Codex Alimentarius Revised General Standards Allow for Higher Levels of Food Irradiation

Updated excerpt from  
Codex Alimentarius -- The End of Health Freedom

Brandon Turbeville

Activist Post 

Although the questionable means by which the General Standards For Irradiated Food was ratified are enough cause for concern in and of themselves, the revision of Codex’s position presents an even bigger danger to the food supply than the original version.  This revised policy seems to be part of an ongoing disregard by federal agencies who are charged with protecting the public.  Just recently, the EPA modified their Protective Action Guides for radiation exposure to Americans in the wake of the Fukushima disaster. 

The revised General Standard For Irradiated Food is remarkable because of its crafty use of technical wording to allow much higher, even limitless, amounts of irradiation in food. Prior to the change in 2003, the limits were set at 10 kGy, an amount of radiation that is the equivalent of 330 million chest x-rays, a procedure that is dangerous in and of itself when only done once. [1] 

However, even the limit set prior to 2003 is not as strict as the current FDA regulations and the regulations of most other nations. Currently, the FDA sets limits on the amount of food irradiation on a case-by-case basis with some foods allowed to receive more radiation than others.[2] 

Codex, however, makes no such distinction and levels a blanket endorsement of irradiation regardless of the type of food. [3] Nevertheless, most of the upper limits for radiation set by even the FDA (which are themselves intolerable) are lower than those set by Codex.  By FDA standards, only two categories are allowed the pre-2003 Codex 10kGy maximum.

Codex Alimentarius and Food Irradiation in the U.S.

Food irradiation symbol -- Wiki Commons

Updated excerpt from  
Codex Alimentarius -- The End of Health Freedom

Brandon Turbeville

Activist Post 

I have written several articles dealing with the risk assessment methods used by Codex Alimentarius in order to water down the levels of nutrition available in vitamin and mineral supplements, as well as the potential removal of many supplements from the market entirely. All of this is of vital importance. However, Codex Alimentarius Guidelines are relevant to many more issues than just vitamins and minerals. One of these issues has to do with food irradiation.

Clearly a threat to public health, irradiated foods are not safe for human consumption and contribute to a host of health problems such as cancer and birth defects. Irradiation also causes genetic damage to cells.[1] One of the reasons for this is the fact that irradiated food is exposed to gamma rays of radioactive material or electron beams causing chemical changes in the food. 

Essentially, the food becomes mutated by this exposure, a condition which does not occur in nature, and is the cause for many forms of cancer and genetic modification.[2]  Yet, Codex pushes irradiation as if it were a great tool of disinfection with no adverse side effects at all. 

Time to Quit Pining for a “Level Playing Field” in International Trade

Ian Fletcher

Activist Post

One of the most common plaints from those who are upset about America’s current trade mess is “just give us a level playing field.”  In particular, this is what one tends to hear from American businesses (at least those which have resisted the siren song of offshoring) that are hard pressed by “unfair” foreign competition.  It’s hard not to be sympathetic, and on an individual basis, my heart goes out to them.

Unfortunately, the whole idea of a level playing field in international trade is basically a mirage as an aspiration, and we’ll all be better off if we stop pining for one right now.

As I pointed out in a previous article, the concept of “fair” trade, while of some finite usefulness in the context of things like fair trade coffee, is basically a non-starter as a serious solution for economic problems, either here or abroad.  And unfortunately, the cry of  “all we want is a level playing field” is just another way of asking for fair trade. 

The fundamental problem is this: a true level playing field would require not just equal rules for international trade, but also that nations have the same domestic economic policies, as these can also confer an export advantage.

WTO Judicial Activism vs. America

Ian Fletcher

Activist Post

The WTO’s latest outrage has brought this odious organization to public attention again, but this is hardly the first time it has sided against American interests.

