The "Pandemic" Panic and Health Freedom
Published May 04, 2009 @ 08:17AM PT
"4 out of 4" Good Doctors agree... don't panic!
The four doctors are: Dr. Ron Paul, member of congress, Dr. Joseph Mercola, Dr. Leonard Horowitz, Dr. Leonard Coldwell...
Dr. Rima E. Laibow, Natural Solutions Foundation Trustee, wrote:"To my mind, the real threat here is decidedly NOT the disease although it is very clear that the novel virus was manufactured by a lab crew. That is threat enough. But there is more. To my way of thinking, this is a crass, cruel and horrifying example of intentional mayhem and death (although this pandemic, like Avian Flu and SARS has so far fizzled) used as a weapon of not only mass deception, but of mass destruction as well."
http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=2659#recommends
Dr. Paul made it very clear that the current "pandemic" panic is just more of the usual 'govt growing to meet the needs of a growing govt' -- his video tells us that we can rely on ourselves to protect ourselves and families.
See my blog at:
http://vitaminlawyerhealthfreedom.blogspot.com/2009/05/health-freedom-and-self-care-in.html
The good doctors agree: good nutrition, hygiene, rest and sun will do more to support health than all the govt concocted panic reactions will ever do!
Also, take a look at: http://www.oath-keepers.blogspot.com/ - there are many in the military who are true patriots and who will not believe the engineered "pandemic" panic.
Regarding the "pandemic" check:
Good Doctors: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=2659
Proactive Protection: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=2581
Threat Analysis: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=2531
No HARMonization Against Health Freedom
Published April 05, 2009 @ 01:26PM PT
White Paper: Mandating No HARMonization with CODEX, Food Safety and Food Regulation
Health Freedom is Our First Freedom
Mandating No HARMonization with CODEX,
Food Safety and Food Regulation
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
April 3, 2009
A Natural Solutions Foundation White Paper
Regarding U.S. Codex Office and Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) for
Adoption of Codex Committee Policies by the U.S. Codex Delegation and FSIS
in Harmony with the Dietary Substances Health and Education Act (DSHEA),
19 USC 3512 (the Anti-Harmonization Statute) and other Statutory and Case Law
Index
Introduction - The Foundation
Introduction - Purpose
Requests for Congressional Action
Statement of Grounds - Facts
Statement of Grounds - Legal
Recommended Findings of Fact
Conclusions
Sharing this White Paper
I. Introduction-A – Who Are We?
The Natural Solutions Foundation, founded in 2004, is an international NGO (Non Governmental Organization) focused on health freedom. We are active and registered in several countries and are a not for profit 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization in the United States.
The Mission of the Foundation is to discover, develop, demonstrate and disseminate natural solutions to the problems facing us and threatening our health and freedom, achieving and maintaining a healthy self, community and world. Since its founding, the Natural Solutions Foundation has pursued a vigorous program on many fronts, including educating Congress and decision makers about natural solutions to significant social problems involving health and wellness.
We consider health freedom to be an essential part of those solutions and have, for example, spearheaded a powerful citizens’ initiative to have “Health Freedom is Our First Freedom” recognized as one of the Top Ten Social Issues on http://www.Change.org. Once this was accomplished, “Health Freedom is Our First Freedom” was then accepted into President Obama’s official Briefing Book on http://www.Change.gov.
We have also developed an international presence, in part by attending Codex Alimentarius meetings around the world, helping to ban the use of fluoride in infant formulas intended for healthy infants by providing powerful scientific information to Codex delegates who were eager for ways to help their infants at the Codex Committee for Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU, Chaing Mai, 2006), shared vitally needed health-focused information with Codex member states and provided leadership to Codex member states on how to protect their country’s food supplies without running afoul of the World Trade Organization’s draconian trade sanctions.
The Natural Solutions Foundation understands that threats to health and freedom are both domestic and international, as are the solutions. We have well over two hundred thousand people on our Action eAlert supporter list. Individuals and other organizations are welcome to participate in our many programs and action options so that netroots and decision makers share the same information and conclusions about the solutions to problems touching us all.
