Huge Supplements Ban Coming To Europe

[Guest guest]

http://www.thehealthcrusader.com/pgs/article-0104-ban.shtml

 

Huge Supplements Ban Coming To Europe

BLOWING THE WHISTLE ON THE COVER-UP

 

An Interview with John Hammell of International

Advocates For Health Freedom (IAHF)

by Greg Ciola

 

Crusador Newsletter DEC-JAN 2004, (ISSUE 16)

 

In August 2005, everything in Europe is about to change. Over 300 bioavailable

nutrient forms present in over 5,000 safe vitamin and mineral products that

include a large number of the safest, most readily absorbed and most effective,

food-derived forms will be banned from the market. It stems from radical

legislation passed in Europe by member State governments in June 2002 known as

the EU Food Supplements Directive (FSD). The list of banned items includes

natural vitamin forms such as mixed tocopherols (natural vitamin E), carotenoids

and methylcobalamin, all forms of sulphur, boron, vanadium, silicon and most

trace elements, the most readily absorbed and safest forms of calcium,

magnesium, zinc, selenium, chromium and molybdenum. It will severely limit the

doses of vitamins and other nutrients allowed in products, removing all

high-dose products from the market. It will include future restrictions on

nutrient forms other than vitamins and minerals such as fatty acids, amino

acids,

enzymes, probiotics, phytonutrients, etc. It will dramatically limit future

innovation in the dietary supplement industry, with consequent serious impacts

on retail outlets, complementary practitioners and consumers who choose to take

responsibility for their own health.

 

In addition to denying most Europeans access to safe nutritional supplements,

this draconian EU Directive is going to be used as the blueprint for

establishing international dietary supplement laws at Codex of which the U.S.

has agreed to adopt. If this happens, which is a very likely scenario in the

next year or so, Codex will outlaw or severely restrict virtually everything

millions of us have grown accustomed to using safely every day. We no longer

live in a world where national borders mean much of anything. We are witnessing

the rapid unification of the world into a new global government with Europe at

the helm. When the World Trade Organization (WTO) was given teeth to enforce

international trade laws in the early 1990s by establishing an international

court known as the Dispute Settlement Body, all WTO member nations in principle

agreed to harmonize their domestic trade laws to a new set of international laws

so every nation operates by the same set of standards. Most

supplement consumers were unaware at the time that in effect, this would

eventually lead to an incremental attack on all of our food supplements here in

America and around the world. Most supplement companies have simply gone along

with the advice from their pharmaceutically dominated trade associations and

know very little, if any, about what is taking shape across the Atlantic.

 

The Alliance for Natural Health (ANH), a consumer advocacy group based in

Britain, was recently granted the green light to challenge the FSD at the last

minute; however, very rarely has a EU Directive ever been overturned and in this

case, it would be a historic event considering the pharmaceutical interests

backing its implementation. Resources are very scarce and desperately needed to

keep the lawsuit going to overturn the Directive before it's too late. They've

hired a top staff of EU lawyers and together with its multidisciplinary team of

experts they are prepared for a legal challenge in a EU Court. With the EU

expanding by ten more nations in early 2004 to a combined total of twenty-five

member nations, and with heavy pressure to finalize a Codex vitamin standard,

we're at a critical juncture on this issue. If the FSD is not overturned, and

with Europe's ever-expanding power, it's very possible that there will be enough

countries onboard to overrule the U.S. at Codex where many

parts of the FSD will be used when international vitamin laws are codified.

Once a Codex vitamin law is finalized, it will supercede all U.S. supplement

laws. The only way for America to truly protect its vital interest is to get out

of the U.N. and the WTO entirely, which is something nobody realistically sees

happening. If America is not vigilant to this threat, our supplement industry

will be blindsided and knocked out without even putting up a valiant fight.

 

In an effort to educate supplement consumers around the world to this dangerous

threat to our health freedoms, CRUSADOR interviewed John Hammell of IAHF in a no

holds barred discussion. Hammell has been sounding the alarm since 1996 that

serious trouble is brewing for our industry. Unfortunately, John's pleas for

help have mostly fallen on deaf ears as these international agreements continue

to plod forward virtually unopposed and with complicity from high level U.S.

delegates with pharmaceutical ties representing us at Codex. The time to muster

the troops and kill this Directive and block a very restrictive Codex vitamin

standard is now. Otherwise, it will be too late and America's supplement laws

will be harmonized to a new set of draconian international vitamin laws.

 

John, Let me begin by asking you who IAHF is and how you got started in this

movement?

 

International Advocates For Health Freedom (IAHF) http://www.iahf.com is a

consulting firm to the dietary supplement industry on legislative issues. I do

lobbying in Washington and all over the world, public speaking, and grass roots

organizing - mostly via my website and email distribution list which anyone can

sign onto at my website. I write articles, and serve as a catalyst to try to get

people working together to defend their common interest in the face of this

Pharma threat to block our access to natural products. I first established IAHF

in 1996 while I was sitting on an airplane coming back from a U.N. Codex

Alimentarius Commission vitamin meeting in Germany.

 

 

Can you explain to our readers a little bit more about Codex?

