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Codex Alert on Dietary Supplements
Separating Fact from Fiction
on the EU’s Codex Alimentarius
By Jim Turner, General Counsel for the Weston A. Price Foundation
There has been extensive email and internet traffic on Codex Alimentarius
(Latin for "food laws") and dietary guidelines, much of
which is erroneous and of a "sky is falling" tenor. Our
purpose is to provide well-grounded and reasoned information on this
very important subject.
The Codex Alimentarius Commission is an international organization
created by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World
Health Organization (WHO) in 1963 to write standards for pesticide residues,
food additives, and food identity. The Codex standards are voluntary
and must be adopted by a country before they can become the law of the
country. On January 1, 1995 the World Trade Organization (WTO) became
operational after seven years of international meetings and agreement.
WTO can order sanctions against a country that creates unreasonable
trade barriers. WTO recognizes Codex standard as reasonable barriers
to trade when a country complies with them.
The 28th meeting of The Codex Alimentarius Commission in Rome July
4-9, 2005 will consider adopting vitamin and mineral guidelines based
on regulatory principles that, while not immediately limiting the access
to dietary supplements of consumers in the United States, could significantly
restrict access to vitamin and mineral supplements worldwide. Consumers
should act to urge adoption of U.S. law as the international standard.
KEY POINTS
Natural health consumers must remain active and organized to protect
and expand their health rights. World-wide health could be undermined
by the limits to nutrients available in many countries created by Codex
guidelines.
Codex, itself, will not change U.S. laws. Codex upper potency
limits established for vitamins and minerals will not restrict U.S.
consumer access to high-potency vitamins and minerals, although U.S.
companies may choose to "dumb down" their potencies to mirror
their international formulations. U.S. lawmakers who oppose consumer
access to dietary supplements are likely to seize on the guidelines
to attempt to change U.S. law. Outside the U.S. the Codex guidelines
may create more access to vitamins and minerals in some countries while
restricting it in others.
Codex misapplies a toxic chemicals risk assessment model to regulate
helpful nutrients. Vitamin and mineral guidelines should evaluate
nutrients with nutrition science rather than with the toxicological
science used to evaluate toxins. Codex fails in this fundamental requirement
by erroneously applying toxic chemical risk assessment principles, such
as: nutrients should be treated as toxins; foods and nutrients are not
useful in treating disease; supplements have little value because people
can get the limited amounts they need from food; known reference values
are more important than unique individual nutrient needs; and Western
science is preferred to individual choice as the best control on access
to dietary supplements.
Codex reinforces, in its vitamin and mineral guidelines, its existing
prohibition on preventing truthful information about the ability of
foods and nutrients to treat, diagnose, prevent, mitigate and cure disease.
World hunger experts recognize that nutrient supplementation can be
extraordinarily useful in improving world health and eliminating disease
(vitamin A supplements in developing countries can offer 30 times as
much social improvement as one dollar of development aid), a fact which
the Codex vitamin and mineral guideline ignores.
Codex is not, and should not be confused with The European Food
Supplement Directive. The European Food Supplement Directive, currently
under legal attack in the European Union (EU), if upheld, which is likely,
will strictly limit European access to many dietary supplements. This
law governs European markets and is not part of Codex, though Codex
and the EU directive derive from the same basic toxic chemical risk
assessment principles.
Codex’s vitamin and mineral guideline should be replaced
by the U.S. Dietary Supplement Health Education Act (DSHEA) standard
as the international standard for vitamin, minerals and all other dietary
supplements. DSHEA, passed unanimously by the U.S. Congress in
1994, recognizes and protects the value of individuals making personal
nutritional and health choices in a way that is rejected by the Codex
guidelines. It is the culmination of 50 years of legislation and litigation
that has refined the supplement policy of the U.S. ensuring that individual
choice and need play a key role in ensuring private and public health.
The Codex guideline subordinates individual choice to professional expertise.
DSHEA balances professionals and people.
REVIEW OF THE CURRENT
CODEX SITUATION
Two important events are taking place this summer that will negatively
impact access to dietary supplements: 1) Codex is meeting with the goal
of establishing international agreement for how to regulate vitamins
and minerals; and 2) European citizens will lose access to thousands
of dietary supplements August 1, 2005 under the new European
Food Supplement Directive if it is upheld in court. This alert
addresses Codex only, not the EU Directive.