For example, it has for years engaged in judicial activism aimed at systematically rewriting American trade law to our disadvantage. As Robert Lighthizer, a former Deputy U.S. Trade Representative, told a hearing of the House Trade Subcommittee in 2007:

Rogue WTO panel and Appellate Body decisions have consistently undermined U.S. interests by inventing new legal requirements that were never agreed to by the United States....Our trading partners have been able to obtain through litigation what they could never achieve through negotiation. The result has been a loss of sovereignty for the United States in its ability to enact and enforce laws for the benefit of the American people and American businesses. The WTO has increasingly seen fit to sit in judgment of almost every kind of sovereign act, including U.S. tax policy, foreign policy, environmental measures, and public morals, to name a few. [Hearing on “Trade Enforcement for a 21st Century Economy,” Finance Committee, U.S Senate, June 12, 2007.]

WTO Sides With Chinese State Capitalism Against the U.S.

Ian Fletcher

Activist Post 

The World Trade Organization has a long history of anti-American actions.  They’ve just handed us another one, and in the process handed a big freebie to Chinese state capitalism.

Unbeknownst to most Americans, huge sections of our nation’s trade policy aren’t set in this country anymore.  They are set by panels of WTO judges in Switzerland, to whom we have signed over the right to rule on the legitimacy of our policies.

At issue in a WTO ruling handed down last Friday is how much scope the U.S. is entitled to in trying to level the playing field for American companies competing against companies subsidized under China’s system of state capitalism.

The specific products at issue in the ruling are steel tubing, off-road tires, and woven sacks.  However, as in domestic legal rulings, the implications go far beyond the immediate subject matter.

Since July 2008, the U.S. has imposed tariffs on $200 million worth of steel pipe imports from China, South Korea, and Mexico.

Why?  The American position is that we are entitled to apply what are called “countervailing duties” against products that are subsidized by foreign governments. And on top of that, we are also entitled to apply duties designed to counteract the practice of dumping, or selling a product below cost in order to destroy foreign competitors.

Both these responses on our part have long histories of being accepted as legitimate, both under international trade law and in economics.  (This is why the WTO had originally accepted our position; the new ruling is actually the result of an appeal by China.)

In terms of international law, one can trace the legitimacy of our policies at least as far back as the founding of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the WTO’s predecessor, in 1947.

In terms of economics, their justifying logic is very simple.

In the case of subsidies, free trade only makes sense if it really is free, which means that a thumb on the scale at one end of the transaction justifies a tariff, or counter-subsidy, at the other end.

In the case of dumping, free trade is not justified if one side sells below cost in order to wipe out the other and thus eventually grab the market (or most of it) for itself.  Even if the attempt fails, the damage done to our industries will be real, and by then it will be too late.

There’s no serious question about whether China engages in subsidies and dumping.  That’s why, in this case, we imposed duties of up to 200 percent to offset their subsidies, plus up to 265 percent to counteract their dumping.

Enter state capitalism. The flashpoint of the current dispute centers on the vexed question of what price constitutes dumping in a non-free-market economy.

In a free-market economy like our own, dumping is considered to occur when a product is sold abroad for either less than its production cost, or less than what it is sold for domestically.  Unfortunately, in an economy like China’s, which is so tightly controlled by the government that many prices are essentially whatever the government says they are, this logic doesn’t work.  There are no normal prices to observe in order to figure out how big the subsidy is.  So the U.S. Government has been using various statistical techniques to calculate the relevant prices. 

The WTO has ruled that our techniques are not legit.  Bottom line? We're supposed to overlook the vast panoply of subsidies—ranging from free land to cheap loans and a million different tax credits—because state capitalism makes them tricky to calculate.

Free traders are celebrating this ruling.  Unfortunately, “free” is the last thing trade with subsidized state capitalism is. It’s controlled.  Just not in our interests. 

As with many of America’s trade problems, it’s not like we didn’t see this coming.  As Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers, has rightly pointed out in protest against this ruling,
When China joined the WTO in 2001, it agreed to be treated as a non-market economy in dumping cases and to be subject to countervailing duty laws, but today the Appellate Body appears to have created special carve outs for China that neither the U.S. nor anyone else agreed to ten years ago.

When will we ever learn?  China views trade as economic warfare by other means, and we keep expecting the WTO to somehow make them play fair.  We will keep losing jobs and industries until we wise up.

