I have been sitting in the CCNFSDU (Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses) Working Group on Gluten - Foods for about 1 hour. We are struggling, as the CCNFSDU has been for over 16 years, to define what a gluten - free food is, whether we are talking about single ingredients, how to measure it and what happens if a standard cannot be reached. There already is a gluten -f foods standard under Codex, by the way, which was adopted in 1981. By the way, right now Basil Mathioudakis of the European Community and Barbara Schneeman of the US FDA are having a food fight: the EC wants to keep out foods that do not usually have gluten (cucumber for instance) while the US (supported, naturally, by Canada) wants to include the possibility of all foods, whether formulated for that purpose or not.
At the last Codex meeting, for which we had pre-registered, we found ourselves confronted by armed guards who did everything they could to keep General Stubblebine and me away from the Delegates at the meeting using intimidation, threat and other weird ways of behaving when you consider that these are meetings open to everyone. So we did NOT pre-register for this meeting in order to see what would happen if we used this strategy. Well, what happened was really interesting. First of all, there are no armed guards in evidence, which is quite a nice touch, to be sure.
Second, when we came up to the registration table When we walked in this morning (NOT having pre-registered) to see if we would be sequestered from the Delegates if we arrived without pre-registering for the meeting. What happened was that Mr. Georg Mueller, the head of the CCNFSDU German Secretariat, saw that we were setting up our computers in the meeting room and insisted (politely, but insisting, none the less) that we not sit in the room on the main floor where the meeting was being held because it was too full and was, indeed, fully booked. Take a look at a picture of the “full room” DURING THE MEETING: https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/images/1-7-2008%204-21-27%20PM_0001.JPG
Hours into the meeting, by coffee break time, there is still no agreement over whether a food like cucumbers (naturally gluten free) should be included in the deliberations or only a product which has been rendered gluten - free by processing. During the 30 minute break, a representative of an African “friendly” comes up to me to seek me out and tell me that she is glad to see us here and I give her an update on the “reasoning” used by the US for prohibiting - actively forbidding - the labeling of Genetically Modified (GM) foods (often called “Franken Foods”) at the February meeting on Labeling of Genetically Modified Foods (Oslo, Feb, 2007): that both FDA and independent research shows conclusively that consumers will reject GM foods if they know that their food IS GM. Since the FDA has decided that GM food is equivalent to non GM food (ADMINISTRATIVELY, NOT SCIENTIFICALLY, THAT IS, SINCE THE FDA REQUIRES NOT A SINGLE SHRED OF SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE THAT GM FOOD IS SAFE OR THAT IT IS IDENTICAL TO NON GM FOOD - REL) consumers would be making a mistake if they rejected GM food. Because of that, the FDA feels that telling consumers the truth about GM foods would be FALSE AND MISLEADING!
Of course, she was dumbstruck at that bit of wacky (and potentially lethal) news about the US and its GM policy.
So you can imagine my surprise when Barbara Schneeman did something
that I actually felt I had to congratulate her on. You see, ordinarily the
EU follows right along behind the US in what appears very much like a
choreographed script. Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina
and Brazil have their lines in the script, too. Only on things which will
not shape world markets is dissent in evidence between these countries.
Today, the discussion was raging about whether a gluten free item had to
provide less than 20 parts per million (ppm) of gluten only or whether
there could be low gluten and reduced gluten products at somewhere between
20 ppm. Meanwhile, the EU Delegate, Basil Mathioudakis is still taking
another position on gluten free foods from the US: he says he wants to
protect industry and their products. That’s when Dr. Schneeman got my
attention: she gave a passionate and powerful plea for actually protecting
the consumer, NOT products! Yikes! I nearly fell of my
chair!
In fact, I was so astonished that, at the next coffee break I went out of my way to talk with her. As I approached her she visibly flinched (you may remember that she was so upset by one of my [accurate] press releases that she was on the verge of tears when we spoke about it at a pre-Codex Committee meeting some time ago. She did not like being quoted in a way that menaced the health of large numbers of people although my quote was fully accurate). She tensed as I began to speak but then got much more comfortable when I congratulated her on her passionate defense of the interests of the consumer. In fact, I went on, if the FDA had that attitude about protecting people in all ways was its work, I would be able to return to the practice of drug free medicine! She and I then had a nice little chat. Her response to my congratulations on her position was to state that it was the FDA’s goal to protect the interests all the time. I agreed but said that they had quite a way to go. I also said that it was nice to be able to thank her for something that she did and pointed out that I did not publicly criticize EVERYTHING she does. Then I told her that I would write to our supporter base, the largest in the health freedom movement by a factor of at least 15 fold, and let them know that she had done something we could approve of and wished her may more such successes!
But don’t be fooled. The FDA is NOT about consumer protection, either on the drug side of the house or the food side. That is one of the reasons why it is so important to push back against them in their degradation of the food supply and permission to market drugs that they KNOW are deadly. The FDA wants to make it illegal to share information about the benefits of food by intentionally confusing health claims with scientific papers and other information (remember, this is consistent with the definition of “advertising” that the FDA bulled through Codex Committee on Food Labeling and then brought home as their ‘Guidance on Health Claims’) and forbidding the dissemination of health benefits information. You can take action, you know, to stop this gag rule on health freedom by taking action to support Ron Paul’s excellent Health Freedom Protection Act at https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/hq/email/summary.jsp?email_blast_KEYS=1077464
On a cultural note, tomorrow, on November 11 at 11:11 AM the women of Bad Neuenaur will storm the city hall and take over the reigns of power for one day. Gosh! If they can do it, why can’t we? Please, today, ask three friends, neighbors, whatever, to go to the Natural Solutions Foundation website, www.HealthFreedomUSA.org, and sign up for the secure Health Freedom E-Alerts.
We are more powerful than we know! It just takes exploring the reality of how power is wielded to get that power pumping for us!
Yours in health and freedom from the Codex Meeting on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org