There is a groundswell of concern in North America and Britain because of the efforts of an organization called Codex Alimentarius to regulate food and food supplements for the World Trade Organization (WTO). Codex Alimentarius, from the Latin, meaning Food Law, is usually referred to simply as Codex.

The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization jointly established Codex in 1962 to help advise nations on food standards for consumer protection. Peter Helgason and I attended the 26th Session of Codex in November 2004 on behalf of health freedom group, Friends of Freedom. It was at Codex in Bonn that we met a 30-year employee of Codex who told us that in 1995, the World Trade Organization took over Codex undermining its original intent. It was no longer in the hands of the 165 member nations of the WHO but in the hands of trade organizations in the 148 countries of the WTO who seem intent on standardizing everything to do with international trade in our emerging global economy. According to complex world trade agreements, which corporations and governments have created with very little public input or support, the decisions of Codex override national and local laws.

The main issue for health consumers is how Codex rules will affect our access to "food supplements". In countries where supplements are classified as drugs, Codex, apparently does not interfere, which sends a strong message to member countries to regulate their supplements as drugs leaving the rest of the world to fend for itself. In countries where supplements are still classified as food, Codex is developing, what appear to be, stringent rules to govern the so-called safety of these products exactly along the lines used for drugs. So, dietary supplements actually all end up in the same drug pot. It's very much like asking your child if he wants the drug in your right hand or the drug in your left hand-there is no choice at all. Food and supplement quality and purity are legitimate avenues for governments to pursue, however, Codex is setting limits on the amount of supplements that an individual consumer can purchase without a prescription. They are using the same scare tactics as outlined in the Canadian Natural Health Products Directorate by saying supplements are dangerous.

Discrediting Dietary Supplements
Unfortunately, Codex is run along the lines of the prevailing vitamins-for-deficiency lobby, which judges vitamins as dangerous and only safe in RDA dosages. If this continues we will be less able to treat the current epidemic of chronic vitamin deficiency diseases. You may have noted in the last year a number of headlines announcing that this or that vitamin is dangerous or shortens life in a particular research study. All these studies, when reviewed, have serious flaws, or have mysteriously reached the opposite conclusion of the actual study results. We see this as a pervasive policy to discredit supplements and scare legislators and the public into accepting supplement regulations. Please remember that dietary supplements are not dangerous.

It is quite apparent to those who have been following Codex and attending their meetings, such as Trueman Tuck, Peter Helgason, and Dr. Carolyn Dean of Friends of Freedom (www.friendsoffreedom.com) in Canada; John Hammell founder of International Advocates for Health Freedom (www.iahf.com), Suzanne Harris JD, of The Law Loft, Diane M Miller JD executive director of the National Health Freedom Coalition (www.nationalhealthfreedom.org, Suzan Walter of the American Holistic Health Association (www.ahha.org), and Scott Tips of the National Health Federation (www.thenhf.com) in the U.S.; Paul Taylor in the UK for the National Health Federation; and Tamara Theresa Mosegard from the organization May Day in Denmark that the Codex agenda for dietary supplements is that of the pharmaceutical companies. Scott Tips, legal counsel for the National Health Federation has been attending Codex meetings for about five years and manages to have a voice at Codex because his group is a recognized NGO. In most meetings, the NHF is the lone voice supporting health freedom. Big Pharma has enjoyed a monopoly in medicine for many long decades. The public, however, is becoming aware of the dangers of modern medicine as documented in "Death by Medicine". Big Pharma does not want to lose its lucrative monopoly and is lobbying governments and Codex for restrictive legislation on the supplement industry and simultaneously, systematically, and silently buying up supplement companies to control the market.