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September 15, 2004

Huge Supplements Ban Coming to Europe: an Interview with John Hammell of IAHF

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BLOWING THE WHISTLE ON THE COVER-UP

An Interview with John Hammell of International
Advocates For Health Freedom (IAHF)
by Greg Ciola

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

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.

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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.

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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?

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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's right. But we won't have a chance of stopping them if we don't first overturn the Food Supplements Directive in court.

What'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't impact us.

Well they don'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.

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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'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'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.

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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'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'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?

CA_NtrlHlthTrdUnions.jpg


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'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'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'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'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'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'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'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@iahf.com 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.

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'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 dietarysupplements whether imposed by the FDA or through the back door by an international organization such as the WTO.


 


mandato da Robin Good il Wednesday September 15 2004
aggiornato il Monday September 25 2006

URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/emma_holister/2004/09/15/huge_supplements_ban_coming_to.htm

 


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