Health Freedom is Our First Freedom: Threat Analysis

by Ralph Fucetola JD

Published February 06, 2009 @ 08:16PM PT

To start the blog off with its first substantive entry, I'm posting the text of the speech I will be giving on Sunday, February 8, 2009 at an event sponsored by the Hunterdon Holistic Society (Hunterdon County, NJ). Their web page is: http://www.hunterdonholisticsociety.org/

Ralph Fucetola JD
Natural Solutions Foundation Trustee

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Natural Solutions Foundation

www.HealthFreedomUSA.org

Presentation by Ralph Fucetola JD
Natural Solutions Foundation Trustee
February 8, 2009
Hunterdon Holistic Society

“Health Freedom is Our First Freedom!”

Thank you for inviting me to speak today on behalf of the Natural Solutions Foundation and Health Freedom. Dr. Rima E. Laibow and Gen. Bert Stubblebine, my two co-trustees of the Foundation, wanted me to tell you all how much we appreciate your efforts to defend access to good nutrition, natural remedies and truthful information about them. We’re here today for a private discussion of these important matters.

With the help of many thousands of people around the country we were able to bring the Health Freedom message to greater national attention over the past election cycle. We went “toe to toe” with all the hot-button social issues on the Obama “Change” web sites and made the Top Ten on Change.org and were added to the new President’s Briefing Book on Change.gov. Food matters. Health matters. And Freedom matters… and the American people know it!

The definition of Health Freedom we used was intentionally broad:

“Health Freedom means the right to control what happens to your body, choosing your own health path, making your own health choices.”

What we say is that Health Freedom is Our First Freedom… without it, our other freedoms are meaningless and nearly impossible to exercise. So we see Health Freedom as a fundamental human civil right.

And where there are fundamental rights at risk there are forces at work both opposing them and supporting them.

I was recently asked, yet again, if the UN agency, Codex Alimentarius (the world food code) was a threat to dietary supplements; was there a deadline after which Codex would prevent us from buying supplements?

Here is my answer:...if you look up the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline, adopted by Codex in 2005, it begins, "Most people who have access to a balanced diet can usually obtain all the nutrients they require from their normal diet. Because foods contain many substances that promote health, people should therefore be encouraged to select a balanced diet from food before considering any vitamin and mineral supplement"

The VMG is at: www.codexalimentarius.net/download/standards/10206/cxg_055e.pdf

When you read the VMG carefully, the prejudices against supplements stated in the very first sentence are reinforced by a general attitude that treats food supplements as though they were industrial toxins (while elsewhere Codex allows all sorts of real industrial toxins into the food supply).

I’ve attended some Codex meetings and my co-trustees have attended many more; you can see some of our video reports about those meetings on YouTube.com/naturalsolutions.

Codex was founded nearly 50 years ago by two primary UN agencies, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Its predecessor was the old AustrioHungarian Empire’s Codex Alimentarius, part of the Napoleonic Code.

Its Statute says it is supposed to protect the safety of the world food supply and encourage world food trade.

Codex guidelines are not "law" but they are "presumptive evidence" in WTO disputes. So it is the World Trade Organization that enforces Codex. For Codex to have domestic impact, local law has to be amended to meet the Codex guidelines. In the US, DSHEA (the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act) still protects us from the full impact of Codex, though the new administration seems to be moving in the direction of "HARMonizing" our laws with Codex, which has long been FDA policy, announced in a 1995 Federal Register policy statement.

I've discussed how countries can opt out of Codex in a YouTube video called the "Codex Two Step" - see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QNg3MD6BxM&

In connection with the "Codex Two Step" Natural Solutions Foundation sponsored our own "nutrient friendly" version of the VMG for countries to adopt, which would not restrict nutrients and natural remedies: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/action/step3/Revised_VMG.pdf

So while at present there is no specific deadline date when Codex will take away our right to access high quality, high potency nutrition, the inexorable pressure continues through Codex, through the North American Union cooperation agreements among US, Mexico and Canada, and through a number of other threats.

