Australia, New Zealand - Codex Alimentarius and Trans-Tasman Harmonization

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Health

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Pharma

Efforts to harmonize rules on supplements between Australia and New Zealand, by establishing a Trans-Tasman joint agency for the control of natural health products have been going on for some time. I previously reported on this here, here and here. (The Tasman Sea is a large body of water that separates New Zealand from the Australian continent.)

The situation "down under" really got hot when the Australian health products and medicines regulator (the Therapeutical Goods Administration) in June 2003 yanked over 1600 supplements off the market over a pretext and forced the producer, PAN Pharmaceuticals, into bankruptcy.

How this ties in with the international plans of Codex Alimentarius to "reign in" nutritional supplements is the subject of an excellent article, quite a piece of investigative journalism by Eve Hillary, a medical reform advocate and health writer, which you find in the second part of this post. In addition to discussing Codex, Eve treats us to an in-depth report on the aftermath of the PAN Pharma products recall and recent regulatory moves underway in Australia.

It seems that Australia might be symptomatic of what we can expect to happen the world over in the next few years, so seems a good idea to study up on this. If we accept what Eve Hillary says, that Codex really is "the sickness industry's last stand", we should also pay attention to a comment I recently received from a lady in the UK who is interested in natural health. Introducing a new angle to what seems to be a world wide Codex control agenda, she writes:

To understand what drives Codex and the Pharma agenda, you need to understand the future direction of health care ....

The Pharma industry as it stands is in a cul de sac - it needs to re-invent itself as a 'health' industry to survive. So they started to explore pharmaceutical genomics - as an output of the human genome project, and discovered instead nutritional genomics, which 50% of the time means that chronic diseases can be treated, prevented and cured by nutritional interventions. Proven. But these treatments under current laws cannot be patented, nor protected - so how can they gain ownership and make money from this, to replace pharmaceutical revenues? (Sepp's comment: here is an actual recent example of what nutrigenomics is coming up with - Vitamin E helps block Alzheimer's)

And this has given rise to the FSD (Food Supplements Directive), Codex, Health Claims Regulations - so that when the supplement sector is safely removed from the [public health area] or reduced to a few major players, they can trumpet the 'discovery' and own it and make money from it, buy out remaining firms and make the financial barriers to entry so large no one else can 'play' as they will be the only operators that can afford to be in the game.

This view seems to be a perfect match to what is - according to Eve Hillary - already happening in Australia.

And if you wonder about Codex actually protecting your health, start researching what else they are doing, for instance this information on a French site on the levels of nuclear contamination Codex allows in foods. Another area to look into is the advice Codex has on genetically modified organisms (GMO) in our foods, which sounds good but is entirely toothless. Consider it is only due to continuous consumer pressure that the uncontrolled spread of the highly dangerous world wide GMO public feeding experiment is being contained at least to some degree.

Codex is even breaking its own rules in its effort to pass their guidelines on food supplements. The discussions in the Nutrition committee were so controversial that the chairman drastically limited the free expression of views. Even discussion on the very purpose of the supplements guideline was never allowed to re-open although Codex rules require that each guideline have a clear statement of its purpose. See the National Health Federation's communication on this.

Anyway, back to Australia and the greater picture on Codex. Here is Eve Hillary's article:

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CODEX – THE SICKNESS INDU$TRY’s LAST STAND

An Article
By Eve Hillary
Special Release April 1, 2005 Sydney

Preamble

Millions of words have been written about Codex. Few of which have been printed in today’s mainstream media. The data comes mainly from health freedom activists in various countries and from obscure government documents hidden to all but those who know where to look. In 2002 I unveiled Codex to a Brisbane, Australia audience of 300 people. Only 3 knew anything about it. The same three I’d spoken with before the lecture. I then wrote a chapter on Codex in my book “Health Betrayal”. Thanks to health freedom activists now Codex information is on many websites and a topic for discussion around the world. But there remains official SILENCE and deliberate misinformation from sources close to corporations.

In writing this article it is my intention to reveal what has been done to move us toward CODEX in the Asia Pacific region. We must not allow this to happen if we value our lives. It is my intention to shatter the silence that threatens to engulf our freedom in order to allow its effects to be reversed by the electors, the only legitimate proprietors of government. But first, some definitions of nutritional supplements and Codex located on footnotes numbered 34 and 35.

Agree or Not

Even amongst activists, there is very little agreement on the issue of Codex, partly because of official propaganda that seeks to confuse the issue and partly because of the incomplete picture that is being presented. I do not expect the reader to agree with all that I write. I have sourced the article extensively and admittedly, I have expressed my own opinions and conclusions after studying dozens of primary documents. However, I invite anyone to undertake for themselves the exhaustive study that I have made over the past 4 years on Codex and to analyse the many documents and sources I have discovered, many of them in obscure archives. Of the many interviews I have conducted, most of the interviewees have not wished to be identified.

Some readers will agree that Codex is a menace but fail to see how it has come to influence the Australia Pacific region. I hope this article leads to that understanding and reveals the tragic consequences to our families and way of life so that we can take the appropriate steps to stop it. I am indebted to many of my fellow activists such as Dave Sloan from the NZ Health Trust and Sepp Hasslberger of Health Supreme, for providing so much extra data that when sifted through has only strengthened my conclusions on the matter. (31,32) Please take what you like and leave the rest.

To seasoned activists; I know you have heard some of it before but there is much new information and I will unveil some ideas you might find inviting. To all readers; we will get to CODEX towards the end but it is important to understand the secretive nature of events that have occurred recently and the unusual laws passed by governments that will put CODEX in a much clearer context.

Personal Note

I’m a health writer. I track the sickness industry. I watch while powerful vested interests infiltrate governments of sovereign nations. I watch and watch and then I write about it. Lately I’ve been busy on some other issues and nearly missed a hat trick that was being performed by our politicians that would wrench freedom of choice out of the people’s hands once and for all if we let them get away with it. I discovered it just in time when an article came across my desk entitled “The Codex threat to Australia – fact or fiction?” written by a chap who sourced his information from a few government websites. He opined that the Codex issue was merely hype and nonsense and nothing much for Aussies or anybody else in the world to worry about. His article was published by the Australian Traditional Medicine Society, an organisation that is supposed to represent complementary health practitioners and provide them with clear information about exactly WHO’s in charge of making decisions about supplements. Frankly, I expected such a hose-down article as this to more likely appear in a pharmaceutical company trade magazine or as a press release from the TGA. But I assumed the drug giants have their own spin doctors, legions of them. And they are quite content to have useful gophers