Who can afford to not dance the Codex tango?

 Ironically, it’s European countries that should know better than anyone else the cost of not dancing to the tune of Codex! They’ve been wearing annual fines of $117 million to the USA and around $11 million to Canada because Europe has refused to import beef and dairy products derived from cattle fed genetically engineered (recombinant) bovine growth hormone (rbGH). In short, Codex—very controversially—says that rbGH-containing meat is safe, so any country that poses a barrier to trade suffers at the hands of the WTO, which in this case, has imposed fines to the two countries, the USA and Canada, who are unable to export to Europe. Bear in mind, these are not one off fines. The fines are annual and will continue relentlessly until the obstructive country decides to abide by the rules overseen by the WTO.

While this might be okay if you’re a superpower like Europe, where you’re collecting taxes from nearly 500 million people, it’s a non-starter for smaller countries wanting to be conscientious objectors to the Codex steamroller. Now you’ll understand why you’ll continue to see a very standard language put out by regulators around the world to help stop us—the consumer and members of the general public—protesting against Codex. We’re told repeatedly: “Why are you worrying about Codex, it’s a voluntary system. While we, your government, may have to comply with Codex for exports, we wouldn’t dream of imposing Codex within our national territories.” Check out what the US Food & Drug Administration says about it at: http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~DMS/dscodex.html. The problem, however, is as Codex and government authorities carry on pushing the line that these restrictions have been proposed because of internationally agreed scientific opinion—albeit a highly flawed opinion—there will be increasing pressure to apply Codex restrictions for in-country use as well as exports, thereby banishing the two-tier system the USA is presently advocating.

Coming back to the rbGH issue, there’s plenty of suggestions that Europe is no longer prepared to remain out of step. It can barely afford to, it says. The European Commission, amidst the deeply misinformed reframing campaign suggesting that GM is needed to feed the world’s population being run by world governments and a clutch of biotechnology companies led by Monsanto, is gearing up to drop its 8-year-long moratorium against GM cultivation. It’s bought into the misinformation, wittingly or unwittingly, and unless we—the people—oppose it, the international trade in low nutrition foods and supplements, as well as GM foods, is set in the coming years to become the norm.  

Boiling the frog slowly

We’ve mentioned above how one particular piece of European legislation, the EU Food Supplements Directive, acts as a template for one guideline in Codex, the Codex Guideline on Vitamin and Mineral Food Supplements. The problem is that there is a rash of Directives and Regulations affecting natural health being developed in the EU, and there are many more Codex guidelines either already on the drawing board or being planned.

Contrary to much of the (mis)information about Codex, Codex concerns itself only with foods—and not with medicines. It deals with every aspect of food including GM, food additives, pesticide residues and the like. While it seems likely that, over time, Codex will approve the use of more and more synthetic additives, more and more GM foods and facilitate the increasing dumbing down of standards on organic foods, it will undoubtedly lower the threshold dosages by which food supplements can be called foods (rather than drugs), as well as limiting the types of ingredients, including botanical substances, that can be regarded as foods or food supplements.

This push is deliberately intended to occur over many years, so that people can become increasingly accustomed to the transition. And it is aided by the media calls questioning the safety of food and dietary supplements—nearly all of it based either on misrepresentations of published studies or on flawed or irrelevant studies—that aims to condition the general public to the proposed future loss of these products from the marketplace.