CODEX: INTERNATIONAL THREAT TO HEALTH FREEDOM
REPORT FROM BONN, GERMANY

By John Hammell, © 1996
POLITICAL COORDINATOR,
LIFE EXTENSION FOUNDATION

In Germany, the trains run on time and the beer is unsurpassed, but pharmaceutical companies like Hoechst are working overtime to drive small vitamin companies out of business in an effort to take over the supplement industry. Hoechst's vehicle is the Codex Alimentarious Commission, which is developing international standards for dietary supplements.

The motives of the pharmaceutical companies are revealed in a letter by Matthias Rath, M.D.(Fig. 1) to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and members of the German Parliament The letter is entitled "The Health Interests of Millions of People Are More Important Than The Stock Price of the Pharmaceutical Corporations".

In his letter, Dr. Rath, who is a German living in California, noted that a German proposal before the Codex Commission is being heavily pushed by Hoechst, Bayer, and BASF -- the three companies formed when IG Farben was disbanded after the Nuremberg War Trials because of their role in manufacturing the poison gas used in the Nazi concentration camps.

Eradicating Cardiovascular Disease

Dr. Rath notes that he has developed a scientifically sound nutritional protocol for eradicating human cardiovascular disease, but that this protocol threatens the interests of Hoechst, Bayer and BASF -- all of which manufacture dangerous, ineffective, and outrageously expensive heart medications.

Clearly, through their support of the Codex Commission, Hoechst, Bayer, and BASF, are contributing to the death of millions of people -- as heart disease is the world's number one killer. More than 12 million people will continue to die worldwide every year from premature heart attacks and strokes if they are denied access to affordable preventive therapies.

Advancing The German Proposal

Regrettably, the German government ignored Dr.Rath's impassioned plea, and held the Codex meeting in Bonn anyway. Moreover, they continued to advance the German proposal that could one day severely restrict your access to dietary supplements. They jumped from step 3 to step 5 during this meeting. In two years when they meet again, they could jump from step 5 to step 8 and finalize things!

In addition, the Codex Executive committee might allocate funds in June for the creation of an "expert panel" on herbs which might create a "negative list" that could limit consumer access to these products internationally. The formation of this "expert panel" was advocated by Canada, and seconded by a majority of the delegations present. Obviously we will need to monitor this very closely and will attempt to be a part of the expert panel. We also encourage people such as Roy Upton from American Herbal Pharmacopoeia to participate. They have developed approximately 300 highly objective monographs on botanicals including Ayurvedic, Chinese, and Western herbs that are commonly in use in the United States- and are pro consumer.

Do you want your favorite supplements replaced by expensive, patented, over-the-counter and prescription drug? Unless a much bigger international coalition can be formed within the next two years to save our health freedom, we will see it stripped from us as the drug companies play a game called "boiling the frog slowly."

Report From Bonn

I am writing this from the Hotel Europa in Bonn Germany because The Life Extension Foundation sent me here to report on the 20th meeting of the Codex Alimentarius Commission's Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Use. I just sat through a week's worth of meetings as part of the U.S. delegation, which was one of 39 member countries comprising a total of 187 participants.

Prior to coming to Bonn, I worked with Suzanne Harris,J.D. of the Law Loft in Johnstown, Colorado to draft comments on the German proposal for dietary supplements and other issues discussed at the meeting. (Our Codex comments can be downloaded from our web site (www.lef.org) on the Internet. Pat Stern in our information office will mail these extensive comments to anyone making a donation of $25. or more.

Ron Birckhead and I reported on the Codex International Threat to Health Freedom in the February and April issues of Life Extension Magazine, however before I outline what happened in Bonn and what we must do to save health freedom, I will summarize the nature of the problem we are facing.

What Is The Codex Alimentarius Commission?

Codex Alimentarius is latin for "food code." The Codex Alimentarius Commission is an FAO/WHO United Nations entity whose purpose is to "create a set of international standards to guide the world's growing food industry and to protect the health of consumers."

Germany has been attempting to manipulate the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Use to further the interests of the German pharmaceutical industry, by raising regulatory standards so that only the big drug companies like Hoechst, Bayer, BASF, Degussa, Fresnius, Rhone-Poulenc, Sandoz, and Novo Nordisk can survive.

The purpose of Codex is "...to guide and promote the elaboration and establishment of definitions and requirements for foods, to assist in their harmonization and, in doing so, to facilitate international trade."

Since being established in 1962, codex has produced 28 volumes of standards, guidelines and principles, including 237 food standards and 41 hygienic and technological practice codes. Codex has resulted in evaluations of the safety of over 700 food additives and contaminants and the setting of more than 3,200 maximum residue levels for pesticides. As of 1994, Commission membership included 146 countries.

