Codex Alimentarius: Globalizing Food

Below from Sepp on HealthFreedom. Sepp phrases things far less stridently than Dr.Rima. He says the same stuff, but does not come off like a conspiracy addict like Dr.Rima.

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“There is a huge shift taking place in the global awareness in the last 5 years with strong views about globalization and the power structures of major corporations.”
— David Korten

Codex Alimentarius, according to its website, was created in 1963 by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) to develop food standards, guidelines and related texts such as codes of practice under the Joint FAO/WHO Food Standards Program. The main purposes of this Program are protecting the health of consumers, ensuring fair trade practices and promoting coordination of food standards.

At first sight, that seems a worthwhile goal. Make sure people don’t get poisoned by what they eat and that international trade is fair - advantageous to both sides.

Unfortunately, the nice words hide a more mundane reality. Codex Alimentarius is an industry-sponsored international legislative forum that promotes corporate interests in a globalized market rather than consumer health and fair trade.

Until a decade ago, few had ever heard of Codex Alimentarius unless they were directly involved in the tedious job of working out its standards or in making sure their country changed laws and procedures to comply with Codex rules, but that changed.

In 1994, the German delegation of an obscure committee – the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses - proposed draft guidelines to regulate a new type of foods that had appeared in Germany during the 1980s but didn’t look like foods at all. They were tablets and capsules with what to the Germans seemed crazy doses of vitamins and minerals. So for all intents and purposes these vitamin pills – they were called food supplements – seemed more like medicines to the German mind than the Sauerkraut and Apfelstrudel which were the healthy foods of the time.

The proposed guidelines promoted dosage restrictions in line with the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) for each substance. Ironically, the idea of RDAs as a minimum amount everyone should get of certain vital nutrients had been introduced in post-war Germany by the American occupation force but now it was used by the Germans to resist the push of new generation nutritional supplements into a very regulated and very pharma-friendly market. After all, medicines were big business. German pharmaceutical companies had been a mainstay of the export economy and were major actors in the so-called Wirtschaftswunder, the miraculous post-war economic recovery of German industry and commerce.


Globalization

Although much of the industrial clout shifted from post-war Germany to the victorious Axis powers, especially the United States, when we consider globalizing markets, countries are not the major players. Industry, by merger and by taking over competitors, has become a force unto itself, no longer part of any one country and often outstripping countries in size.

A global club of producers resisting control by national legislators and governments, seeking to be left to the pursuit of profits, with as little interference and as little competition as possible. A well financed lobby addressing both lawmakers and government agencies works tirelessly to bring about what the multinationals like to call “a level playing field”.

The globalized food and pharma industry just loves Codex. Since its guidelines are often used as a template for national laws, once a guideline is passed, much work is saved in convincing countries to change their laws. They will normally adjust national rules to be in line with Codex.

Nominally, compliance with Codex guidelines is voluntary. Since the establishment of the World Trade Organization in 1995 however, any country that does not comply and finds itself in a trade dispute with another country, runs the risk of being subjected to trade sanctions. This is because the international court that decides in matters of trade disputes is bound to use international guidelines, where they exist, as their basis of law. So in real world terms, Codex Alimentarius guidelines are international law.


Additives, pesticides and GMOs


Food Supplements

It took the Codex Nutrition Committee a full decade – from 1994 to 2004 - to hammer out a text on food supplements. The final confirmation came the following year at a meeting of the full Codex Commission – the guideline was officially passed on the fourth of July 2005. Irony of ironies, some said, to finalize a guideline with the potential to greatly limit supplement availability on a day that for Americans signifies freedom and independence.

So the winner in the first round was Germany, or rather its pharmaceutical industry, but not without a lot of work and some intrigue. Although the Codex guideline proposal was made in 1994, it was not until the European Union had made its own law, a directive on food supplements, that enough of a force could be mustered to push the Codex guideline through against US resistance. The European directive meant all the European member states’ delegates had to vote in unison, and in accordance with the text of the newly passed European law. With the combined strength of the then 15 EU member countries, supported by Rolf Grossklaus, the German chairman of the Nutrition Committee and Basil Mathioudakis, a senior official in the EU’s Health and Consumer Directorate, the Codex guideline on supplements was eventually passed. The text remained very similar to the original German proposal and is practically an identical twin of the European directive on supplements.


Round two


Honest Science and Transparency

Supplements have become a political bone of contention. There are the restrictive countries – Germany backed by France, Greece, Denmark, Norway and some others, and we have more liberally inclined ones like the United States, the UK and the Netherlands. The contest seems to center around “my industry is better than yours”, when it should really be “how can human health be improved”.

I believe we must find a way to bring transparency and scientific honesty to this process. As long as science is subordinate to industry and research can be skewed to fit industry’s needs, as long as industry’s wishes determine international rules and regulations where a self-interested group of multinational corporations can tell us what we should or should not eat, we will be in trouble.

We need independent scientists and a more balanced procedure of making these international regulations.

How about reforming Codex!


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01:49 am August 8th, 2008


Tryptophan and Niacin

I am posting several articles nipped from Sulfurstories list which were posted by Susan, the list owner.

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Niacin is made out of tryptophan very ineffeciently, but this is a step that could be vulnerable if tryptophan is limited, and that could have a lot to do with sharing this resource with serotonin and other related compounds.

I have a slide about a very interesting study which looked at adults with autism who were resticted of tryptophan for one day. The results were plainly awful: whirling, flapping, banging, hitting self, rocking and toe walking. Some of the adults did not have a worsening of behavior, but that was found to be related to their already having had low plasma tryptophan before the experiment, and so, they already had these "behavioral" problems and they didn't get worse.

A study below shows how taking niacinamide can bring up plasma tryptophan.

I've also mentioned before that (at least in rats) the leaky gut can develop as a RESULT of exposure to gluten IF you are niacin deficient. That may mean that improvements that follow supplementation with niacinamide may include the "sealing up" of the leaky gut, and perhaps a corresponding easing of all sorts of food sensitivities, including that to wheat and corn. Please see the study below.

There is something very tricky about measuring tryptophan in the blood, especially when inflammation is about, and that relates to what is happening with a pocket in albumin made just for tryptophan. I've put some articles about that below. I've also added some other tryptophan issues which may be interesting to those who can take a moment to look and think about whether this could be relevant to something you've seen.

Susan