I don’t know enough about the topic to offer any judgment, but though the lady sounds extremely serious and well documented, it also sounds too alarming to be true. (pro and con sources of the Codex are listed here)
It’s a video which is knowing substantial viral success over the internet and of course the issue of freedom in health and food is an important one.
This is the crux of the message:
If the WTO succeeds in harmonizing world legislation around the Codex Alimentarius,
– Seven of the most dangerous compounds, now prohibited in 176 countries, will be legal (it will be forbidden to stop them)
– Lots of therapeutic compounds will be as illegal as heroin
– And all cows will have to be treated by hormones and antibiotics
Neurologist Rima E Laibow has calculated that the resulting disruption of agriculture, and death through toxic substances, could lead up to 3 billion avoidable deaths.
The most interesting allegations against the new system start at 9:30 minutes in the speech.
Of course, this is very alarming, so caution is required with this message. One of our network members said: “I think the video greatly misunderstands and exaggerates them. For instance, the video says that only a few nutritional supplements will be allowed. I saw instead a blanket allowance to add any substance whose sole purpose was to enhance nutrition.”
The video is available here.
Michel,
you quote one of our network members as saying “I think the video greatly misunderstands and exaggerates them”, apparently meaning the dangers of Codex.
Having had a lot to do with Codex, I can confirm that Rima Laibow does exaggerate some of the threats. One obvious example is “And all cows will have to be treated by hormones and antibiotics”. There is no such determination by Codex, to be sure.
But that is not to say that Codex Alimentarius is not bad. It is an international legislative body that bypasses legislative procedures by passing what is known as “guidelines” that are said to be voluntary for countries to adopt. The trouble here is that these guidelines are also used by the World Trade Organization to resolve trade disputes. So while nominally voluntary, Codex guidelines are actually enforceable, subjecting countries to danger of trade sanctions.
I have come across Codex as part of my work on food supplements. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a lot of international movement became evident, apparently in an effort to eliminate nutritional supplements which are a serious competition to pharmaceutical medicines.
At the time, Australia re-defined supplements as medicines (therapeutic goods), Canada initiated action to control supplements (as natural health products subject to medicine-like controls), the European Union started discussions that eventually resulted in restrictive legislation for supplements (EU Food Supplements Directive), and Codex Alimentarius started to talk about supplements.
In that sense, Codex is part of a world wide effort to “spoil” supplements as a competing element to pharmaceutical medicines.
The proposal in Codex on how to deal with supplements was made in 1994 by the German delegation to the Nutrition Committee. Discussions went on for a decade and finally resulted in a Codex vitamin guideline. The text is a rather vague affair. It doesn’t have any enforceable limits, but discussions are in progress right now, how to limit supplement ingredients and dosages of vital nutrients on “safety” grounds.
Anyone wanting to follow that string further can check out my site, specifically:
Codex Alimentarius: Globalizing Food and Health
There are more articles on Codex on that site, and some of them are listed at the end of the page under the heading “related articles”.