Ian Fletcher is Senior Economist of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a nationwide grass-roots organization dedicated to fixing America’s trade policies and comprising representatives from business, agriculture, and labor. He was previously Research Fellow at the U.S. Business and Industry Council, a Washington think tank founded in 1933 and before that, an economist in private practice serving mainly hedge funds and private equity firms. Educated at Columbia University and the University of Chicago, he lives in San Francisco. He is the author of Free Trade Doesn’t Work: What Should Replace It and Why.

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Weakness of U.S. Natural Health Laws Revealed in Europe

Brandon Turbeville

Activist Post 

In the previous article I discussed Codex Alimentarius and, more specifically, the DSHEA (Dietary Supplement Health Education Act) in relation to it. I pointed out that the DSHEA law, while a step in the right direction, has major holes in the “protections” it provides for vitamin and mineral supplements. It is therefore important to look at the situation in which natural health advocates find themselves in Europe in order to see the position in which they will soon find themselves in the United States.

Implementation of the Codex machinery has been even more successful in the European Union, at least in relation to vitamin and mineral supplements. In 2002, the EU produced the European Union Food Supplements Directive which is almost identical to the Codex platform for vitamin and mineral supplements.[1]  While a grace period of around eight years was allowed for individual states to exercise their dying sovereignty, the Food Supplements Directive (FSD) went into full effect on December 31, 2009 across the EU, making it the country closest to achieving complete Codex compliance.[2] This deadline has given rise to claims that Codex Alimentarius would be implemented on December 31, 2009 the world over, and that, all of a sudden, natural supplements would no longer be available and themselves be replaced by toxic chemicals. The claim that such a situation would occur is not unbelievable. Rather, it is actually quite probable as one can see through the discussion made thus far. However, that such a situation would occur in such a sudden manner is somewhat less likely.

Unfortunately, most of the people making these claims did so out of ignorance, and some simply were taken out of context. Regardless of how this rumor was started, it is false and those like it only serve to hinder the fight against Codex and obfuscate its dangers. No doubt many woke up on January 1, 2010 and dismissed Codex Alimentarius as a silly conspiracy theory with little relevance to their health based upon the fact that the sky did not fall the night before, as they had been told it would.[3] 

That said, a major step in the implementation of Codex standards was taken on December 31, 2009 when the EU FSD went into effect. In many aspects, the FSD is almost a carbon copy of the Codex Alimentarius Guidelines for Vitamin and Mineral Food Supplements. Exuding a philosophical and policy similarity, it is mentioned in one of the opening statements of the Directive that “Excessive intake of vitamins and minerals may result in adverse effects and therefore necessitate the setting of maximum safe levels for them in food supplements.”[4] 
From the outset, the FSD expresses the same biased stance towards natural supplements as Codex, even though the adverse effects to taking large amounts of natural supplements are almost completely insignificant, especially when compared to those of pharmaceuticals. Nevertheless, this is the justification used for the ensuing attack on basic god-given rights of European citizens.

Similar to Codex Guidelines, the FSD contains provisions for the establishment of maximum levels of nutrient content for supplements. Paragraph 14 states:

When maximum levels are set, therefore, account should be taken of the upper safe levels of the vitamins and minerals, as established by scientific risk assessment based on generally acceptable scientific data, and of intakes of those nutrients from the normal diet. Due account should also be taken of reference intake amounts when setting maximum levels.[5]

Not only does the FSD provide for maximum levels for nutrients, it also bases its determinations, as does Codex, on the flawed methodology known as risk assessment.

Also, it will take the Global Average Daily Diet into account. This is what is meant when it states that “intakes of those nutrients from the normal diet” will be given due account.[6]  
It should be noted that Article 5 Section 1 completely copies (or vice versa) the Codex Guidelines section 3.2.2. They both state, word for word, “Maximum amounts of vitamins and minerals present in food supplements per daily portion of consumption as recommended by the manufacturer shall be set, taking the following into account: (a) upper safe levels of vitamins and minerals established by scientific risk assessment based on generally accepted scientific data, taking into account, as appropriate, the varying degrees of sensitivity of different consumer groups; (b) intake of vitamins and minerals from other dietary sources.”[7]  
It seems very suspect that a supposedly unrelated “regulatory” agency and a European Union law would contain the exact same language without some kind of common connection between the two. Indeed, as mentioned above, while the rest of the law might not be a literal word-for-word carbon copy of the Guidelines, in principle it is exactly that. It should be a cause for concern or, at the very least, skeptical curiosity, when laws or policies begin to be enacted simultaneously in different countries and/or international governing and administrative bodies.

