From American Association
for Health Freedom
“Food Safety” Bill: Bad News for Supplements (Ties U.S. to Codex) and Gives FDA Control Over Farming
The Senate’s “Food Safety” bill is better than the House’s in some important respects. For example, it drops the draconian jail sentences and fines for vague infractions including paperwork errors. But it includes a Codex provision that absolutely must be removed by amendment in order to protect free choice about supplements. Please take action to help ensure that this bill does not get through the Senate in its present form. Because of the importance of this bill, we will devote the entire newsletter to it.
A reminder: The Codex Alimentarius Commission was formed as a joint project of the World Agricultural Organization and the World Health Organization, both created by the United Nations. Codex’s stated mission is to protect the health of consumers and to ensure fair practice in food trade.
The problem is that Codex is dominated by Europe and Europe is putting into place an increasingly restrictive regime on supplements. Under this regime, a supplement containing more beta carotene than a couple of carrots is deemed dangerous, as is a supplement containing more lycopene (0.5mg) than might be found in a day’s consumption of tomatoes. Just to make it sillier, lycopene as a food additive is approved without limit by the world body Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) despite the European limit on supplement use.
These are European rules; they are not yet Codex rules. But because Europe has the dominant voice in Codex, it is quite likely that these same standards will be embraced by Codex. Why not? Even the US government, as presently represented by the anti-supplement FDA, would readily go along with these standards.
Why, by the way, does the FDA agree with the Europeans? We think the Agency’s judgment is warped by the fact that it depends so heavily on drug approval fees, and it also takes the view that unapproved supplements are competing with the approved drugs, even though absolutely no health claims by supplement producers are allowed. In other words, we think that the FDA has been captured by commercial drug interests, and that the FDA would welcome a chance to use Codex to shut down the supplement industry as we know it.
Read the article and contact your Senators to protect your freedom.