 

I'd be glad to. The United Nations Codex Alimentarius Commission was originally

created in1963. " Alimentarius " means " food code " in Latin. The Codex

Alimentarius is the most authoritative set of international food standards ever

proposed. It was set up as a joint program of the United Nations' Food and

Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO). It was

created ostensibly to generate a harmonized trade standard for governing the

international sale of all food products. The goal was to eliminate the expense

of compliance with a variety of different country regulations by establishing

one universal standard, thus enabling companies to more efficiently move their

products. Germany, the largest pharmaceutical manufacturing nation on earth,

currently dominates the EU which hosts the Codex Committee on Nutrition and

Foods For Special Dietary Use, and is leading the charge to railroad our dietary

supplement laws into international harmonization.

 

Another Codex goal is to supposedly protect consumers. Unfortunately, the

reverse has proven true. Codex is actually protecting the profit interests of

the multinational corporations at the expense of the consumer. In fact, the

large multinationals are dominating the U.N. Codex process. Furthermore, it's

" one country, one vote " so even the tiniest country that doesn't manufacture

dietary supplements, has as much decision making input in the voting process as

the much larger countries.

 

 

 

 

 

In essence, Codex was designed to be a stepping-stone to harmonize all member

countries to international law - is that correct?

 

Exactly! But they didn't have any teeth until the advent of the Uruguay round of

GATT (Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), which created the World Trade

Organization (WTO). Until WTO was formed, GATT did not have any control

mechanism to force a country to adopt an international standard. It was strictly

voluntary up to that point. After the advent of the WTO it became mandatory that

these countries adopt these international standards as their own. And the only

legal option a country had to refuse to adopt a Codex vitamin standard for its

own law was on the basis of safety [sPS Agreement]. The problem for the U.S. is

that all alleged violations will be adjudicated in a new international court

outside of the U.S. created by the World Trade Organization. In my opinion, this

court " known as the Dispute Settlement Body " is nothing more than a " Mickey

Mouse " court. It's a rigged court that doesn't follow our rules of evidence. It

is rigged to uphold the greed-driven interests of the

multinational corporations. The court is made up of people from different

countries and it makes its rulings in secret. The public doesn't have access to

its deliberations. You and I, for example, can't just walk into a courtroom

presided over by the Dispute Settlement Body of the WTO. We can't watch their

proceedings. Private citizen have no standing to appear before that court no

matter how well qualified they are. In theory, a private citizen could appear

before the court but only if both conflicting parties agreed to allow it. That

has never happened. For the most part the only people with standing to appear

before the court are representatives of WTO member nations.

 

How did you originally get to be a delegate on the Codex committee?

 

Anybody that wanted to be an observer could simply apply to be on the U.S.

delegation. All they had to do was go to a meeting the FDA held in Washington,

D.C. prior to the meeting in Germany to be eligible. I went to that meeting in

D.C. and applied to be an observer on the delegation because I was willing and

able to pay my own way. That's the only reason why the grassroots even had

anyone on that delegation. The powerful multinationals don't like to make it

easy for the public to know what's going on. They hold meetings that can impact

people all over the world far away from where anyone can see what's happening.

 

How does what's happening with the EU Food Supplements Directive tie in with

Codex?

 

Fair question. The European Union currently has fifteen countries within it.

It's going to expand by ten new countries in 2004 to include twenty-five

countries. All of these countries are members of the U.N. Codex Alimentarius

Commission and they can all send people to this meeting of the Committee on

Nutrition that is in the process of developing what threatens to be a very

draconian vitamin standard. The problem is that unless we overturn this Food

Supplements Directive in court, all twenty-five of these countries are going to

go into Codex and they'll have the power to force a really restrictive vitamin

standard through at Codex because they'll all be walking in lock-step with

Germany. Germany is the world's biggest pharmaceutical producing country.

They're the biggest opponent of dietary supplements of any country in the world.

That's why they became the host committee for the Codex Committee on Nutrition

because they have a real vested interest here in railroading us.

 

So if I understand you correctly, the EU, with Germany's influence, is going to

have the leverage to force Codex to adopt their stringent standards, which will

then become the worldwide standards for dietary supplements?

 

That's exactly right. The European Union is the blueprint by which our would-be

rulers intend to form a global totalitarian state. What they're doing with the

EU is their first little science project. They're trying to do similar regional

trading blocks all over the world. In our little hemisphere they're trying to

create something similar to the EU called the Free Trade Area of the Americas

(FTAA) through which they're trying to harmonize the laws between Canada, the

U.S., Mexico, and Central and South America. When they held a summit meeting of

the FTAA in Quebec City in 2001, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police put a ten

square kilometer chain link fence around the area of Quebec City where the

summit meeting was to take place. The intent was to keep demonstrators out

because they saw what had happened in Seattle at the anti WTO demonstrations in

1999 and they were worried that something like that might happen in Quebec City

so they took that as a security measure and also rimmed

their fence with over 2,000 riot gear police. Demonstrators were able to breach

this fence and rip it down and there was a clash between police and

demonstrators where a lot of tear gas and hard plastic bullets filled the air.

One demonstrator got hit in the trachea and he'll never be able to talk again.

So we are at war. People need to wake up and pull their heads out of the sand

and recognize what's going on in the world.

 

Can you tell us about some of the covert tactics being used to set our industry

up for harmonization?

 

First of all I should explain that there's an entity called the Dietary

Supplement Working Group of the Trans Atlantic Business Dialogue also known as

TABD. Their website is www.tabd.org. TABD is a U.N. NGO group. NGO means Non

Government Organization. What TABD is doing encompasses many different working

groups from many different industries, not just the dietary supplement industry,

that are having dialogues on both sides of the Atlantic with key trade officials

and they're trying to get the laws harmonized. There's a dietary supplement

working group of TABD which is comprised mostly of pharmaceutical interests that

is attempting to harmonize American vitamin laws to the European Union. They're

not trying to harmonize the European Union to our laws.

