To: IAHF List
Subject: Penton Codex Article Exposed for Inaccuracies - Whose Side is Penton Media On?
From: John Hammell jham@iahf.com
Date: Sun, 28 Jul 2002 22:25:31 -0400
IAHF List: Penton Media http://www.penton.com is a huge corporation that publishes hundreds of trade publications in a slew of fields
http://www.penton.com/cgi-bin/search/publications.pl including the dietary supplement industry. Mind you, they have no allegiance to the dietary supplement industry, all they care about is making money- which is why they sponsor a trade show called "Nutricon" wherein they are fostering a pharmaceutical takeover of the supplement industry.
The article below, "Congressmen DeCry Codex" is a pack of lies which supports the Big Lie told by FDA and by the pharmaceutically dominated vitamin trade associations that Codex does not threaten our domestic vitamin laws. Below the article, you can see my letter to the editor of Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals (a Penton Publication) and to the author of this spin piece, in which IAHF sets them straight. They won’t respond, for the simple reason that they can’t.
Please print this out and show it to all the health foods store owners in your area, especially if they belong to NNFA, because they are being lied to on the Codex issue by their own trade association and need to know it. Send this to the CEO’s of all the vitamin companies you buy products from and do all in your power to wake them up, or the American supplement industry will end up following the European industry off the same cliff that the small companies there are going over right now. A fight back is still occurring in the EU and IAHF is trying hard to awaken American companies to help the UK based Health Freedom Movement http://www.healthfreedommovement.com/ while there is still time. Their fight is our fight. Anyone can be on the IAHF list. Sign up at http://www.iahf.com and please donate via paypal or the mail, see address on the site. Thank you. John Hammell IAHF 800-333-2553 N.America 540-961-0476 world
From The July 2002 Issue of Functional Foods & Nutraceuticals
WASHINGTON—Two US Congressmen lambasted the US Food and Drug Administration's participation in the Codex Alimentarius process to harmonise international supplements regulations, calling it a "back door" attempt to undermine America's liberal regulatory climate.
Rep. Ron Paul (Republican-Texas) and Rep. Peter DeFazio (Democrat-Oregon) testified to the House Committee on Government Reform on March 20 here that global harmonisation of dietary supplements regulations "may be beneficial for the large corporations and international bureaucrats that control the World Trade Organisation but it would be a disaster for American consumers of dietary supplements."
An FDA official said that, while the agency takes seriously comments from members of Congress, any Codex standard does not automatically result in a change of US laws or regulations.
At issue is how upper-intake levels for various nutrients will be defined and related to global standards. The US National Academy of Sciences has elected to set the levels based on safety levels as opposed to recommended daily allowances. Neither FDA nor Codex has affirmed a position as of yet.
"How FDA will use these levels in a regulatory scheme remains to be seen," said John Hathcock, PhD, vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs at the Council for Responsible Nutrition, based here, and also representative of the Trans-Atlantic Business Dialogue, an executive-level co-operative venture among CEOs of industry on both sides of the Atlantic. "FDA's involvment in Codex will bode well, not ill, if the Codex guidelines come out to be science-based. We need those limits to be rational and not restrictive."
—Todd Runestad
Editor psofroniou@newhope.com
Please give my comments to Todd Runestad, and Todd, please reply:
Todd: Congressmen Ron Paul and Peter De Fazio never said Codex automatically threatened DSHEA, so your quote of the FDA here does not address what they actually said! Please read the gif file of Paul and De Fazio’s statement about the Codex threat to our dietary supplement laws at http://www.iahf.com by clicking on the spinning globe on the front of the site. Quoting Paul and De Fazio’s letter to Congressman Burton on this they say "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 1999 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 US] 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!
Paul and DeFazio go on to assert that the USA can be hauled before a WTO Dispute settlement panel, which can pressure Congress under threat of imposing trade sanctions against us, to change our domestic vitamin laws to conform to the Codex standard.
Paul and DeFazio are not incorrectly interpreting the law here, they are going on a basis of what they were told by the Congressional Research Service, and you have done a real disservice to your readers by not checking this out more carefully and by going on a basis of what the FDA and John Hathcock of CRN have told you.
Why do you trust what FDA tells you? Why do you trust Hathcock on this when he used to work at FDA and now works for CRN which is dominated by multinational pharmaceutical companies- see their membership list at http://www.crnusa.org/2members.html CRN’s membership includes Pfizer, Aventis, Novartis, and many other multinational giants that are intent on taking over the dietary supplement industry by harmonizing US law to grossly restrictive EU and Codex standards.