The FSD also provides for the establishment of minimum levels of nutrients. It states, “To ensure that significant amounts of vitamins and minerals are present in food supplements, minimum amounts per daily portion of consumption as recommended by the manufacturer shall be set, as appropriate.”[8]   Although, unlike the Codex Guidelines, the Directive is not specific in terms of percentages, it clearly provides for the two-pronged attack of simultaneous maximum and minimum levels of nutrients in food supplements.

The most frightening aspect of the FSD, however, is not the maximum and minimum levels but the Positive and Negative Lists that are created. All the vitamins and minerals allowed in food supplements are included in the FSD Positive List, while those not included are completely banned for use in supplementation. [9]  The list itself is quite restrictive, prohibiting the production, sale, and distribution of many different vitamin and mineral substances. As the Directive states: 

Only vitamins and minerals normally found in, and consumed as part of, the diet should be allowed to be present in food supplements although that this does not mean that their presence therein is necessary. Controversy as to the identity of those nutrients that could potentially arise should be avoided. Therefore, it is appropriate to establish a positive list of those vitamins and minerals.[10] 

Restricting the inclusion of vitamins and minerals to only those that are part of the diet is bad enough. However, the language of “only vitamins and minerals normally found in, and consumed as part of, the diet,” adds an even more limiting scope.[11]  This is because such language not only limits the approved substances to those found in food, but to those found in the diet of Europeans specifically. Even then, it is only those substances that are “normally” consumed.

Also, the antipathy towards the discovery of new nutrients is clearly expressed in the desire to avoid controversy “as to the identity of those nutrients that could potentially arise.”[12] 
Not only that, but the Directive quietly gives the Council and the Commission of the EU the authority to remove any substance that it wishes from the Positive List. In Article 4, section 5 of the Directive it states, “Modification to the lists referred to in paragraph 1 [the Positive Lists] shall be adopted in accordance with the procedure referred to in Article 13(2).”[13]  Article 13, Section 2 then reads, “When reference is made to this paragraph, Articles 5 and 7 of Decision 1999/468/EC shall apply, having regard to the provisions of Article 8 thereof.”[14]  When one reads these sections of the cited law, it becomes apparent that the authority to change those substances on the Positive Lists is granted to the Council and the Commission.[15]  

Considering the various mechanisms of the WTO, it is only a matter of time before the EU decides to take the US to international trade court over its more liberal supplement market. If this ever occurs, the protections provided by DSHEA will immediately disappear and we would see an immediate change of policy towards natural supplements. This is precisely why the EU FSD means so much to the US DSHEA.

Notes:

---

[1] Tipps, Scott C. “”Foreword – Codex Alimentarius: Global Food Imperialism – What is Codex?” Ed. Scott C. Tipps. FHR. 2007. P. IV.[2] Starling, Shane. “Food Supplements Directive: Stay positive (or bans may follow).” Nutraingredients.com January 8, 2010. http://www.nutraingredients.com/Regulation/Food-Supplements-Directive-Stay-positive-or-bans-may-follow [3]  Press Release: National Health Federation. “December 31, 2009 – Where Were You When The Earth Ended?” January 4, 2010. http://www.thenhf.com/press_releases/pr_04_jan_2010.html [4]  Directive 2002/46/EC Of The European Parliament And Of The Council of 10 June 2002 on the approximation of the laws of the member states relating to food supplements. “Codex Alimentarius: Global Food Imperialism.” Ed. Scott C. Tips. FHR. 2007. Pp. 237-243[5] Ibid.[6] Ibid. [7] Ibid.

