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”.