Among the innovative solutions we are pursuing are “Mouse Warrior Campaigns” which allow everyone with Internet access to communicate their opinions and need for “Health Freedom as Our First Freedom” to members of Congress, executives, health and food quality/safety officials around the globe and other people making decisions about health freedom and health freedom policy. We urge everyone to join our free, secure Health Freedom Action eAlerts by visiting our home page, www.HealthFreedomUSA.org or our international page, http://www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org and signing up there. Our efforts include the International Decade of Nutrition Program and an alliance among Health Conscious Nations expressed through international cooperation at Codex (the World Food Code) and the creation of Valley of the Moon™ Eco Demonstration Project (VotM™) with its Beyond Organic, BioDynamic, Zero Emissions™ (BO-BD-ZE™), ecologically sound communities and schools for farmers and non-farmers alike. VotM™ exists to share high impact, low technology, natural solutions to permit economically and environmentally sustainable, chemical free farming and other sustainable techniques for health and economic stability. Among these solutions, we consider Fr. Godfrey Nzamajo’s UN Center of Excellent-recognized Songhai Community in Benin to provide an outstanding example. VotM™ has formed a strategic alliance with the Songhai Community, sponsoring and teaching BioDynamic methods testing in several countries including the Republic of Panama.
II. Introduction-B: What Does This White Paper Accomplish?
This White Paper addresses the urgent need for Congress to adopt further assurances that American access to clean, biologically effective, health promoting and wholesome nutrition will not be compromised by “HARMonization” with new Federal food safety laws (including HR 875, 759, S. 425, etc.) or domestic or international rules, regulations or standards such as the Guidelines and Standards ratified and promulgated by the Codex Alimentarius Commission (the World Food Code). Such assurances already exist in US law but are flagrantly ignored by those attending Codex Alimentarius. Reigning in that disregard is essential to the food safety and security of the United States. And, since nutrients and nutrition are essential to health, halting such disregard of the law will improve the national health and the national bottom line at the same time by reducing expenditures for health care and diet, related illnesses, currently accounting for at a minimum of 1 out of every three dollars spent on health care. Diabetes, a disease of under nutrition, and its heartbreaking (and often lethal) consequences accounts for 1 out of every seven dollars spent in the health care sector in the US.
US participation in Codex Alimentarius and similar international activities drives food toward the unsustainable, the toxic, the non-nutritive and the undisclosed. The assurances that this will change and that we recommend build on the basis of the protections enacted in the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), the Anti-Harmonization Act, 19 USC 3512 and the DSHEA savings clause 1011 of the 2007 FDA Reorganization Act, as well as the First Amendment since full disclosure and free dissemination of information about the relationship between health benefits and food components is illegally suppressed by the FDA through its claims policies and other regulatory measures.
The FDA was documented to be a failed agency by the November 2007 Report of the Subcommittee on Science and Technology, “FDA Science and Mission at Risk.”
That report concluded that FDA a failed agency because:
1) The FDA cannot fulfill its mission because its scientific base has eroded and its scientific organizational structure is weak.
2) The FDA cannot fulfill its mission because its scientific workforce does not have sufficient capacity and capability.
3) The FDA cannot fulfill its mission because its information technology (IT) infrastructure is inadequate.
4) FDA does not have the capacity to ensure the safety of food for the nation.
5) The development of medical products based on “new science” cannot be adequately regulated by the FDA.
6) There is insufficient capacity in modeling risk assessment and analysis.
7) The FDA science agenda lacks a coherent structure and vision, as well as effective coordination and prioritization.
8) The FDA has substantial recruitment and retention challenges.
9) The FDA has an inadequate and ineffective program for scientist performance.
10) The FDA has not taken sufficient advantage of external and internal collaborations.
11) The FDA lacks the information science capability and information infrastructure to fulfill is regulatory mandate.
12) The FDA cannot provide the information infrastructure support to regulate products based on new science.
We would add:
13. The FDA does little or nothing to control or prevent conflicts of interest leading to decision which impact the public health which are based, in whole or in part, on the financial and professional advancement and advantage of the decision-makers who are thus unable to act impartially.
In 1994 Congress unanimously adopted DSHEA, signaling a new approach to allowing Americans the freedom to develop the most advanced and dynamic nutritional marketplace in the world. Memorializing the essential concept that nutrients are to be treated as foods, and, as such, cannot be limited or controlled in their dose or combination any more than eating, for example, lamb flavored ice cream could – or should – be regulated, DSHEA created a legal climate which allows natural remedies, therapies that may benefit and medical treatment to flourish through the active participation of over 90% of the US population.
However, that expression of the People’s will has been continually undercut by a clear Federal agency [FDA, IOM, EPA, USDA] prejudice against natural, wholesome, non-industrialized food and nutrition. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), EPA, IOM, NIH and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) all fail the Public trust in this regard.