See Also,

“Guidelines for Vitamin and Mineral Food Supplements.”http://www.codexalimentarius.net/search/advanced.do?lang=en
[8] Directive 2002/46/EC Of The European Parliament And Of The Council of 10 June 2002 on the approximation of the laws of the member states relating to food supplements. “Codex Alimentarius: Global Food Imperialism.” Ed. Scott C. Tips. FHR. 2007. Pp. 237-243[9] Ibid. [10] Ibid. p. 237[11] Ibid. [12] Ibid. [13] Ibid. p.239[14] Ibid. p. 240.[15]  “Council Decision of 28 June 1999 laying down the procedures for the exercise of implementing powers conferred on the Commission (*) (1999/468/EC)”http://www.ena.lu/council_decision_1999_468_ec_laying_down_procedures_exercise_implementing_powers_june_1999-02-4941     Accessed April 21, 2010.   

Brandon Turbeville is an author out of Mullins, South Carolina. He has a Bachelor’s Degree from Francis Marion University where he earned the Pee Dee Electric Scholar’s Award as an undergraduate. He has had numerous articles published dealing with a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, and civil liberties. He also the author of Codex Alimentarius - The End of Health Freedom   
  

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Challenging The Conventional Wisdom on Free Trade

Ian Fletcher

Activist Post 

Free trade has been the conventional wisdom in the U.S. for so long that many people have forgotten that it is even possible to challenge its fundamental assumptions.  It is supposedly a settled truth of economics that free trade is always best and that anyone who questions it is either merely ignorant or the spokesperson of some special interest.  Protectionism supposedly belongs to the dark past —despite the fact that we ourselves accuse some of the world’s most successful economies, like China, of practicing it in the 21st century. 

But in reality, free trade is not generating rising prosperity, rather a relentless economic headwind which “caps” the incomes of  ordinary Americans by competitive pressure from foreign nations, some of which suppress their own wages by undemocratic means.  According to the Census Bureau  (see  page seven of this report, real median family income in 2008, the last year for which complete data are available, was actually slightly lower than in 1999. An entire decade has proved a giant economic bust for the average American, even before the recession.

The hard fact is that the U.S. economy has ceased generating net new jobs in internationally-traded sectors. All our job growth is now in non-tradable sectors like waitresses and security guards.  We were promised that high tech jobs would be America’s salvation, but this failed, as we have been running a deficit in high technology since 2002.  High-tech jobs are not going to save us.  Neither, given the rise of offshoring, are service jobs, given that service jobs immune to offshoring (because they must be performed in person) are either too elite to help most people (surgeons) or low-paid (the aforementioned waitresses and security guards). 

The supposedly intellectually-impeccable economic economics that vindicates free trade is, as I discuss in my new book Free Trade Doesn’t Work: What Should Replace it and Why, a tangle of weak reasoning, outdated facts, and outright corruption.  It ultimately comes down to counting up the (undenied) benefits of free trade, then assuming that these benefits “must” surpass free trade’s costs because of economic logic that is either: 

a) Simply assumed, either by sleight-of-hand or  on the grounds of  laissez faireideology.


or


b) Based on cartoonish oversimplifications of how real economies work, economic theories that haven’t been updated since Ricardo’s 1817 theory of comparative advantage, and factual premises that are observably not true today.

The great irony is that these problems are no real mystery.  The problems with free trade have, in fact, been understood for hundreds of years—indeed since free trade was first advocated at the dawn of modern capitalism 400 years ago.  They were certainly understood when America was founded: it is no accident that the U.S. was historically a protectionist economy. This is why the Founding Fathers explicitly granted Congress the power “to regulate commerce with foreign nations” in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.

If protectionism is such a terrible and un-American idea, why did the U.S. go from being an agricultural backwater to the world’s industrial superpower under this policy?  In our pre-WWII tariff era,  we had the world’s highest standard of living despite the fact that imports were well under five percent of GDP.  (They are 17 percent today.) The average American was roughly twice as well-off as the average Englishman, despite the fact that Britain in this era had imports roughly three times our scale.