CRN comes right out in the open and ADMITS that this is what they are trying to do in the following TABD press release which you can find on their website at http://www.crnusa.org/shellnr112000.html
© Copyright 2001, CRN
Council for Responsible Nutrition
• Contact CRN 202.872.1488
• 1875 Eye Street, NW, Suite 400
• Washington, DC 20006
Monday, November 20, 2000
Contact: Mike Greene
202/263-1002
mgreene@crnusa.org
U.S. and European Leaders Agree on
Principles to Harmonize Dietary Supplement Regulations
WASHINGTON, DC -- The dietary supplements sector-working group of the TransAtlantic Business Dialogue (TABD) agreed on several key elements to harmonize the regulatory framework for vitamin and mineral food supplements on both sides of the Atlantic. These major breakthroughs were forged at the Sixth TABD CEO Conference in Cincinnati, Ohio, from November 16-18.
The working group approved the principles and components on definition, safety, and GMPs. The working group also agreed to continue its dialogue and that its next steps would be to:
1. Define types of claims and appropriate labeling for food supplements and develop criteria for transatlantic acceptance of credible scientific evidence to substantiate these claims; evaluate mechanisms for authorizing/approving claims; and assess conditions for exclusivity to encourage research and development.
1. Encourage the scientific bodies responsible for the evaluation of the safety of total intakes of vitamins and minerals (EU Scientific Committee on Food and US Food and Nutrition Board) to cooperate closely to harmonize setting upper safe levels for vitamins and minerals.
2. Define and recommend methodologies for setting maximum levels for vitamin and/or mineral food supplements on the basis of upper safe levels of total intake for these nutrients and intakes from other sources. The responsible regulatory bodies are encouraged to cooperate and establish one set of figures for maximum levels for vitamins and minerals in food supplements on both sides of the Atlantic.
3. Seek urgently, in light of the imminent proposed US rule on GMPs, transatlantic harmony for implementing common GMPs and quality standards. The working group also agreed to develop practical procedures to support GMP details; and seek acceptance, implementation, and appropriate enforcement.
Progress toward transatlantic harmonization of dietary supplements was led by a team of supplement CEO’s that included: Gale Bensussen, Leiner Health Products Inc.; William Van Dyke, B&D Nutritional Ingredients, Inc.; Johannes Burges, Hermes Arzneimittel; and Sonnich Fryland, Ferrosan. They were among the more than 120 industry leaders from the U.S. and the European Union who called on their governments to adopt a list of progressive trade liberalization measures at this TABD CEO Conference.
The CEO’s, meeting with senior officials form the U.S. Administration, the European Commission, the U.S. Congress, and the European Parliament, made recommendations on how best to boost transatlantic and global trade and investment. They focused on specific mechanisms for resolving trade disputes and expanding the U.S.-EU commercial marketplace, which at $1 billion per day in two-way trade, is the world’s largest trading relationship.
"The recommendations we have developed at this meeting will, if adopted by the governments, expand trade and investment opportunities for large, medium, and small companies by removing obstacles and inefficiencies in the U.S. and European regulatory regimes," said George David, chairman and CEO of United Technologies Corporation and US TABD chair for 2000. "Adoption of these recommendations will create jobs, raise living standards, lower costs and improve access to goods–that is, provide concrete benefits for business, for labor, and for consumers."
The TABD is a results-oriented forum that seeks to increase transatlantic trade and investment opportunities through the removal of costly inefficiencies from excessive regulation, duplication and differences in the EU and U.S. regulatory systems and procedures in a manner consistent with sustainable development.
For details about the dietary supplement sector working group progress and future plans, contact either Issues Manager John Cordaro–USA jcordaro@crnusa.org or Peter Heer–Europe peter.heer@roche.com.
Hathcock developed the toxicology model that the National Academy of Sciences used to generate the paper titled "A Risk Assessment Model for Establishing Safe Upper Levels for Nutrients" The problem is that they’re extrapolating from a toxicology model intended to evaluate toxic pharmaceutical drugs and they’re misapplying it to safe dietary supplements.
There is nothing scientific about that! There is also a serious problem when the FDA attempts to hide behind the National Academy of Science which as a non governmental body is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. We can’t get the raw data behind their papers or the CVs of the authors- which would clearly show a gross conflict of interest as most are chairs of university nutrition departments that are awash in pharmaceutical research grants.
Hathcock is being paid well by the pharmaceutical companies that dominate CRN to assist them in setting the USA up to lose in a WTO trade dispute that threatens DSHEA in the future. CRN has publicly stated their intention to harmonize US dietary supplement laws to the EU’s in the TABD press release shown above.
This calls into question Penton Media’s allegiance- is it to the dietary supplement industry, or is it to a pharmaceutical takeover of the dietary supplement industry?
Do you not sponsor "Nutricon", a trade show at which vitamin company ceos look to sell out to drug companies?
The problem…… is INESCAPABLE!
Comments?
For Health Freedom,
John Hammell- International Advocates for Health Freedom http://www.iahf.com