The Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC),based in Rome, Italy, is
an international organization jointly created by the Food and
Agricultural Organization (FAO) and the World Health
Organization (WHO) of the United Nations. The Codex
Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Use (CCNFSDU)
is responsible for Dietary Supplements and Medical Foods and is
one of 26 separate Codex committees. The CCNFSDU meets
once yearly in Berlin, Germany (its host country) and the
National Health Federation is a Codex-recognized organization
with the right to attend and speak out at these meetings.
The purpose of Codex is to provide a forum to facilitate global
trade in foods and promote consumer food safety by developing
science based standards and guidelines for use by member
countries. Codex guidelines and standards are
automatically implemented by the General Agreement on Trade &
Tariffs (GATT) of the WHO and become binding for all
international trade among GATT signatory countries. The
CAC process calls for proposed committee standards and
guidelines to be forwarded and approved by the Codex
Alimentarius Commission's Executive Committee. When the
proposals reach final approval (after an
eight-step process), they then become binding on all GATT
signatories, including the United States. Thereafter, no
GATT-signatory country may use as a trade barrier any standard
or guideline that disagrees with a Codex guideline or standard.
According to some, it does not mean that all GATT countries must
adopt Codex standards for their own domestic use.
According to the NHF, we think that Codex guidelines and
standards will inevitably supersede domestic laws, including the
Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994.
The National Health Federation supports Codex guidelines and
standards that are based on a free-market approach that
maximizes freedom and health. In a free-market approach,
the consumer is king and can choose to purchase and consume any
foods and dietary supplements that he or she wishes.
History has shown that the safest food products do not come from
a
top-down driven, controlled-market economy where an elitist
select few decide what is "best" for all of us. Rather,
the safest and healthiest individuals are those who are free to
choose for themselves what is best for their health. The
National Health Federation does not say that a free-market
system is perfect. No system is perfect. Instead,
the goal is to minimize health errors and disease and a
free-market system inevitably leads to such minimization.
Recent history has shown centralized, planned economies to be
among the unhealthiest for their citizens. And the more
that free-market economies themselves are seduced into allowing
health-care decisions to be made by elitist planners, the more
health and health freedom will suffer. Therefore, the
National Health Federation supports a decentralized system of
health choices; and the most decentralized system is one where
each individual consumer is free to choose what to put into his
or her own body.
In the case of Codex, the National Health Federation opposes the
current Codex member states who wrongly believe that consumer
health will be enhanced by: (1) denying that dietary
supplements can benefit normal, healthy people; (2) incorrectly
defining dietary supplements as only those vitamins and minerals
that the body cannot manufacture itself; (3) restricting the
upper-limit amounts of vitamins and minerals, particularly by
referring to currently-crude and archaic medical beliefs about
nutrients; (4) restricting any physiological benefit information
for consumers; (5) restricting the lower-limit amounts of
vitamins and minerals that may be consumed by individuals; and
(6) creating "positive" and "negative" lists of dietary
supplements.
The current direction of Codex is off course and is
unfortunately driven by a statist and elitist mentality that
thinks it knows what is best for consumer health and protection.
Unfortunately, such a mindset comes from the 1930s, 1940s and
1950s kind of "brave new world" thinking that elevated central
planners into a form of "God on Earth." That kind of
out-dated thinking has caused more misery, death and disease
than can possibly be imagined. That is why the National Health
Federation supports a Codex process that will free up health
knowledge and products for the entire World. A free-market
system of choice and knowledge will avoid the errors of central
planning that sets standards, however well intentioned, into
stone. With the doubling time of knowledge constantly
accelerating, mankind cannot afford the "luxury" of getting
stuck in health standards established in the 20th Century while
new health knowledge and products are discovered almost daily.
We also wish that such discoveries continue. The best way to
ensure such progress and advancing health is to keep the
planners and bureaucrats from straitjacketing dietary
supplements with medievalist thinking and restrictions.