Nonetheless, the Dietary Supplement industry has responded with growth and expansion to massive consumer demand since the adoption of DSHEA. Much of this growth may be attributed to the thriving free market in Dietary Supplements established by DSHEA. As U.S. District Court Judge Tena Campbell stated in Nutraceutical Corporation and Solaray, Inc. v. Lester Crawford, Acting Commissioner, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Case No. 2:04CV409 TC, USDC, Utah Central Division, “the legislative history of the DSHEA indicates that Congress generally intended to harmonize the treatment of dietary supplements with that of foods when it added the dietary supplement subsection…”
Many people in the health and wellness industries, Health Freedom Advocates like the Natural Solutions Foundation and consumers fear that the Federal agencies’ avowed adherence to “HARMonizing” our laws and regulations to the Codex Alimentarius process (starting October 11, 1995, Federal Register and continuing unabated since then) is, over time, reversing these positive, and widely supported developments. There is great public consternation and well-earned concern that these agencies are seeking to HARMonize United States Standards, Guidelines and Codes of Practice with the restrictive rules and practices prevalent in certain countries outside the United States. These restrictive, anti-high-potency nutrient standards are consonant with Codex standards and guidelines such as the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline (VMG - ratified by Codex Alimentarius Commission July 4, 2005, Rome, Italy to the public jubilation of the US Delegate, despite the fact that this Guideline violates US law in both principle and fact), rather than with the freedom of access to nutrients and other wellness products protected and guaranteed by DSHEA.
Because of DSHEA, most of the world’s Dietary Supplement consumption and demand takes place in the United States, meaning that US law should be the basis for international HARMonization rather than the other way around. The United States has far more experience with the strong positive [and virtually absent negative ] consequences of free consumer access to nearly unlimited health supports than any other country and understands fully the importance both to health and to freedom of health choice embedded in this access pattern. The United States also has developed a wide clinical experience with diverse nutrients and substances which supports the conclusion that nutrients at levels chosen by consumers and the practitioners who use them for their patients are enviably safe and free of toxic effects and dangers. In fact, deaths from these products are virtually unknown, while their competitors, pharmaceutical drugs, are noted by the American Medical Association and others as constituting a major cause of death, even when used according to professional guidelines and recommendations.
Congress must reject the position stated by FDA in the US Federal Register (October 11, 1994) that it would “HARMonize” [emphasis added] our laws and regulations to international standards, even when those international standards were not yet completed. Further, Congress must mandate that delegates and participants in international standard setting bodies, of which Codex is only one, may ONLY support and ratify those standards, guideline or regulations which are directly supported by US law
In addition to the highly restrictive VMG, the Codex Committee on General Principles has prepared, among other things, “Proposed Draft Working Principles for Risk Analysis for Food Safety (Guidance to National Governments) [and] Proposed Amendments to the General Principles of the Codex Alimentarius” [and] “New definition of risk analysis terms related to food safety.” These principles include the definition developed by a World Health Organization Workshop on Application of Risk Analysis to Nutrients of an adverse event caused by nutrients as “any change in a bio marker” [emphasis added] regardless of the beneficial impact of those nutrients - http://www.who.int/ipcs/highlights/nutrientraproject/en/. The Codex Committee on Methods of Analysis and Sampling should consider the proper science and methods to apply to Dietary Supplements and nutritional products. Risk Assessment without regard to benefit is advised by the aforementioned Codex Vitamin and Mineral Guideline. National “Nutrient Risk Managers” are advised to use population data when it is available to set limits that prevent this bizarre class of events called “adverse events” which translate to “any change in a bio marker regardless of the beneficial impact of those nutrients”. When such population data are not available, this class of bureaucrats is advised to pool data from desperate populations and literally guess what those limits would be. If no data exist to be pooled, then they are advised to follow the same non-science-based process to set limits.
These principles and practices leave the health of whole populations literally subject to collapse. No such limit setting for nutrients is permitted under US law.
The same document also refers to “safe upper limits” for nutrients despite the fact that under DSHEA specifically exempts nutrients from upper limiits of any type. Science makes it clear that biology concurs with US law in this case and the dangers of taking any type of supplement are virtually non-existent while the dangers of taking pharmaceutical drugs, whose sales are significantly impacted when people are free to use nutrients, are so great that the American Medical Association and other organizations have listed the unintended effects of properly used drugs as a major cause of death in the developed world.