Free traders often defend free trade by reminding us of the benefits of trade. These are real. But trade and free trade are not the same thing. Nobody protectionist in America today is proposing abolishing all trade, but we don’t need a trading system without reasonable limits in order to gain from some foreign goods and foreign competition. We rejected pure laissez faire in our domestic economy a very long time ago, in the Progressive Era around the turn of the 20th century; there’s no good reason to suppose it makes any more sense internationally. 

When free traders can’t sell the economics of free trade, they resort to mythology about its supposed political effects.  But free trade does not promote democracy, human rights, or peace. Instead, it massively enriches governments like that of China, enabling them to buy the bullets they need to oppress their own peoples and menace their neighbors.  And free trade has been the origin of shooting wars for a long time: that’s how Hong Kong became British. Human rights?  Under the WTO’s free-trade rules, the sanctions imposed on South Africa in 1986 would now be illegal.   

Ian Fletcher is a Research Fellow at the U.S. Business & Industry Council, a Washington-based think tank founded in 1933, and author of the new book Free Trade Doesn’t Work: What Should Replace it and Why. His website for his book is at freetradedoesntwork.   He can be contacted at ian.fletcher@usbic.net.

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S. 510 and Codex Alimentarius Link: Tracking, Tracing, and Monitoring Independent Food Production

Regulated out of existence under S. 510

Brandon Turbeville
Activist Post

Being honest, I must confess some slight personal agitation at the thought of writing another article on yet another “food safety” bill making its way through congress with the words “tyranny” and “Codex” written all over it. It seems that every legislative session, we are faced with the prospect of the same food bill cloaked in a different name. Invariably, this bill seeks to corral all food production into the hands of a few major corporations and essentially destroy the ability of the population to feed themselves. Here in late 2010, we have the new version of food imperialism known as S.510, the Food Safety Modernization Act.




While it is true that S.510 contains new and improved tyrannical sections that are unique specifically to it, the truth is that it is merely a repackaging of past bills  (See here and here ) and attempts to control people through food. It is also yet another attempt to implement Codex Alimentarius guidelines under the guise of domestic legislation.




One example of hidden Codex guidelines in the Food Safety Modernization Act are the overly broad provisions regarding “traceability.” The desire for enhanced traceability of food products is sold to the public as a desire to better respond to food-borne illnesses and follow them back to their source. However, as with almost anything that comes out of the mouth of government, there is a more sinister role that traceability programs have to play. 





Essentially, traceability has little to do with food safety in this context. While no one could argue being able to trace food contamination back to the source is a bad thing, the fact is that these mechanisms already exist. Unfortunately, they are generally ignored and unused when it comes to adverse health effects related to food produced by multinational food corporations. While there is always an exception to the rule, it is a fact that international corporations are by far the source of food adulteration more often than small independent farms.




The real reason behind traceability programs lies in the desire to monitor where food is coming from to ensure that, in the future, it only comes from large agribusiness. Hence, the new traceability procedures  involve massive financial, management, and bureaucratic burdens placed on the shoulders of mainly small “food producers.”




It should be pointed out that, while it is true that major corporations will also be burdened with these regulations (unless the Secretary exempts them), it is also true that a company that makes billions in profits can afford to deal with them. Your neighborhood farm down the road simply can’t. 





For all the claims that small independent producers will be exempted, the fact is that the “exemption” is merely semantics. Small independent producers will be held to essentially the same guidelines as Big Agro. This is because, in order to be exempted from the regulations as S.510, they have to submit to similar regulations as the S.510 regulations themselves dictate. As Eric Blair points out in his article Why the Tester Amendment Does NOT Help Small Food Producers Under S.510:





Those [S.510 Tester Amendment Exemption Requirements] bear a striking resemblance to the ‘expensive’ food safety plans outlined in subsection (h) of S.510 that small producers are supposedly exempt from. In other words, they must submit similarly comprehensive plans just to qualify to be exempt from creating them. But it gets worse.
  If Grandma wants to sell her famous raspberry jam at the county fair (within 275 miles of her canning kitchen) she will indeed be a small producer exemptions, but not before she forks over 3 years of financials, documentation of hazard control plans, and local licenses, permits, and inspection reports. She must submit this documentation to the satisfactory approval of the Secretary; and if she fails to do so, the entirety of S.510 can be enforced on her. That’s hardly what I call an exemption.