 

There are a lot of reasons for this but one of them is that they just want one

set of labeling and one set of rules, not two sets of rules. One set of rules

for the planet regardless of whether or not this is in the best interest of

consumers. In other words, you've got to realize that the way WTO operates is

when their Dispute Settlement Body makes a ruling, they ignore all the

intangibles that go into the making up of a democratic nation's laws. Every

single ruling that the WTO's Dispute Settlement Body has made has gone against

the environment, against the public health, against consumer rights, against

labor rights, and against human rights. They're trying to move the seat of power

for the whole world to Brussels and New York where the United Nations is. And

then the national governments of the world nations would be pretty much

figureheads. In other words, we really couldn't look to them any more because

they're being usurped. Power is going away from our immediate areas and

it's being centralized in Brussels. It's getting to a situation similar to that

which the colonists of this country had when we had the revolution against

England. We broke free of England because we wanted to govern ourselves right

here. Right where we live. Not be governed by people across the ocean. We have a

similar situation now where people over in Brussels want to tell us what to do.

Well I'm sorry, I'm not going to let anybody over in Brussels tell me anything.

Nobody in America should let anybody in Brussels tell them what to do. We must

send donations to ANH for their lawsuit to overturn the EU Food Supplements

Directive because it threatens to impact us via CODEX.

 

Are there other Directives besides the Food Supplements Directive that we need

to be concerned about?

 

Yes. If a really restrictive Codex vitamin standard is created, there are two

other Directives in Europe waiting in the wings that are working their way

through the European Parliament that also have to be stopped.

 

What are those Directives and what would their implications be?

 

One is the EU Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products Directive and the other is

the EU Pharmaceuticals Directive. Both are described in detail at

http://www.alliance-natural-health.org The Traditional Herbal Medicinal

Directive attacks herbs and the Pharmaceuticals Directive attacks anything that

has any physiological effect on the body. In other words, anything that manages

to make it through the other two Directives gets stepped on by the third

Directive which is the heavyweight. The third Directive is the 10,000-pound

gorilla. It trumps everything. It makes water a drug.

 

So even though there's lobbying efforts against the Food Supplements Directive

right now, these other two Directives may be even worse?

 

That#146;s right. But we won't have a chance of stopping them if we don#146;t

first overturn the Food Supplements Directive in court.

 

What#146;s really amazing is that most people in our industry know very little,

if any, about these issues. Ever since the Dietary Supplement Health & Education

Act (DSHEA) passed in 1994 that governs our industry, they assume our vitamin

laws are safe and that international laws somehow won#146;t impact us.

 

Well they don#146;t understand what's going on. They don't understand that there

have been instances already where we have been forced to harmonize our laws. See

http://www.citizen.org/trade/ See the book WTO: Whose Trade Organization? By

Lori Wallach, JD. Also see the article U.S. Congress Bows to WTO Mandate - Our

National Sovereignty is Violated by Congressman Ron Paul

http://www.thelibertycommittee.org/uscongressbows.htm. Also see letter from

Congressman Ron Paul and Peter De Fazio to Congressman Burton pleading for a

solid oversight hearing on the Codex vitamin issue in light of my findings (see

page 15). Due to pharmaceutical pressure the hearing was whitewashed, and we

have been set up to lose in a WTO Trade Dispute by the FDA.

 

Let's say this Directive can't be stopped and a restrictive vitamin standard is

passed at Codex. Who would act as the enforcement arm to mandate that the U.S.

abide by these trade laws - the FDA?

 

The FDA is more than willing to comply with international law and enforce Codex

so in answer to your question, yes, the FDA would ultimately be used as the

enforcement arm. What would happen is if we went before the WTO court, the only

legal means by which we could defend our domestic law is on a basis of safety.

However, the FDA has been taking steps to ensure we lose a WTO trade dispute and

the way they've been taking those steps is by generating false definitions of

vitamin safety. In other words, under the SPS agreement, the Sanitary Phyto

Sanitary measures agreement, the only way you can defend your domestic law from

harmonization is on the basis of safety. Well, we'd have no problem doing that

if the matter were under review in a U.S. court where we could bring any expert

witness that we wanted to testify, including private citizens like Linus Pauling

if he were still alive for example - people of that caliber. But the problem is,

no private citizens have standing to appear

before the WTO's Dispute Settlement Body.

 

A major breakthrough occurred recently in Germany at the latest round of Codex

meetings. Industry leaders are hailing this as some kind of progress but to me,

it seems like bargaining with the devil. It deals with " Safe Upper Limits " of

nutritional supplements and this was allowed to advance at Codex. I'm hearing

reports that this will now put Codex on a fast track to completion which could

happen some time in the next year or so. What can you tell us about this?

 

The Codex meeting where the vitamin agenda item " advanced " just occurred from

November 3-7 in Bonn. IAHF did not attend, having been permanently banned from

attending Codex meetings. Vitamin consumers worldwide were burned at this year's

meeting of the U.N. Codex Alimentarius Commission's Committee on Nutrition and

Foods For Special Dietary Use where the agenda item on vitamins and minerals,

which had been blocked from moving for 8 years, just advanced from Step 3 to the

pivotal Step 5. Codex Rules allow for implementation at Step 6 if there is

unanimous agreement on an agenda item, otherwise, it can take as many as 8 steps

to win approval.