Laibow, RE, et. al., Codex Book, Natural Solutions Foundation, 2005
http://www.fsis.usda.gov/Frame/FrameRedirect.asp?main=http://www.fsis.usda.gov/OPPDE/rdad/FRPubs/2006-0004.htm
III. Congressional Mandate and Protective Clause Request
We urge Congress (1) to mandate to the U.S. Codex Office. FSIS (or its successor) and all other agencies and government instrumentalities, all delegates to Codex or other national or international standard setting bodies that they shall adopt as the policy of the U.S. Codex [or other agency] Delegation and Agencies support only for harmonization of Codex Standards, Guidelines and Codes of Practice, or other international standards and regulations, that conforms to United States law and practice, and (2) to adopt DSHEA (and family/organic/small enterprise, church, school, club, garden, farm, ranch, seed saving and similar food-related enterprise) protective language in any food safety bill or other bill relating in any way to food (closely patterned after the “Rule of Interpretation” protecting DSHEA products added to the 2007 Kennedy FDA enabling act, Section 1011).
First, with respect to the agencies and delegates representing American interests internationally, they must be instructed specifically to:
1. Reject any international standard that is inconstant with the First Amendment to the United States Constitution or any other part of the US Constitution, DSHEA or with 19 USC 3512 or any other US law, statute or regulation,
2. Support the Congressional determination that vitamins and minerals are foods, not drugs or toxic chemicals, and, therefore,
3. Support the rejection of any regulation, standard or agreement which imposes upper limits on nutrients. Since optimal intake levels of nutrients is the result of biochemical individuality and may vary (based on complex, shifting, interdependent and interweaving factors such as age, diet, nutrient absorption capacity, the presence or absence of co-factors, genetic makeup, underlying nutritional status, disease state, toxic body burden), no maximum intake levels or upper limits for nutrients have biological significance and must not be determined or fixed by government policy, regulation or agreement. Nutrients are not toxins and must not be regulated as if they were. Nutrient combinations and doses have been demonstrated, through 14 years of US consumer and practitioner experience, to be remarkably safe at any desired level. In the same way that liver ice cream should not be prohibited by government legislators or regulators, so nutrients must not be the subject of such regulations since they pose no risk to consumers, although their hazards to the expensive illness care industry, which is widely acknowledged to be playing a significant role in helping to bankrupt the US economy, are significant.
Risk Assessment is a wholly unnecessary and a totally inappropriate mechanism for determining safety and dosage of nutrients although it is highly significant as a tool for limiting exposure to toxins. In their documents dealing with the use of Risk Assessment for nutrients, both WHO and Codex make note of the fact that Risk Assessment is a tool of toxicology and that its use for substances which are essential for survival is both untested, unproven and has never been subjected to either professional scrutiny or peer review. Given that Codex is supposed to operate strictly on a “Science Based” principle, this makes the use of Risk Assessment for determination of any aspect of nutrient policy totally inappropriate.
4. Support the biochemical reality embodied in DSHEA’s protection of all supplements and categories of nutrients which Codex, through the Codex Vitamin and Mineral Guideline and other texts, violates when it states that the principal nutritional value of foods comes from its vitamins and minerals. Food world wide is demineralized and diminished in nutrients, including the vitamins and other co-factors, including helpful and essential factors, many of which have yet to be identified in a laboratory but whose absence can be detected through the clinical problems and diseases which result.
Exemplary and abundant scientific and clinical evidence supports the importance of essential fatty acids, oils, complex plant residues with physiological impact in foods, flavinoids, antioxidants, amino acids and other vital factors, sisosterols, and many other compounds which are essential to health and which are found in food. All of these compounds are protected under DSHEA, but ignored or limited by the Codex Alimentarius Commission. Further, World Health Organization guidance in the above referenced Workshop document makes it clear that nutrients are treated as toxins and any effective biological activity is to be considered an adverse event.
In other documents, the World Health Organization identifies under-nutrition as the cause of the epidemic, preventable, non-communicable diseases which are the principle killers of the developed world:
Cancer
Cardiovascular Disease and Stroke
Diabetes
Obesity.
DSHEA allows nutrients to be used to protect against, mitigate, treat, or cure these conditions of under nutrition. Codex makes this impossible for any country following its guidelines, thus assuring massive under-nutrition. US delegates and agencies must be prevented from supporting anything which defies US law and supports massive under-nutrition. These guidelines, standards and other agreements stand in stark contradistinction to both the principles and intent of DSHEA.