He goes on to point out that the bill does not explicitly make it illegal to sell food independently produced, but it does make it so cumbersome that small producers will be unable to maintain compliance with the law. 





While one could successfully argue that by forcing independent producers to file information and obtain permits and licenses is in fact making the production of food illegal, there is no doubt that small producers will be forced out of business by the overbearing regulation.




Nevertheless, cumbersome traceability provisions have surfaced before in other areas. In reading the traceability-related sections of S.510, there is a striking similarity between the language of the bill and that of Codex Alimentarius in its own proposed guidelines. 



The HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point), a “food safety” methodology used by Codex Alimentarius (and addressed in S.510), plays an important role in the tracking, tracing, and monitoring of food production. Under this system, food business operators (defined so broadly so as to include both big agribusiness and recreational gardeners) are required to “identify any steps in their operations which are critical to the safety of the food; implement effective control procedures at those steps; monitor control procedures to ensure their continuing effectiveness; review control procedures periodically and whenever the operations change.” 

Likewise, in the document entitled, “Recommended International Code of Practice General Principles of Food Hygeine,” Codex states that “Where necessary, appropriate records of processing, production and distribution should be kept and retained for a period that exceeds the shelf-life of the product. Documentation can enhance the credibility and effectiveness of the food safety control mechanism.” Although the language of the bill and the Codex document are not identical in every section, they are similar. Unfortunately, this is all that is needed to initiate the implementation of Codex Alimentarius guidelines in the United States.
 


However, there is yet another danger posed by S.510 in regards to Codex Alimentarius. The fact that this bill provides the FDA, HHS, and even DHS with even more authority over food production, transportation, and consumption should be alarming enough. But because these agencies often respond to policy as much as they do law, the chances of Codex Alimentarius guidelines being implemented domestically rises sharply. This is due to the fact that no congressional approval would be needed to implement them. Simply an executive order or change in policy from the executive branch or even the FDA, HHS, or DHS acting independently would be enough to enact Codex guidelines in the United States. 

Because Codex Alimentarius guidelines are enforced by the WTO, any dispute brought before the WTO and its dispute settlement board could essentially force the United States to buckle under and implement Codex guidelines. With the passage of S.510, the need to gain congressional approval for such a change would be effectively erased. 

Yet while Codex guidelines can be enforced through the WTO in one fell swoop, it is much more likely that they will be implemented by stealth. Introduced gradually and under the cover of domestic legislation, the chance of organized public resistance is greatly reduced. Without a doubt, the majority of Americans have no idea what Codex Alimentarius actually is. In fact, it is an unfortunate reality that the majority of the American public have no idea what S.510 is. Even to the relatively informed individual, the legislation is merely just another government power grab. Little do they know that is a major step forward on the path to a global dictatorship which uses food as a weapon and a means of control. 
 
Those who ridicule activists and opponents of S.510 as paranoid conspiracy theorists march unwittingly down a road which leads directly to just such a global tyranny where food will be most definitely taken – but not for granted. 


Brandon Turbeville is an author out of Mullins, South Carolina. He has a Bachelor’s Degree from Francis Marion University where he earned the Pee Dee Electric Scholar’s Award as an undergraduate. He has had numerous articles published dealing with a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, and civil liberties. He also the author of Codex Alimentarius - The End of Health Freedom 


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Absolute power comes from absolute control over food

Devinder Sharma
Ground Reality

Ever since I was a child I have been drinking milk bought directly from a small dairy in my neighbourhood. When I moved to New Delhi, for some months I managed to get my direct supply of milk from a neighbourhood supplier. But soon, the buffalo-keeper moved out his animals under pressure from builders. This was almost two decades back, and since then I am left with little option but to buy processed milk.

However, there are millions in India who can afford to avoid intake of processed milk and I think they are the lucky ones. I wish I could still buy my daily requirement of milk from the small neighbourhood dairies that dot the outskirts of New Delhi, and elsewhere.

I was therefore shocked when I viewed the accompanying video on YouTube.