 

What's most distressing to me about this situation is that misleading reports

have been sent out by Simon Petman of controlled opposition group IADSA

(International Alliance of Dietary Supplements Association), by CRN (Council for

Responsible Nutrition), and by others, who would have us all believe that a

" victory " for vitamin consumers was achieved at this year's meeting because a

move to impose RDA potency levels was scrapped in favor of using less draconian,

but equally unscientific " Safe Upper Levels " as determined by supposedly

" scientific " risk assessment. Unfortunately, all we've just seen unfold was a

classic " bait and switch " ' con game - a perfect illustration of the Hegelian

Dialectic: Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis. That is, FIRST, the Cartel creates

the problem (threat of restricting things to RDA levels), in order to create a

desired public reaction (FEAR), THEN the Cartel ushers in an alleged " Solution "

to this problem by conning people into getting behind supposed

" Safe Upper Levels " (e.g. 35 mg on niacin). It wasn't legal for Dr. Beth Yetley

of the FDA to put the biased, pharmaceutically funded paper " A Risk Assessment

Model for Establishing Safe Upper Levels for Nutrients " on the table at Codex in

1998, but she did so anyway knowing that the Pharma Spin Machine has the power

to rig any Congressional Oversight hearing at which her illegal actions might be

exposed. Although she was told by several members of Congress not to put this

paper on the table at Codex [see their letters at http://www.iahf.com under

" Letters from Congress " ], she did so anyway, and on March 20, 2001, an Oversight

Hearing on Codex where this crime could have been exposed was whitewashed. I

wasn#146;t allowed to testify, and neither were any of my witnesses including

Richard Malter, PhD, whose scholarly rebuttal to the National Academy of

Sciences " Risk Assessment " paper was published in the Journal of Orthomolecular

Medicine, Second Quarter 2000, Volume 15, Number 2.

[see it along with the NAS paper which openly states that it was funded by

pharmaceutical interests at http://www.iahf.com under NAS Paper and Rebuttal]

 

Paul Taylor, a tireless health freedom fighter from the UK has provided us with

a very well written report from the Codex meeting which concluded recently in

Bonn, Germany. Here's a short excerpt summary of what he believes to still be a

dangerous threat worldwide to all health freedom advocates.

 

" The growing similarities, and others, between the text of the EU Food

Supplements Directive and the Codex Draft Guidelines for Vitamin and Mineral

Supplements are no coincidence. Basil Mathioudakis (the EC Observer), who

drafted the text of the EU Food Supplements Directive, will now be representing

25 EU countries at the next Codex meeting in Bonn in November 2004. Clearly the

long-held fear that the EU will eventually win the vote at Codex over the

vitamin and mineral issue through being able to outvote all of the other

countries could soon become a reality. This therefore raises the grim

possibility that discussions regarding the Codex Draft Guidelines for Vitamin

and Mineral Supplements could even be concluded at next year#146;s meeting. This

eventuality could have grave implications for the legal challenge to the EU Food

Supplements Directive because if the Codex Guidelines were finalized before the

legal challenge is complete, the UK lawyers would in essence be arguing for

naught.

 

In summary then, Codex is the trump card. Even if the legal challenge to the

Food Supplements Directive is successful, the Codex proposals could still be

implemented globally, effectively overruling any short-term victory for health

freedom in Europe. Proof of this comes from recent research by the American

Holistic Health Association, which confirms that implementation of the Codex

Guidelines for Vitamin and Mineral Food Supplements is not optional. See

http://www.ahha.org/AHHAcomments2003.htm Clearly then, the next couple of years

are going to be crucial ones for the future of natural healthcare and freedom of

choice. "

 

That's pretty alarming John. In my opinion, instead of trying to cooperate with

Codex, we should be working as an industry to completely disband from Codex and

all these international organizations and trade agreements. None of these

international laws will benefit us here in the U.S. no matter how hard we try

and massage them to our liking. If I understand the seriousness of what you're

saying, we must, as an industry, get behind the lawsuit that the Alliance For

Natural Health has filed in order to overturn the whole EU Directive to block

what could turn out to be something terrible for our industry when Codex

finalizes its laws?

 

Yes. We have Anderson, the best lawyer in England handling the case. This guy

has made over seventy appearances before the European court of Justice, which is

their equivalent to our Supreme Court. This guy is the first one to ever

successfully have a European Directive overturned. He studied this case very

carefully before agreeing to take it on because he wants to build on the case

law he's already established to win. He wants to win badly. He wouldn't have

agreed to take on the case if he didn't think he could win. He's an excellent

attorney, one of the best in the world and we've got to go through with this.

It's our only shot.

 

 

 

 

 

What kind of support is the Alliance For Natural Health getting from citizens

throughout Europe and the rest of the world?

 

They're able to get donations over a secure form on their website. Donations are

trickling in but they are still working to get more resources that are needed.

 

When America's supplement industry was under attack back in the early 1990s,

millions of people rose up and wrote Congress and demanded that they continue to

have free access to dietary supplements. Are you seeing this kind of protest

happening in Europe as well?

 

The letter writing campaign behind DSHEA was the largest volume of mail ever

received on a single issue by the U.S. Congress in its history. They received

more mail in a campaign to pass DSHEA than they did for the Vietnam War.

 

I have to imagine that this is going on in Europe as well?