At the end of 2006 the threat was the FDA's anti-CAM draft guidance document that Dr. Ron Paul called "an abuse of FDA power..." We beat this back with hundreds of thousands of comments posted on the FDA site before the site crashed (the guidance has still not been finalized). We believe this is a perfect example of what organized push-back can accomplish!

In 2007 the threat was Sen. Kennedy's FDA enabling act, to which was added a "savings clause" protecting DSHEA (dietary supplement) products; we worked to keep that savings language in the final act, when it looked like it might be lost in the congressional conference committee. Another example of successful push-back by organized, strategic force!

Last year, 2008, FDA asked for "comments" on whether that savings clause really restricted their enhanced authority to ban interstate shipments of nutrients, proving the wisdom of persevering -- had we not fought hard to keep the language in the Act, FDA would be moving even faster against nutrition.

During the same year other FDA initiatives threatened further "HARMonization" while the EPA moved toward banning Nano Silver products. Push-back is a tool that gives us impact, but it is only effective when large numbers of people push back together! Natural Solutions Foundation is proud to be at the forefront of push back for health and health freedom.

See: Defending Nano Silver:
http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=1773

And then there's NAIS - the National Animal Identification System and recent efforts to control heritage seeds as well, which some see as parts of a developing regulatory structure that will of necessity restrict access to wholesome nutrition and natural remedies.

We've opposed all these moves and will continue to do so. We need your support so please visit www.HealthFreedomUSA.org and join our free Health Freedom Action eAlert system there. You see, “support = capacity” to push back on a global basis. Food is globalized. Health freedom assaults, coordinated through Codex, are globalized and our push-back need to be globalized. And that is where Natural Solutions and its “Mouse Warriors” shine!

It isn't just Codex that is a threat to free access to nutrients and natural remedies

But so are the FDA, the EPA, etc. This year, 2009, needs to be the year when the FDA was divested of its misused food authority.

And here in New Jersey, a world center of Big Pharma, both the forced vaccination of children with dangerous concoctions and new restrictions on nutritional free speech are important pending political issues.

Since most people in the world do not have "access to a balanced diet" as the Codex VMG pretends to presume, what is the real purpose behind this regulation? Is it not reasonable to presume that it is not a benign purpose?

If you want to explore the dark underbelly of Codex, I recommend that you see Dr. Laibow's brilliant expose of the evil intent behind Codex and all such restrictions, see her video "Nutricide" at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmrF9KjlGsc&

Now, though I’d like to briefly review FDA’s current policies and initiatives that threaten health freedom and remind you why DSHEA is so important to your health freedom and why it is so much of a threat to the FDA, the agency which runs US Codex activities.

Today we are talking about the FDA and Codex. Bear in mind that everything we are saying about the dangerous FDA and its international partner, Codex, is equally true of the dangerous USDA, the EPA etc. We want our rights; we want our health; we want our Health Freedom. And we want the US government out of the business of mis-regulating food. Food regulation must be the province of the marketplace and the states, which are closer to the people and more accessible to our impact and control.

DSHEA says that supplements and herbs are to be considered as food. They are deemed safe when used as directed. Because they are food, there can be no limitation on dose, leaving the door open for the high potency supplements we enjoy so uniquely in the United States. Protected ingredients are defined as those items available for sale and use in dietary supplements before June, 1994 (when DSHEA went into effect). The list of grandfathered substances was complied by the National Natural Food Association (now the Natural Products Association) and had been accepted by the FDA. It defines the DSHEA protected substances and has been a core of health freedom as it pertains to supplements in the US since the law was passed.