In July 2005, the Codex Alimentarius Commission will meet to approve
vitamin and mineral guidelines that were finalized by the Codex nutrition
committee in Bonn, Germany, in November 2004. If the committee
moves forward and approves these guidelines, Codex will restrict
access to vitamins and minerals in five ways:
- By setting "upper safe limits" (maximum potencies) for
each vitamin and mineral based on "scientific risk assessment."
Such limits treat nutrients as dangerous chemicals and restrict their
availability to consumers while undervaluing, if not ignoring completely,
supplement benefits; "dumb down" the flow of
useful nutrition information by imposing lowest common denominators
on the population at large, discourage nutritional information and ignore the
evidence for bio-chemical individuality (that there is a different
optimum nutritional intake for each individual, made increasingly
clear by mapping the genome).
- By marginalizing the nutrient supplement possibilities of the nearly
one billion people worldwide, who, by international standards, go
hungry, and the population-based Codex standards under-appreciate
the nutritional status of the remaining 4.6 billion people, a majority
of whom lack the recommended amount of one or more essential nutrients.
- By creating, through setting maximum vitamin and mineral
consumption limits, an approach to regulating dietary supplements,
which is consistent with and leading the way toward, if not itself
directly establishing, prior restraint. This would require marketers
to seek and obtain prior approval for their products before being
allowed to market them. Codex seeks to substitute its judgment about
efficacy and reasonable risk for that of the individual consumer.
- By narrowing the amount of nutrition and health information about
vitamins and minerals that consumers will be allowed to receive, asserting
that only "drugs" can contain label claims for products
that are suitable for the prevention, alleviation, treatment, or cure
of disease, disorder or particular physiological conditions.
- By fostering the world-wide health assumption that sufficient levels
of nutrients can be found in a regular diet. The United Nations itself,
during the Earth Summit, documented evidence of massive mineral depletion
in our soils over the past 50 years. Other research shows the
reduced nutritional profile of an industrial food system diet.
And, as stated above, billions of people, in rich and poor countries
alike, do not have sufficient access to nutritional food.
The Codex guidelines definitively limit much of the world’s
access to dietary supplements. The impact on the American consumer is
unclear and not so immediate. Nonetheless, Codex establishes a dangerous
precedent and negatively impacts health worldwide.
Committees of the Codex Commission other than the Committee On Nutrition
And Foods For Special Dietary Uses, the committee that recommended the
vitamin and mineral guidelines to the commission, routinely consider
matters relating to food trade that raise serious questions of consumer
safety and health such as Genetically Modified Organisms, irradiation,
antibiotics, hormones and pesticide residues in food, and rBGH growth
hormone in dairy cows.
Of these serious issues only the vitamin and mineral guidelines are
being considered by the Commission at its annual meeting in July of
2005. The other issues are in various stages of development and we will
keep you informed about their status and progress in upcoming issues
of the Journal.
Sidebar Article
PUBLIC ACTION
Codex information can be received from and sent to the U.S. Codex
Commission delegate Dr. F. Edward Scarbrough. Citizens for Health (CFH)
is preparing comments and an email campaign to be sent to the delegate.
CFH updates on Codex and campaign activities can be found at www.citizens.org
and will be posted on our website, www.westonaprice.org.
Foundation members will be alerted through our Action Alerts.
Dr. F. Edward Scarbrough
U.S. Manager for Codex
U.S. Department of Agriculture
4861-South Building
Washington, DC 20250
Phone: (202) 205-7760
Fax: (202) 720-3157
Public Meeting before Codex Commission in July
The U.S. Codex Office has scheduled a public meeting on June 9, 2005,
to discuss agenda items coming before the Codex Alimentarius Commission
session in Rome, Italy on July 4-9. For details, see http://www.fsis.usda.gov/regulations_&_
policies/Public_Meetings/index.asp.
The US Codex official website is
www.fsis.usda.gov/regulations_&_
policies/Codex_News_&_Comments_Requested/index.asp
For Further Information Contact:
U.S. Codex Office
Room 4861, South Building
Washington, DC 20250-3700
Phone: (202) 205-7760
Fax: (202) 720-3157
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