 

We sent enough email to crash the server on the day of the vote on the EU Food

Supplements Directive. This was done via Dr. Matthias Rath's website. The EU

labeled Rath a " terrorist " for facilitating this email blitz, and he was removed

from the EU Parliament Building by armed guards who would not allow him to

speak. The European Union is a dictatorship controlled by multinational

corporate interests. The members of the European Parliament really don't have

any power. The European Parliament is just window dressing. The only people that

really have power are the European Commission. They're not even elected, they're

appointed.

 

Who is putting these people in power?

 

The drug companies and other multinational corporate interests that dominate the

European Commission who really make the laws. The European Parliament is just a

facade to appease the people to make them think that they have a democratic

government, but it's really a joke. It's the most corrupt, treacherously

dictatorial regime on the face of the earth - bar none.

I hesitate to make the comparison because of the negative connotations but

what's happening in Europe sounds to me like the revival of the Nazi Empire,

only this time they are seeking to suck the whole world into this web, including

the United States.

 

It's interesting that you say that because there's a guy named Phillip Day who

would totally agree with you. Phillip Day is an Englishman who wrote a book

called Ten Minutes To Midnight that I mentioned in my article Ripping Up The

Railroad Tracks To Auschwitz, which can be found on my website at www.iahf.com

[see Emergency Alert]. On the cover of Day's book it shows Big Ben, the famous

clock in London, with the British flag super imposed on the clock face with ten

minutes of the flag remaining as the clock ticks towards midnight. This book is

about the imminent destruction of England as a nation as it gets plunged into

darkness and gets subsumed by the Nazi entity called the European Union. In the

book he documents the Nazi origins of the European Union and he documents how

after losing WWII the Nazi's set the stage for regaining power in Europe. They

in fact set the stage for the creation of the European Union and all this is

thoroughly discussed in his book. After I reviewed Day's

book I find it to be unimpeachable. There's no controversy about the fact that

the European Union is a Nazi entity. Hitler's rise to power was fueled by I.G.

Farben. They ran the concentration camps and fueled his war machine. They were

under-written by American corporate interests and after the war through Project

Paperclip many of Germany's top Nazi's were brought here to America for work. So

WWII never ended, that's just an illusion.

 

We've been witnessing in our lifetime, especially in the last ten or so years,

this global beast really taking root with such things as NAFTA, GATT, WTO, FTAA,

IMF, World Bank, World Court, and other international organizations and trade

agreements coming to fruition.

 

You have to look at the Hegelian Dialectic and what it really means. The

Hegelian Dialectic is thesis plus antithesis, which eventually leads to

synthesis. What this refers to is Problem - Reaction - Solution where you have

these would be rulers trying to form a global totalitarian state. The way

they're doing it is that they're tricking us in the way that they want us to

move where first they'll create a problem in order to trigger a desired public

reaction, such as fear, and then they propose the alleged solution which they've

already thought out in advance that moves the gullible sheep towards the cliff.

They've consistently used this careful bate and switch tactic for centuries.

They've been behind all the world's wars where they've controlled both sides and

they control the outcome. And it's desirous for them to trigger wars. They

started the first world war to try to get us into the League of Nations.

Congress didn't go for that because they realized the League of Nations was

unconstitutional. So the globalists set the stage for a second world war by not

doing anything to re-build post war Germany in the aftermath. They set the stage

for Hitler's rise to power in order to trigger a second world war because they

needed a second world war to get us into this League of Nations, which by then

was re-named the United Nations. They needed a pretext to get us into that. They

used similar bate and switch tactics to get us into the WTO as well. Neither one

can be trusted.

 

Since the war in Iraq began some of our elected officials are saying the U.S.

should get out of the U.N. With all of these international trade agreements in

place do you honestly see that ever happening?

 

No. It would be nice if we could. Congressman Ron Paul has a Bill right now that

would get us out of the U.N., HR 1146 The American Sovereignty Restoration Act,

but that doesn't have any appreciable movement at this time [15 cosponsors- all

members of the Liberty Caucus http://www.thelibertycommittee.org]. He's at least

trying. He tried to get House Joint Resolution 90 through a few years ago that

could have removed us from the WTO. He had only roughly forty or so supporters

for that. There at least is a movement to a degree to get us out of these world

bodies, which we should do because it's to nobody's advantage to get us into a

situation like exists in the European Union. I've talked to people in England

and other countries over there who are totally disillusioned and feel they have

no ability to shape their destiny because Brussels is so hard to get to. The

only country from which people can relatively afford to get to Brussels is from

France but from anywhere else in Europe it's

as expensive as it is to fly from London to New York. The fact that England has

not joined the economic union yet shows that there's still some hope for

rebellion. As long as England has the pound at least they have some autonomy.

The moment they go in for monetary union and embrace the Euro that's when

they're done for completely. They#146;re almost done for now, that's why

Phillip's book is titled Ten Minutes To Midnight.

 

That's why I think the EU Food Supplements Directive and what's happening with

Codex is so critically important. If Europe can ram rod this draconian

legislation down all the EU member nations it's only a matter of time before

this ripple effect hits here in America. Without free access to dietary

supplements our health will be entirely in the hands of the globalists.

 

 

You have to understand what Big Brother's goal is here. Big Brother wants to

cull our numbers. Big Brother doesn't want us living over the age of sixty-five.

He wants us to keel over on our sixty-fifth birthday. They don't want us to get

on these entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid because these things

are bankrupt and they don't have the money to keep them going. They're also

worried about world population. It's not to their advantage if we're healthy.

