
that they are in no danger of ending up like their European
counterparts. Large companies such as Herbalife
International say that anyone who suggests that Americans
will lose access to supplements is plying "misinformation."
The company goes so far as to tell its international network
of distributors that corporate HQ represents them at Codex
meetings, and they will be told when, if ever, to open their
mouths. In July 2003, the Consumers Union hailed the
scientific risk assessment standards of Codex. American
Herbal Products is slightly more perspicacious. This trade
association recognizes that the WTO can, at least in theory,
push the Codex standards upon Americans.
Why Is There Confusion About Codex?
One of the reasons that U.S. trade associations and
consumers are confused about Codex—and why pro-Codex
lobbyists, such as the FDA and the CRN, can dismiss the
legitimate concerns of consumers as conspiracy theories—is
because, due to the complexity of the bureaucracy at work,
people have conflated the Codex Guidelines (which has no
positive list, nor an upper dose limit, yet) and the EU
directive (which does have a positive list, but no upper
dose limit, yet). Reading the FDA's or CRN member's barrage
of disclaimers about the negative impact of Codex upon the
U.S., one is struck by the shared mantra that compliance
with Codex is "voluntary," when, in truth, non-compliance
may result in trade sanctions or expulsion from the WTO.
Another popular phrase that pops up in the campaign,
"science-based risk assessment," sounds nice until you
realize it is a technique more aptly applied to arsenic or
cyclamates, than to Vitamin E, which has known benefits (as
well as some risk if used improperly).
The fact that too much of a good thing can cause harm has
been blown out of proportion by Codex proponents. For
instance, a study of the effects of Vitamin E upon smokers
and cancer victims has been widely publicized as "proving"
that the vitamin has no positive effect on health (and may
result in death); whereas dozens of unpublicized,
scientifically-superior studies show that Vitamin E has many
benefits (and that the negative study was deeply flawed). Or
take the case of the amino acid, L-tryptophane, demonized a
few years back after a genetically-engineered batch
manufactured in Japan was fatally contaminated. Instead of
questioning the efficacy of genetic engineering as a
manufacturing strategy, or the wisdom of replacing natural
substances with synthetic, proprietary goop, the
pharmaceutical-regulatory establishment attacked L-tryptophane
in all of its forms, many of which are beneficial.
Underlying all the public relations blather, and reams of
subjectivized, financially compromised studies, is the fact
that world trade in food supplements is being restricted and
transformed for the worse under the guise of eliminating
trade restrictions and promoting health.
Enter the WTO
Contrary to rumor, Vitamin C will not be banned in the
U.S. in August. But some forms of it will be banned in the EU;
and a similar ban could eventually appear in the U.S.,
although that event is not inevitable. On the other hand, it
will be much more difficult for ordinary consumers to stop
this eventuality than it was for them to affect DSHEA, which
was transformed by consumer pressure from a restrictive
measure into its opposite. In fact, the very existence of
DSHEA is used by Codex proponents as "proof" that the U.S.
is protected against Codex, because DSHEA is "less
restrictive" than Codex and the EU directive. That is hollow
reassurance.
DSHEA is a malleable act of Congress, subject to constituent
pressure. The implementing force of Codex—the WTO—is based
upon an international treaty to which the United States is a
party. And the WTO does not care a fig for people's health
concerns. It is designed to manipulate the formation and
deformation of trade barriers in favor of the strongest
monopolists.
Here is how it works. The WTO derives its power to regulate
international trade through treaties. In the age of the
political, cultural, and economic dominance of multinational
corporations, it acts as a kind of clearing house, or court
of last resort, to settle trade disputes short of war. In
theory, the WTO is concerned that no country favor its own
exports by placing "unfair" restrictions upon competing
imports.
Run by and for the interests of large industrial and
financial enterprises, the WTO views "harmonization" of food
standards as promoting "free trade." Unfortunately, free
trade as conceptualized and actualized by the dominant WTO
members (United States, European Union, Japan) is not about
leveling the playing field so that small producers or
underdeveloped countries can compete with the big guys. It
is about ensuring that the most powerful corporations can
continue to grow, eating up the small fish and expanding
into new markets in both industrialized and industrializing
economies. It is about maximizing the extraction of profit
for stock-holders, as opposed to maximizing the health or
economic well-being of a population.
To that end, WTO members have agreed to abide by the
Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS), and
the Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement (TBT), which
mandate that no country will impose unfair barriers to
trade, and that they will work to harmonize regulations that
affect trade by abiding by international standards, or face
trade sanctions. In theory, this could mean that the United
States, by allowing the internal sale of substances and
supplement doses that are disallowed in Europe is, in
effect, imposing a barrier to the "free trade" of EU
supplements, since consumers are less likely to buy products
that are diluted by Codex restrictions. And the FDA, which
is clearly controlled by the pharmaceutical and agribusiness
sector, is in the process of harmonizing the internal
market, partly through the scientific auspices of the IOM,
in a way that parallels the EU Community and Codex
processes. From the perspective of the WTO, it is not
harmonious to have one relatively unrestricted supplement
market, governed by DSHEA, surrounded by a more restricted
world market bound under Codex. Since it is, when all is
said and done, in the interests of the WTO movers and
shakers to carve up the food supplement market amongst
themselves, while excluding small producers, it is likely
that the movement to mirror the Codex restrictions in
America will continue. And should that fail, the SPS and TBT
treaties ensure that legal actions can be mounted by
European governments at the WTO level to compel the U.S. to
toe the Codex line, or pay the price of non-compliance.
