What is Codex?
The origins of Codex
Published: 02 December 2016
The Codex Alimentarius Commission, based in Rome, Italy, and created in 1963, is an international organization jointly run by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) of the United Nations. One of its 27 committees, the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Use (CCNFSDU) is responsible for Dietary Supplements and Special Foods. The CCNFSDU meets once yearly in Germany (its host country).
Unique among all health-freedom groups, the National Health Federation is the only health-freedom organization accredited by the Codex Alimentarius Commission to participate at all Codex meetings. In this way, NHF actively shapes global policies for food, beverages, and nutritional supplements. And by having an accredited seat at Codex, NHF can submit scientific research and arguments about food standards and guidelines, speak out during the many meetings of delegates, and influence the wording of Final Reports on all meetings that NHF attends. No other health-freedom group has this vital, global impact.
Codex’s published goals are to develop and adopt uniform food standards for its member countries and to promote the free and unhindered international flow of food goods, thereby eliminating trade barriers to food and providing food safety.
Unfortunately, the implementation of these goal are clouded by both government regulatory bureaucrats who are largely out of touch with the needs of consumers, and by powerful commercial interests whose motives center on their bottom line, profit.
The purpose of Codex:
- Codex Alimentarius is a set of international trade standards for food, beverage, and nutritional supplement quality and safety.
- Established to “protect the health of consumers and ensure fair practices in the food trade.”
- A Codex Commission was established by, and works in coordination with, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) – since 1963.
- The World Trade Organization joined Codex in the 90s.
How does Codex affect the health of U.S. & other citizens?
The delegates to the committees are regulatory bureaucrats, largely out of touch with consumers and influenced by commercial interests adverse to true health. As a result, they are establishing unhealthy guidelines.
The U.S. FDA delegate at Codex, no friend to health freedom, announced the FDA’s intention to harmonize U.S. food regulations to international standards, a position it also took in an October 11, 1995, Federal Register pronouncement.
In 1994, Codex began the process of establishing “guidelines to govern international trade in food supplements, which will be used to exclude high-potency American supplements and move towards harmonization of the more-liberal U.S. food regulatory regime with the harsh European regulatory model that only allows ridiculously low-potency and expensive supplements to be marketed. Other Codex-harmonization issues concern food additives, GM (genetically-modified) foods, food labeling, infant formulas, risk assessment of food supplements, and other related issues.
Who does Codex answer to and who responds to Codex?
Codex Alimentarius Commission answers to WHO and FAO.
- The WTO is the enforcement arm of Codex, on issues brought before it.
- In a trade dispute – the WTO enforces.
- Absent a trade dispute, each country that incorporates Codex standards & guidelines into its rules & regulations, then enforces them.
- The Codex Alimentarius Commission is heavily influenced by appointment and infiltration by powerful industries: Food, agricultural, biotech, and pharmaceutical industries.
What is Codex Doing to Our Rights?
- Sponsored by international pharmaceutical interests and the FDA, CODEX intends to circumvent both our Congress and Senate, and bring about a prohibition on nutritional supplements.
- An example of the consequences: possession of DHEA is now a felony in Canada with the same penalty as that for possession of drugs. You could go to jail for having DHEA in your house.
- What this means, as Norway, South Africa, Ireland, and Chile discovered is the control of nutritional supplements as if they were drugs.
- Codex could gain political and economic leverage to force the U.S. to modify our laws that currently provide U.S. consumers personal access to nutritional supplements.
What Can You Do?
Make your Voice heard where it counts: Codex Alimentarius.
- Support the work of the NHF on your behalf by donating toward the NHF delegation’s expenses at various Codex Committee meetings around the World each year.
- Supply research on upcoming debate topics in response to the many Codex Committee meetings NHF attends.
- Raise awareness how Codex works to destroy not only our rights but our health.
- Use consumer power to thwart international attempts to regulate you right out of your health and rights.