They don't make business with health they make business with disease. An example

of that is back in the 1950s when they stopped farmers from using manure for

fertilizer and they got them all using chemical fertilizers and they broke the

sulfur cycle. They did that on purpose knowing that it would trigger a huge rise

in cancer and other degenerative diseases that would enable them to sell a lot

more pharmaceutical drugs. That's just one example. Anything preventative

they're against. Anything that will make you sick or will

keep you sick, or keep you going into their hospitals to see their doctors to

get drugs is what they want. It's as simple as that. They don't want you living

a long time. Another aspect of this, which is even more sinister - food control

equals people control. If they can control the world's food supply, which is

what they're trying to do through Codex, they have us in the palm of their

hands. That's what they're after - control.

 

Some people reading this interview may think that everything you#146;re saying

here is too far fetched and that there's no way any of these things could happen

- there's no way we, as Americans, would tolerate this. However, an interesting

scenario is unfolding with genetically modified foods. The U.S. is the number

one producer of genetically modified foods and Europe has not openly embraced

our exports or these foods being planted. They've got a moratorium in place

where they can't grow and farm biotech crops until all these safety studies are

done, yet the United States is threatening to do to Europe what Europe in turn

would potentially seek to do to us on the vitamins. We're threatening to take

this trade dispute to the WTO and say that they're restricting free trade in an

effort to force Europe to accept GMOs.

 

It is ironic isn't it?

 

Most people in America still have no idea that roughly 70% of the foods in the

grocery store are now genetically modified. Yet we're trying to shove GM foods

down Europe's throat and the rest of the world's throat through the same tactics

Europe would use against us.

 

The sad part about it is the Dispute Settlement Body of the WTO will probably

force Europe to accept genetically engineered foods the way they'll more than

likely force us to harmonize our dietary supplement laws. I didn't finish

commenting on this earlier. Under the Sanitary Phyto Sanitary measures

agreement, the only means by which a country has to protect their domestic law,

the FDA has been creating false safety standards for supplements through safety

monographs that they've had developed under the National Academy of Sciences

where they generated bogus safety monographs for the most commonly used

supplements. And they're continuing to do these bogus safety investigation

monographs on products like saw palmetto, DHEA, melatonin, shark cartilage,

chaparral and chromium picolinate. What are they doing a safety monograph on Saw

Palmetto extract for? This is a waste of our tax dollars. We don't need to be

wasting valuable tax dollars on totally safe supplements. Saw Palmetto is far

less expensive and far more effective for the prevention and treatment of

benign prostate hypertrophy than the drug Proscar, but FDA is on a witch-hunt to

remove Saw Palmetto from the market under false pretenses in order to protect

the profits of Merck, makers of Proscar. The same motive holds true for all

other supplements under FDA " review. "

 

That's pretty astounding considering the fact that there are over 100,000 people

in America dying each year from pharmaceutical drug side effects, yet I bet we

can't even count on our hands the number of people that are dying from dietary

supplements.

 

Exactly. We've got the equivalent of a 747 crashing and burning every calendar

day for a year from iatrogenic side effects from properly prescribed

pharmaceutical drugs. This is documented in the Journal of the American Medical

Association, which has identified properly prescribed prescription drugs as the

third leading cause of death. When Dr. Barbara Starfield wrote the article in

JAMA July 26, 2000 she stated that the Iatrogenic causes of death in U.S.

hospitals averaged 225,000 per year. This means mistakes by nurses, Doctors and

hospital systems. Of that figure, 106,000 deaths per year were from non-error

use of prescribed medications. This was a decade long study. The label " third

largest cause of death " was for the entire system. The non-error use of

prescription drugs was roughly half that amount. It still means that over 1

million people were poisoned to death in the decade of the 90s by the Pharma

cartel. At the same time, there was not one death from Niacin, Chromium

Picolinate, L-Arginine, L-Carnitine, Vitamin C or any other nutrient sold and

taken by human beings. Not one nutrient had a prescribed limit. There were no

warnings of severe side effects on any that I have purchased. The health

benefits were noticeable instantly in the increased vibrancy of the human

condition and vitality. So whom are they kidding? You have less of a chance

dying from a dietary supplement than you do from a bee sting or being hit by

lightning. The hypocrisy is mind blowing. The double standard is mind blowing.

And the biggest problem we have is the Pharma tentacles that reach into our

vitamin trade associations and the fact that the members of these trade

associations allow that to happen.

 

Why don't you touch on that briefly - what can you tell us about these industry

trade associations?

 

Well, NNFA (National Nutritional Foods Association) has a conflict of interest

disclosure bylaw, article 14.3, in their bylaws. They have a code of ethics that

can be seen on their website at www.nnfa.org and they#146;re not enforcing

these. On paper, any new company considering joining NNFA would read their code

of ethics and bylaws and be led to believe that the trade association is truly

behind them and that they-re truly protecting their interest, but they-re not.

Not when they let pharmaceutical companies join. Not when they let employees

like Randy Dennin of Pfizer hold key committee chairmanships on committees like

IADSA (International Alliance of Dietary Supplements Association). IADSA is an

umbrella group of the world#146;s vitamin trade associations. It has NGO status

at the U.N. to represent the supplement industry at Codex meetings.

Unfortunately, IADSA is setting our industry up to go over the cliff.