(It is important to note that food and food supplements are
only one area of commerce that the WTO and the United
Nations are attempting to harmonize. Ultimately, world trade
will increasingly fall under the spell of monopoly as
commodities become uniformly regulated in conformance with
the Neoliberal economic doctrine [the so-called "Washington
Consensus"] that currently prevails in the White House, at
the United Nations Security Council, and inside the WTO.)
The Irony of the Situation
The ultimate irony, some might say horror, of the situation
is highlighted by looking at a joint report by the FAO/WHO
issued in 2003, Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of
Chronic Disease. This impeccably researched, enormously
valuable study—performed by other arms of the same
organizations that administer Codex—finds that the health of
Third World populations is being destroyed by importing the
First World diet, which is heavy in saturated fats, trans
fats, unrefined carbohydrates and sugar, meat and dairy,
while lacking in vegetables, fruits, and dietary fiber. This
unhealthy diet, says the FAO/WHO, is spreading around the
globe "like an infectious disease."
Without mentioning Codex, the report implicitly damns the
commission's methods and its guidelines for vitamins and
minerals. For example, the report notes that "[Food]
guidelines should try to ensure that the overall benefit of
recommendations to the majority of the population
substantially outweigh any potential adverse effects on
selected subgroups." In other words, upper dosage limits for
supplements should be set to benefit the population as a
whole, not calculated, say, on the potential for excessive
intake of Vitamin A to harm a fetus.
"Population nutrient goals recommended by FAO/WHO [should
be] tailored to local or national diets and populations [to]
reverse or reduce impact of unfavorable dietary changes
occurred over the past century [and in] developing countries
recently." Of course, the WTO is not about to base trade
rules on health issues. Rather, with the assistance of the
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, Third World
markets are being inundated with fast and processed
foodstuffs, even as their trade balances are undermined by
the importation of meat, dairy, sugar and refined grain. In
short, the natural economies serving billions of people are
being turned to dust by transnational agribusiness, which,
in taking over local food industries and promoting bad diet,
cause the need for vitamin and mineral supplements to
increase at the very moment that the population's ability to
access natural pharmacopeias is being curtailed by Codex's
profit-maximization scheme. The rise of diet-related chronic
disease is good business for biotech corporations such as
Cargill that sell food and food ingredients while
positioning themselves to market cancer cures,
cardiovascular drugs, and dietary food supplements.
Regarding upper dosage limits for supplements, the FAO/WHO
report observes, "Seldom is there a single 'best value'
[instead] there is often a range of population averages
consistent with maintenance of health … the recommended
dietary/nutrition practice should modify the attributable
risk of the undesirable exposure in that population." In
other words, national-level regulations can best serve the
needs of national populations. And responsible labeling
practices protect consumers by informing them about the
dangers of over-dosing.
The FAO/WHO study advises eating fruits and vegetables,
shying away from red meat, saturated fat, and refined sugar,
while exercising regularly, and avoiding television. It
promotes the use of vitamins and minerals (including
substances excluded from the EU directive's positive list)
for fighting cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and
the other ills that come from eating nutrient-stripped,
flavor-added "food." Which brings us back to the opening
sentence of the Codex Guidelines: "Most people who have
access to a balanced diet can usually obtain all the
nutrients they require from their normal diet."
Conclusion
Clearly, most people, even in America, do not have access to
a balanced diet and the nutrients they require. Supplements
are one way of alleviating the symptoms of a globalizing
problem that can only be solved by an epochal transformation
of the planet's political economy. It is not just
irresponsible for the Codex Commission to throttle the
global market in food and food supplements when 2.8 billion
people are forced to live on less than two dollars a day; it
is malign.
But even in the world's most over-consuming society,
corporate domination of the food and drug supply is wreaking
havoc. As reported in the Journal of the American Medical
Association, and elsewhere, food-borne diseases contribute
to approximately 76 million illnesses, 323,000
hospitalizations, and 5,200 deaths in the United States
alone each year, while properly prescribed and administered
prescription and over the counter drugs are estimated to
cause annually 2.2 million serious adverse events, and some
106,000 deaths in the United States—while "regulators" sit
by idly. The normal use of vitamins and minerals, on the
other hand, is not a death sentence.
© 2005 Peter Byrne. Peter Byrne is an award-winning
investigative journalist. He hangs out at
www.peterbyrne.info
Sources For More Information …
Codex Commission:
www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/05.11.05/byrne-0519.html
U.S. Codex Office:
www.fsis.usda.gov/regulations_&_policies/Codex_Alimentarius/index.asp
Draft Codex report on vitamins and minerals (see ALINORM
05/28/26):
www.codexalimentarius.net/web/reports.jsp?lang=en
EU Directive on Food Supplements:
http://europa.eu.int/comm/food/food/labellingnutrition/supplements/index_en.htm
Alliance for Natural Health
www.alliance-natural-health.org/index.cfm
Center for Science in the Public Interest (Codex
participant, ultra-precautionary lobby):
www.cspinet.org/
FDA site on supplements and Codex:
http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/supplmnt.html
Institute of Medicine report on dietary supplements:
www.4.nationalacademies.org/news.nsf/isbn/0309091101?OpenDocument
The European Union Bureaucracy online:
http://europa.eu.int/
Council Responsible Nutrition (Codex participant, Big Pharma
lobby):
www.crnusa.org/
World Health Organization on safety standards:
www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/agrm4_e.htm
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