5. The agencies must “Take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” (Article II, Section 3, United States Constitution) as established by DSHEA that, as foods, nutritional supplements of any type do not require safe upper limits, maximum potencies, maximum permissible upper limits or similar constraints on their use and that any such limits are antithetical to the legislative intent and guarantees of DSHEA.
6. Furthermore, the Natural Solutions Foundation urges support for the position, already enshrined in US law, that:
(a) Nutients are foods and should be regarded as such.
(b) Toxic burdens (industrial chemicals, pesticides, heavy metals, fungicides, food additives, artificial colors, preservatives and flavors, etc.) are well known to increase nutrient requirements to levels which cannot be met by food alone.
(c) High nutrient density dietary supplements may be required to counteract the deleterious effects on health of toxic burdens.
(d) Natural source dietary supplements present no significant health hazard, based on sound scientific analysis and a 14 year history of a self-imposed experiment by the American people who have taken massive amount of supplements and nutrients with no harm or negative consequences to their health although it can be argued that there has been harm done to the bottom lines of the industries that profit from their ill health.
(e) Synthetic/GMO source synthetic nutrients provide the only hazards associated with nutrient ingestion at any level which people select for themselves. Appendix 3 to the Final Report of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Foods Derived from Biotechnology, approved by the Codex Alimentarius Commission in 2008 makes it clear that neither the safety nor bio-availability of nutrients derived from Biotechnology (GMO)s) is known and that such compounds may actually function as “anti-nutrients”, interfereing with metabolism, absorption and enzyme function. The Final Report recommends testing their impact on large human populations, although involuntary testing, such as already being carried out through unlabeled GMOs in the food chain, violates both US and International law.
(f) Compounds which are, in fact, toxic, like pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, GMOs, industrial toxins and veterinary drug residues should be reduced via the principles of Risk Analysis and the Precautionary Principle, to levels which have no discernible impact on any human or animal system. Toxicology supports this principle for toxins while biochemistry refutes it for nutrients.
(g) Compounds which fail to pass the Ames or similar cancer protective tests should be banned from the human food chain as already required under US law.
(h) Optimal health should be the stated public policy goal of the world’s food standard setting bodies, including Codex Alimentarius, and of the United States. Delegates and representatives to all such bodies must be clearly instructed to support and endorse only those items which further this goal.
(i) Preservative techniques which increase free radical concentrations and/or which result in the degradation of food components to toxic or carcinogenic compounds [e.g., irradiation] should be globally banned.
(j) All known or suspected toxins which are applied to food or created through its farming, growth, processing, packaging, shipment or treatment should be clearly labeled to allow consumers optimal choice in their food supply.
(k) No US delegation shall permit persons with any type of financial, professional or personal ties to the industries involved in the deliberations. Any other type of conflict of interest shall bar persons from participating as delegates. No private consultations with industry representatives or others who stand to gain from the particular outcome of any deliberation or action shall be permitted. All such contacts shall be open to the public and matters of clear public record.
(l) No US regulator or bureaucrat shall be permitted to take employment, remuneration, subsidy or support of any type from the industry with which that regulator or bureaucrat has been involved while on the public payroll for a period of 5 years following termination of their employment by the US or State governments, agencies, foundations, organizations or other bodies. Financial, professional or other conflicts of interest between government employees and industries which they are involved in regulation shall result in immediate dismissal and the possibility of civil or criminal charges.
Second, regarding all pending food safety bills, the Natural Solutions Foundation strongly recommends that public health and personal liberty require protective language, such as the following, be enacted in any such bill, whether the bill divests the FDA of food safety authority (as HR 875 would do, creating a new Food Safety Agency) or would further empower FDA (as HR 759 would do):
“Rule of Interpretation
“No provision of this act shall be deemed to apply (a) to any home, home-business, homestead, small farm (including organic or natural) agricultural activity, social club, association, church, school or other local organization, (b) to any family farm or ranch, or (c) to any natural or organic food product, including dietary supplements regulated under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994.”
For well researched details about the potential threat posed by the Food (sic) Safety bills pending in Congress, see independent investigative reporter Linn Cohen Cole’s writings on this subject, which have been widely reprinted, including by the Foundation, for example, A Solemn Walk Through HR 875 by Sue Diederich and Linn Cohen-Cole: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=2287
These two sets of recommendations are predicated upon the clear expression from hundreds of thousands of Americans, representing the views of millions, that “Health Freedom is Our First Freedom.”