 

I was at a hospitality suite dinner at the NNFA vitamin trade show in Las Vegas

in 1999 and at this dinner IADSA was introduced to members of NNFA that were at

that trade show. People were shown a slide show that showed a map of the world

and it was very simplistic. It showed the U.S. marked in green indicating the

proper degree of access to supplements on account of DSHEA and it showed

countries like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, England, Ireland, Holland and

Sweden marked as striped indicating less than ideal access but still better than

a lot of other countries. Then the whole rest of the world was red indicating

poor access. Major work needs to be done to harmonize these countries to our

supplement laws based on DSHEA. People were led to believe that IADSA was our

savior and that they were there to protect us by representing us at Codex

meetings. They were led to believe that IADSA#146;s goal was to harmonize the

world to DSHEA. Now the reality of IADSA is the exact opposite.

IADSA is doing the diametric opposite to what NNFA members have been conned

into believing it's doing. I built the website that exposes this. The address

was http://iadsa-exposed.tripod.com but it was mysteriously removed from

cyberspace just prior to the Expo East vitamin trade show in Washington in early

September, presumably by Dennin. The information has been reposted at

http://www.iahf.com/iadsa Dennin was emailed directly about this

[http://www.iahf.com see " Letters to Dennin " ] but predictably, he did not reply.

He has consistently refused to debate me publicly knowing he cannot beat me in a

public debate. Gary Null challenged him to debate me, and he refused.

 

On the IADSA exposed website I have giff files of letters going back and forth

between the board of directors of NNFA New Zealand and IADSA. What is going on

here is that Australia has very stringent pharmaceuticalized supplement

regulations that are among the worst in the world. That's where they recently

had this recall that resulted in over 1600 dietary supplements being removed

from the shelves under false pretenses without a single product assay to prove

contamination. And this was accompanied by a media circus demonizing the whole

supplement industry. Not a single one of those products should have been removed

from the shelf. There was not a shred of evidence to prove that any of them were

dangerous. This whole thing is a farce.

 

Neighboring New Zealand on the other hand has very liberal food based supplement

regulations very similar to ours. There is massive harmonization pressure on New

Zealand from Australia to try to force them to harmonize to their laws. I say

all this to say that if IADSA were for real, they would have done everything in

their power to assist New Zealand in repelling the Australian invasion. Then the

other thing that happened was IADSA#146;s lobbyist, Simon Pettman, in Brussels,

refused to send out a press release defending Kava Kava when it came under heavy

attack in the media. Ron Law from New Zealand's NNFA, a country where you can

get Kava, said: " Please, please, I'll furnish you with a risk assessment but do

a press release under IADSA's auspices. " Simon Pettman wouldn't do it and the

reason he wouldn't do it is that he's not only lobbying for IADSA, but he#146;s

lobbying for other organizations which include Merck, a company that wanted Kava

banned in the first place.

 

So we have these massive conflicts of interest. Ron Law of NNFA New Zealand

wrote an e-mail to Randy Dennin complaining about Pettman raising the issue of

conflict of interest. Dennin responded to Ron Law accusing him of making wildly

unsubstantiated accusations. Then the board of NNFA New Zealand wrote a very

straightforward letter to the board of IADSA enumerating their grievances.

Rather than invite them to come to a meeting to discuss them in a formal way,

IADSA simply expelled them. They threw them out. That proves what they're all

about. That proves that they can't be trusted and they're trying to take this

whole industry down. And what I've been saying to NNFA is: " Why do you tolerate

this. Why don't you enforce your own bylaws and throw Dennin out and tell IADSA

you don't represent us. Why don't you get behind the Alliance For Natural

Health? They're actually trying to do what we were told IADSA was all about. "

 

What do you feel is the best way people in the U.S. can work to stop what's

happening because it appears to me that the only way to stop this onslaught is

to wake up the sleeping populous that depend upon their supplements and to band

with the British and fight back with everything we have?

 

What we need to do is the following. We need to get donations to the Alliance

For Natural Health via their website http://www.alliance-natural-health.org not

only to get the Food Supplements Directive overturned in court, but to provide

the funding for a proper lobbying campaign in Brussels against the other two

Directives which have to be killed. I don't think anybody can trust the U.S.

trade Representatives Office or the Department of Commerce. But the proof will

be in the pudding. I don#146;t trust their responses to my letters at all. What

we have to do is contact them en masse, which is something the public should do.

Not only should they let their Congressmen and Senators know that we want Europe

to Harmonize to DSHEA, but they also need to tell the U.S. Department of

Commerce and the U.S. Trade Representatives Office as well.

 

Where's this all going John? Do you really think people will wake up and take

action or are they too concerned about trivial things such as sports and

entertainment while our whole nation is being sold out?

 

You know something - it hasn't gotten as bad here as it's getting in England.

I've been over to England and I've seen what those poor people have to contend

with, with the European Union. If they start going whole hog on pushing the FTAA

on us here in our hemisphere, all I can say is good luck. Good luck FTAA. You

want to get an idea of what I#146;m talking about, look at the photographs on

the web of the demonstrations that occurred in Seattle in '99 against the WTO

and in Quebec City in 2001 against the summit meeting of the FTAA. All hell

broke loose and there was an actual war where thousands of demonstrators squared

off against these heavily fortified police. Riots are happening because

oppression is happening. Riots are happening because people's rights are being

trampled into the dirt. Riots are happening because there is no more democracy.

All we have is a totalitarian state. Riots are happening because people are

being ignored. All of the intangibles that go into the making

of a democratic nation's laws are being trashed by the World Trade

Organization, which is running rough shod over people's rights through secret

entities that we have no access to like the Dispute Settlement Body of the WTO.

They hold their courts in secret. We can't get in there and see what goes on in

that courtroom. It's a sick joke.

