Codex Standards

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The Standards and regulations voted by the CAC do not protect consumer rights nor public health, but industry corporations’ economic interests.

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By Manon Godot, 14th of December 2010

The Codex Alimentarius Commission is a huge bureaucratic organization. It has currently about 27 Codex Committees (Committee on fish and fishery, Committee on fats and oils, Committee on fruits and vegetables, Committee on ground nuts, etc.), regional organizations, etc. The committees vote the regulations, which are then presented to the Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC) for ratification.

The CAC has so far promulgated more than 4000 guidelines, standards and regulations on everything that can possibly be eaten. Any kind of processed food, dairy, fruit, vegetable, mineral, vitamin, fish, meat, etc. is regulated by a Codex standard:  Any food product or component that is not allowed by Codex Alimentarius should be illegal according to the Commission, as Codex is a code system that forbids everything that is not explicitly permitted.

As stipulated in the article “What is Codex Alimentarius?”, Codex is not a consumer organization, nor a public health organization. According to Dr. Rima E. Laibow, Medical Director of the Natural Solutions Foundation, Codex Alimentarius is a trade commission. It is neither a public health nor a consumer commission. Codex is an industry dominated regulation setting organization[1], driven by economic interest only. Codex serves what she calls the five bigs: “Big Pharma, Big Chema, Big Biotechna, Big Agribiz and Big Medica.”

As an illustration of this fact, the Vitamin and Mineral Food Supplements Guideline[2] (VGM), ratified by the CAC in 2005, establishes that vitamins and minerals are toxins, the use of which must be limited to very low “safe levels” established by scientific risk assessment. According to Dr. Rima E. Laibow, “Risk Assessment is a branch of Toxicology, the science for assessing toxins. The proper science for assessing nutrients is Biochemistry. Codex does not use Biochemistry.” The risk assessment procedure consists in feeding very small amounts of the substance tested to animals in order to determine a maximum before which a discernable impact is noticeable. This maximum amount is then divided by hundred in order to obtain a safety margin, in other words the largest dose that can be fed to a person without discernable impact. Doing so, Codex paradoxically forbids all vitamins and minerals that could have an impact on the human body, while these nutrients are supposed to have a positive discernable impact on human health. According to Dr. Laibow, “the VMG can ban all high potency and clinically effective vitamins & minerals”. “The more natural health products people use, the fewer drugs they use. Millions are turning to natural

health. Big Pharma fears this as it would diminish profits. Codex is designed to protect Big Pharma profits”, she says. That could remind one that a certain EU regulation was voted in 2004 (coming into full effect in April 2011) in order to ban most of the traditional herbal medicine remedies within the EU, via the establishment of a list of criteria almost impossible to comply with (Read our article “Ban on Herbal Medicine”).

Codex also reintroduced dangerous pesticides via its regulation on “Pesticides Residues in Food”. The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants of May 22, 2001[3] defined however 12 chemicals (POPS) that had to be banned worldwide because of their evident danger. Nine of them are pesticides. Codex has brought back five of these nine POPS (Aldrin, chlordane, DDT, Endrin, Heptachlor)[4] banned worldwide by 176 countries. So if food containing one of these five substances passes the border, it cannot be stopped, otherwise it would be a trade violation.

In one of its guideline, the CAC also allows food derived from recombinant-DNA animals. The Guideline for the Conduct of Food Safety Assessment of Foods Derived from Recombinant-DNA Animals (CAC/GL 68-2008) allows countries to produce recombinant DNA animals for human food purpose as long as it complies with Codex principles of risk analysis. According to the guideline, “This approach is based on the principle that the safety of foods derived from new animal lines, including recombinant-DNA animals, is assessed relative to the conventional counterpart having a history of safe use, taking into account both intended and unintended effects. Rather than trying to identify every hazard associated with a particular food, the intention is to identify new or altered hazards relative to the conventional counterpart.” So if a food product derived from recombinant-DNA animal is in accordance with the Codex guideline, no WTO Member State will be able to forbid its importations as it would be considered as a trade violation.

These are just a few examples among thousands Codex standards and regulations.

Sources:

http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/features/codex_wto.html

ftp://ftp.fao.org/codex/Publications/understanding/Understanding_EN.pdf

http://ec.europa.eu/food/international/organisations/codex_en.htm

http://www.codexalimentarius.net/web/index_en.jsp

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spoucYXa3A&feature=&p=19BE6DDF85536EAC&index=0&playnext=1


[1] Codex Alimentarius, Rima E. Laibow, M.D. – National association of Nutrition Professionals NANP 2005 Conference

[2] Vitamins and Minerals Guideline, CAC/GL 55 – 2005 – 3.2.2(a)

[3] Stockholm Convention Website: http://chm.pops.int/Convention/tabid/54/language/en-US/Default.aspx#convtext

[4] Pesticide Residues in Food, Maximum Residue Limits; Extraneous Maximum Residue Limits: http://www.codexalimentarius.net/mrls/pestdes/jsp/pest_q-e.jsp

 

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2 Responses to “Codex Standards”

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