Police raiding an organic grocery shop in California.

This is certainly outrageous. But this is a grim pointer to where the next battles would be fought. It is not water, as many people believe, but food that will be putting nations at war. You can clearly see, if you want to, where it is coming from. Multinational food giants have been slowly but steadily gaining control over food. They know that absolute control over food is the road to absolute power.


The process of takeover of food simultaneously began on several fronts. It began with Green Revolution in the late 1960s, which was essentially to provide controlled technology to increase farm production in developing countries. This was followed with Structural Adjustment Programme that the World Bank/IMF pushed seeking policy changes through the 150-odd conditionality's that came with every loan. To provide more teeth to the process, the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and the Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) have been brought in.

Technology is now controlled through the instruments of Trade-related Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs), and unhindered grain trade is made possible by the unjust obligations that developing countries have been made to accept under the so-called free trade paradigm. To complete the control over the entire food chain, the third actor in the game -- food retail -- is now being moved across the national borders. G-20 is pushing for compliance, asking member countries to streamline the norms that facilitate the entry of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Multi-Brand Retail.

Internationally, the food trio -- Monsanto/Syngenta as symbol of the technology providers;Cargill/ADM among the major food trading companies; and Wal-Mart and Tesco representing food retail -- have formed an unholy alliance They operate in unison, making the governments fall in line. Food laws are being changed everywhere across the globe to make it easy for the trio to operate. WTO is helping to push farmers out of agriculture thereby making it easier for these multinationals to march on. IPR laws are bringing the necessary changes in national laws in conformity with internationally designed parameters bringing private control over technology.

The process of takeover of food is now complete.

But there are still irritating impediment on the way to absolute control over food. Alert and conscious consumers are not giving up so easily, and they are gaining in strength. Even in the United States and Europe, more and more people are realising the dangers of processed foods, and silently moving away to organic foods. The annual market for organic foods is growing at a phenomenal 20 per cent. This has to be stopped. So the regulators are now working overtime to outlaw organic foods. The underlying objective is to limit your food choice. You will be left with no option but to buy what the food giants want you to buy. Hobson's choice, isn't it?

In the name of food safety, which is a misnomer, food laws are being changed. S 510 is one such law that the US is considering to bring in. One of the world's most corrupt body -- US FDA -- is at work. It is working overtime to outlaw organic food. The prescription is simple: GM food is what you should be eating, organic food is bad for your health. That's the best it can do. The police raid in an organic store in California therefore is just the beginning. You wait and watch. The day is not far when the police will enter your kitchen. In the name of Mendel in the Kitchen, Nina Fedoroff, presently science advisor to the Secretary of State, is working hard to police your kitchen.

There are some who realise the threat ahead. This is what someone wrote in the comments section of the YouTube: I go to my apt garbage bin and search out empty general mills cereal boxes and various gmo containers, wash them out and sterilize them and place my organic foodstuff inside because I don't want to be dragged down to jail. I can't afford a criminal record, to maintain my job.

I don't know what is happening to the United States. Whenever I see the Statue of Liberty I can't miss the tears in her eyes. Only the Americans refuse to see it. As my film-maker friend Ajay Kanchan often says:America is the country where civil liberties have been mortgaged to the multinationals. People live in virtual tyranny. I am in complete agreement. I can only feel sorry for fellow Americans. But I can assure you the world outside is waiting to help you, to pull you out of the police rule. Come, let us join hands. Let us try to regain our control over what we eat.

And if you still believe, the police is acting right. Read this letter (from someone with the user name 12dogpal): 'They did not ban the H1N1 virus infection at the factory pig farm in Mexico where the virus was released. The pork was still sold in the USA. They didn't close the Wright County Egg farm for poisoning the food supply, they didn't close Wal-Mart for passing out e.coli beef. They didn't stop the drug co's from putting out dangerous drugs, lets face it folks, your government is your worst enemy.'

How true?

As Jawaharlal Nehru had said during the days of the British Raj: Freedom is in peril, defend it with all your might. Start by saying no to S 510. Remember, regaining control over our food is the ultimate freedom.

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