The Problem

The German "Proposed Draft Guideline for Dietary Supplements" calls for the following:
  1. No dietary supplement can be sold for prophylactic (preventive or therapeutic) use;
  2. No dietary supplement sold as a food can exceed potency (dosage)levels set by the commission;
  3. Codex standards for dietary supplements would become the reference international standard under GATT, and a reference international standard under NAFTA.
  4. The current trend is for countries to adopt the international standards either individually or in regional compacts. If that happened in the U.S., all new dietary supplements would automatically be banned unless they conform to Codex standards- (which would require going through a very expensive drug like approval process.) The Delaney clause, which used to protect us against carcinogens in our food supply, has already been "harmonized" to a Codex standard which favors pesticide manufacturers, and not a single member of Congress protested against this.

What It's Like In Germany

All anyone needs to do in order to grasp the motives behind the German proposal is to visit any German health food store and pharmacy (called an "apothecary").

In a German health food store, you simply don't find the shelves filled with vitamin products that you see in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. or Australia. You won't find a single product by Twinlab, Standard Process Brands, Solgar, Solaray, or any of the other usual brands.

What you WILL find is little besides health food. You'll find organic vegetables, macrobiotic staples, herbal shampoo, skin creams, Birckenstock sandals, books on massage, and only a handful of multi-nutrient formulas in OTC drug form such as "Alsiroyal", a royal jelly, vitamin E and ginseng.

Where You Can Get Supplements In Germany?

The answer is that you really CAN'T! The closest thing to the products available to Americans and can only be found as high priced, prescription and over-the-counter drugs found in pharmacies called apothecaries, such as the "Apotheke im Stadthaus" on Berliner Platz in Bonn where I went with a list of the products I usually take.

The first thing that struck me about the "Apotheke im Stadthaus" was that I was BLOCKED from even accessing the products I was looking for by a long counter that extends the full width of the store. BEHIND that counter, standing GUARD over the products was a phalanx of registered pharmacists wearing white lab coats.

I told one of the pharmacists, a woman named Christi Himmelfahrt, that I was moving to Germany for 6 months, and needed to stock up in the states on supplements before returning.

She asked me a slew of annoying questions, and gave me a lot of unwanted advice regarding my supplement program. I cut her short by informing her that I just wanted to price a few products and be on my way, and that I wasn't used to not being able to look at the products myself. She stared as if in shock at my "impudence" and proceeded to pull boxes containing various OTC drugs off the shelves lining the wall behind the counter.

All the products available in a German apothocary are listed in a "PDR" like volume called "Die Rote List" (ISBN 3-87193-167-5). There one can find a complete listing of international pharmaceutical firms that manufacture patented analogs of dietary supplements sold as OTC and prescription drugs. Through this you can see who the companies are that are trying to manipulate the Codex process.

German Rip-Off Prices!

Here is an example of how OTC drug prices at "Apotheke im Stadhaus" compare The with Life Extension Foundation's supplement prices:

LEF: Vitamin C, 250 caps, 1,000 mg, $22.50, cost per gram: 0.090 cents.

GERMANY: Vitamin C not available in 1 Gram caps, only in a quantity of 20, 1 Gram effervescent lozenges (Merck) which cost 6.45 DM or $4.19 U.S. (U.S. dollar=1.5263 DM). Cost is .209 cents per mg). German cost is more than double LEF cost.

The largest sized tablet of vitamin C in Germany is 250 mg (Merck)(a huge, hard-to-swallow tablet -- they don't have capsules). Their price for 30 tablets is 18.89 DM or $12.27 US (cost is $1.63/gram in Germany vs .09 cents per gram for the Life Extension Foundation product. The German cost is 18.11 times HIGHER than the LEF cost

I consume 20 capsules/day of C, or 20 x 365 = 7300 capsules/year. My cost at .09 cents per gram (73,00 capsules x 1 gram or 7,300 grams x .09/gram = LEF cost of $657/year.

If I consumed 7,300 grams x $1.61 cents/gram, my cost per year in Germany would be a whopping $11,899/ year-- or FAR more than I can afford to pay for vitamin C, ESPECIALLY when I figure the cost of the OTHER supplements I take! The German price for 1 gram of vitamin C is 18.11 times higher than the LEF price!

North American Pharmacies Move In On Supplement Market

Americans and Canadians had better wake up because on Oct. 14, 1996 a press release announced the publication of "The Natural Pharmacist," a new magazine exclusively for retail pharmac