The FDA is now unilaterally denying the fact that this list is good evidence of what substances are protected under DSHEA. The agency is acting to continue and accelerate the process of destroying access to high potency supplements upon which so many of our Natural Health options rely. Here’s the process the FDA is following:

First, in 2007, Congress rewards FDA for its failures by increasing its power. This was done through Sen. Kennedy’s FDA “enabling act” although our vigorous efforts (thank you!) did get the “DSHEA product savings clause” 1011 added to the bill. This important clause specifically exempts all DSHEA products from any provision in that bill.

Second, in 2008, FDA asks for public comments on how the “DSHEA product savings clause” applies to section 301(11) of the act which gives FDA authority to ban foods that are being studied for use as “treatment of disease.” The simple legal answer, of course, is that the section in question has no relationship whatsoever to our nutrients since the entire law has no impact on DSHEA products.

Third, last month a prior “Citizens Petition” from a pharmaceutical company is used by FDA as the excuse to ban a specific form of B6 (Pyridoxamine), negating the critically important 1994 NNFA Grandfather List of Dietary Ingredients. This opens all supplements to similar bans.

Fourth, comments are sought on the idea that FDA can ban any nutritional product it likes from interstate commerce despite legislative protection through the specific legislative prohibition preventing the FDA from doing so for products covered under DSHEA…

Read more at: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=1956

Again, our valiant Mouse Warriors took the challenge and clicked in large numbers to tell the FDA that we value both the rule of law and the protections of this bill for DSHEA products.

Fifth in Europe, the EFSD meets to discuss maximum permitted levels (MPLs) of nutrients …

Sixth, based on another one of those “citizens petitions” from favored “consumer” groups, EPA expresses a possible ban of topical nano silver products as “pesticides” despite the fact that it has already been approved as an efffective, inexpensive and highly effective surface cleaner…

Seventh, FDA seeks to eliminate all nutrients and objects from health use which have had any study about them published of any sort whatsoever - this is the ultimate import of the dangerous section 301(11) of the act.

Eighth, FDA and CODEX seek to eliminate all nutrients which have not had met an artificial “Significant Scientific Agreement” standard that violates DSHEA’s commercially reasonable standard of “competent and reliable scientific evidence.”

And the beat(ing) goes on…

But back to Pyridoxamine. FDA’s “response” as noted above, to the position that DSHEA protects dietary supplements from the unfair tactic of some pharmaceutical company conducting a so-called “study” of the ingredient for medical use and then using that to ban the competing natural substance, was to throw down the gauntlet at the feet of the industry and ban a legal, grandfathered nutritional supplement ingredient for that very reason…

It’s our opinion that what we - health freedom advocates, industry and the consumers of the United States, together need to protect access to high potency supplements. It is also our opinion that we must engage in a concerted campaign to Divest the FDA (and the USDA) of Food Regulatory Authority. Congress has, at least three times before, divested FDA of authority it was misusing or failing to exercise well enough, when DEA, EPA and CPA were created.

How much more FDA mis-regulation can consumers and the industry survive? How much more FDA mis-regulation will consumers tolerate? Are we ready to act?

My answer to the question of what is the impact of Codex, the world food code, on our health freedom is this: that depends on the FDA, the USDA and the other alphabet agencies. And it depends on us!

So there we have it: either FDA is divested of food authority or we will, bit by bit, then larger bit by larger bit, lose our access to high potency, advanced nutrition.

For more on Divesting the FDA see: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=1601

Action to Divest the FDA: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26314

My thanks to the Hunterdon Holistic Society: www.HunterdonHolisticSociety.org

And thank you all for coming here today. It is democracy in action – such as this event today – that will make real change possible. And please check http://youtube.com/naturalsolutions in a couple days for videos of this event. By coming here today you’ve all shown that you are the “grass roots” of Health Freedom. By going to www.HealthFreedomUSA.org and joining our free Health Freedom Action eAlert list you will become the “net roots” of change!

Copyright 2009

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Update: Video of presentation is at:

http://vitaminlawyerhealthfreedom.blogspot.com/2009/02/health-freedom-is-our-first-freedom.html