 

You're exactly right. It's a shame what's happening. I can never set foot inside

the U.N. Codex Alimentarius Commission Committee on nutrition again. I have been

permanently banned from setting foot inside that meeting ever again by the

German government because I videotaped the first half hour of the Codex meeting

in 1998 until the German chair of the meeting noticed that I was taping and

forced me to turn my camera off. I have an edited section of that footage

showing them forcing me to turn my camera off. I have that on my website at

www.iahf.com. That's why I got thrown off the delegation. I'm not allowed back

on the panel because of my whistle blowing efforts.

 

Well John, we could go on for hours about all the intricate details of the

events taking place. I know we just scratched the surface with this interview.

However, I think you've certainly given our readers plenty of good, eye opening

information so they have a greater understanding of the situation. I want to

thank you for your time and keep up the excellent work you're doing. I look

forward to doing a follow up interview with you down the road as more events

unfold.

 

 

 

CREDITS:

John Hammell will be turning International Advocates for Health Freedom into a

Membership Organization in the near future. For updates you can sign on to the

IAHF email distribution list at http://www.iahf.com For questions about this

article, contact IAHF via jham or via 1-800-333-2553. In an effort to

awaken a sleeping public, IAHF is in a process of putting together a power point

presentation, and a video to facilitate public speaking and education. IAHF has

a monitor operating directly in Washington DC, and has contacts around the

world. Donations to IAHF can be made via IAHF 556 Boundary Bay Rd. Point

Roberts, WA 98281 USA.

 

Congress of the United States. House of Representatives.

 

Mr. Chairman, we appreciate the opportunity to submit comments regarding the

need to protect consumers from intrusive regulations which interfere with the

availability of dietary supplements. Today's hearing is just the latest example

of the leadership you have shown on this important issue.

 

Over the past decade the American people have made it clear that they do not

want the federal government to interfere with their access to dietary

supplements. In 1994, Congress responded to the American people's desire for

greater access to the truth about the benefits of dietary supplements by passing

the Dietary Supplements and Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA), which

liberalized the rules regarding the regulation of dietary supplements.

Congressional offices received a record number of comments in favor of DSHEA.

 

Despite DSHEA, officials of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continued to

attempt to enforce regulation aimed at keeping the American public in the dark

about the benefits of dietary supplements. However, in the case of Pearson v.

Shalala, 154 F.3d 650 (DC Cir. 1999), reh'g denied en banc, 172 F. 3d 72 (DC

Cir. 1999), the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit Court

reaffirmed consumers' first amendment rights to learn about how using dietary

supplements can improve their health without unnecessary interference from the

FDA. The FDA has been forced to revise its regulations in order to comply with

Pearson. However, members of Congress have had to intervene with the FDA on

several occasions to ensure that they followed the court's order. Clearly

Congress must continue to monitor the FDA#146;s action in this area.

 

The freedom of consumers to use, or even obtain truthful information about

dietary supplements could also be threatened by the United States participation

in the Codex Alimentarius Commission (Codex). Codex is part of the Food and

Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Health Organization

Food Standard Program operating under the authority of the Sanitary

Phytosanitary Agreement and the Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement.

 

Codex is the vehicle through which the World Trade Organization (WTO) is working

to " harmonize " (e.g. conform) food and safety regulations of WTO member

countries. Codex is currently creating a guideline on the proper regulation for

dietary supplements with the participation of the Food and Drug Administration

(FDA). We are concerned that the end result of this process will force the

United States to adopt the same strict regulations of dietary supplements common

in European countries such as Germany, where consumers cannot even examine a

bottle of dietary supplements without a pharmacists permission. By participating

in this process, the FDA is ignoring the will of Congress as expressed in DSHEA

and in the FDA Modernization Act of 1997, which expressly forbid the FDA from

participating in the harmonization process, as well as the will of the American

people.

 

While Codex has no direct authority to force Americans to adopt stringent

regulations of dietary supplements, we are concerned that the United States may

be forced to adopt Codex standards as a result of the United States' status as a

member of the WTO. According to an August 199 report of the Congressional

Research Service, " As a member of the WTO, the United States does commit to act

in accordance with the rules of the multilateral body. It [the U.S.] is legally

obligated to ensure national laws do not conflict with WTO rules. " Thus,

Congress may have a legal obligation to again change American laws and

regulations to conform with WTO rules!

 

If Congress were to refuse to " harmonize " US laws according to strict Codex/WTO

guidelines, a WTO " dispute resolution panel " could find that the United States

is engaging in unfair trade because of our failure to " harmonize " our

regulations with the rest of the world. In any such trade dispute, the scales

are tipped in favor of countries using Codex standards because of WTO rules

presuming that a nation who has adopted Codex has not erected an unfair trade

barrier. Therefore, in a dispute with a country that has adopted the Codex

standards it is highly probable that America would lose and be subject to heavy

sanctions unless Congress harmonized our laws with the other WTO countries.

Harmonization may be beneficial for the large corporations and international

bureaucrats that control the WTO but it would be a disaster for American

consumers of dietary supplements!

 

In conclusion, we once again thank Chairman Burton for holding this hearing and

for all his efforts to protect the freedom of American dietary supplements

customers and for the opportunity to express our concerns regarding the threat

to American consumers posed by the WTO and the Codex Alimentarius process. We

also express our hope that Congress will act to protect the freedom of American

consumers from over regulation of dietary

 

supplements whether imposed by the FDA or through the back door by an

international organization such as the WTO.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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