Codex – Quick Take
One
Page Overview!
June 2007
Much information is circulating about Codex and it is understandable that there is confusion because Codex is an international issue with great complexity. The organization of Codex is 45 years old and has many formal Committees working on setting guidelines for countries to follow when they ship food products between international countries. Codex is a joint project of the United Nations, World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and 182 countries are members. Click here to go to the official Codex web site: http://www.codexalimentarius.net/web/index_en.jsp
Health freedom is recently impacted by Codex because Codex formed a committee to make a guideline for Vitamin and Mineral trade between countries. Sadly, after years of deliberation, they passed Vitamin and Mineral Guidelines in 2005 that say that for products being traded between countries, “maximum upper limits shall be set” for vitamin and mineral amounts per daily portion of consumption as recommended by the manufacturer . Click here to read Vitamin and Mineral Guidelines passed. http://ahha.org/CodexGuidelines.htm There are no maximum upper limits in the United States for vitamins and minerals because of our hard won victories in our Congress years ago. But other countries do not have the same freedoms and views of vitamins and minerals.
The new guidelines are for international trade and do not directly change our own internal US laws. But the guidelines do show that the global community view vitamins and minerals as drug-like substances to be afraid of unlike our United States view of seeing them as nutrients and safe for the public. The new guidelines will force countries to abide by the upper limits when Codex completes the setting of the limits. Many meetings are taking place now to work on setting the limits and health freedom advocates are attending the meetings to encourage the committee to request that the scientific team avoid using the toxic drug risk/benefit analysis but rather use the food safety analysis. A leading health freedom organization that has NGO status at Codex and is able to speak at meetings is National Health Federation (NHF) NHF is working on our behalf to give input to the committee and attend the Codex meetings on a regular basis.
There is some concern by health freedom advocates that the global attitude will be used to convince lawmakers in the U.S. to change our public policy and to change U.S. laws for vitamins and minerals. There is also a concern that since most countries in Codex are also members of the World Trade Organization which requires their member countries to abide by international safety guidelines, that the WTO might attempt to enforce the Codex Vitamin and Mineral Guidelines. This fear comes from the fact that complying with Codex has always been voluntary and the guidelines were simply recommended. But now that the WTO is pointing to Codex as one of the international guidelines for food safety and WTO has an enforcement and dispute resolution arm.
One way to take action about Codex is to contact your U.S. Congressmen and Senators and tell them that you do not want maximum upper limits to be set on Vitamins and Minerals either in the U.S. or around the world. And protest that the FDA mis-represented us by supporting the Codex guidelines at international meetings, and that you want to make sure that DSHEA is vigorously protected here in the U.S. and that you expect to continue to have access to any kind of dietary supplement that you wish at any potency and level of dosage.