IV. Statement of Grounds
A. Factual Grounds
The Codex Alimentarius Commission has adopted Standards, Guidelines and Codes of Practice are based on regulatory principles that will, if the United States “Harmonizes” with them as announced, but despite US law, over time, limit access to nutrients, complementary therapies and dietary supplements of consumers in the United States, and that will significantly restrict access to clinically effective vitamin and mineral supplements worldwide. This will have a markedly deleterious impact on liberty and an equally significant one health, if the definition of the major killers of our time as preventable diseases of under-nutrition by the World Health Organization is be believed.
Based on evaluation of its contents and the public statements of the Chairman of the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU), Bonn, 2004, it is the intent and understanding of that Committee (which promulgated the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline, which was then ratified by the Codex Commission in full (July 4, 2005, Rome, Italy) that, despite the limited title of the Guideline, it will, because of the legal structure under which the Codex Alimentarius Commission operates, restrict all classes of nutrients, not just those classed as Vitamins and Minerals. While Codex texts, including this one, are voluntary, countries which deviate from them without following very specific steps, are liable to enormous WTO trade sanctions.
Furthermore, since the guidance offered by the aforementioned WHO Workshop makes it clear that high potency nutrients are to be considered as producing adverse events when their ingestion results in any change of a biomarker in any direction leading to change, no matter how beneficial, this guidance means that high potency nutrients will be unavailable in any HARMonized country, enhancing under-nutrition and the burden of suffering and death caused by preventable sub-optimal nutrition. High potency nutrients, absence of anti-nutrients and foods free from toxins are the antidote.
The US must not support restrictive and, under our laws, illegal, measures such as those ratified by Codex, with the US delegation’s vigorous approval and leadership.
If the Codex Alimentarius Commission continues to support restrictive measures, such as the Vitamin and Mineral Guidelines, Codex will restrict access to wholesome nutrition in several ways:
1. Setting so called “upper safe limits” (maximum potencies, maximum permissible upper limits or similar limitations) for each vitamin and mineral based on inappropriate scientific risk assessment from the science of toxicology, not the science of nutrition; this violates scientific sense and clinical experience. “Optimum levels” which carry no legal weight and are not used to restrict access to nutrients are a much more reasonable, clinically and scientifically supported standard and must be individually determined for each individual.
2. Setting any upper limits on supplements and nutrients; this directly violates US law by violating the legislative intent and provisions of DSHEA which hold that Dietary Supplements are Foods, not Drugs.
3. Marginalizing and eliminating nutrient supplement access for the nearly 1 billion people worldwide, who, by international standards and the assessments of the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization, now experience devastating widespread under nutrition and go hungry on a regular basis. Declines in IQs for the world’s hungry and under-nourished children are but one of the devastating results. Why would the US, which spends so much money in foreign aid, adopt or support positions which put the world’s most vulnerable into an even more vulnerable, but completely preventable, compromised position? In addition, the population-based Codex standard, which represent no strong science whatsoever, as made clear by the directions to National “Nutrient Risk Managers” under-appreciate the nutritional status of the world’s hungry 4.6 billion people, most of whom lack the recommended amount of one or more essential nutrient every day of their lives.
4. Creating, through setting maximum permitted vitamin and mineral consumption limits, an approach to regulating dietary supplements which is consistent with and leading the way toward, if not itself directly establishing, prior restraint, illegal under the US Constitution.
5. Substantially restricting the amount of nutrition and health information about vitamins and minerals consumers will be allowed to receive, asserting that only drugs can contain label claims for products that are suitable for the prevention, alleviation, treatment or cure of disease, disorder or particular physiological conditions; this violates the US Right of Free Speech guaranteed by the First Amendment.
6. Fostering the incorrect worldwide health assumption that adequate levels of nutrients can be found in a regular diet since the ideas of nutritional sufficiency and “average expectable daily diet” are totally unsupported by nutritional science while an abundant body of scientific literature and clinical experience as well as the repeated findings of international organizations like the World Health Organization, UNESCO and the Food and Agriculture Organization confounds these assumptions. Were either idea true, there would be no widespread malnutrition or under-nutrition in the world.
7. Continuing to fail to implement the WHO/FAO “Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health” which explicitly supports better health through better nutrition, including dietary supplementation, to address the epidemic of “preventable diseases of under-nutrition” including major killers like Cancer, Heart Disease and Stroke, Diabetes and Obesity.
American health consumers (otherwise know as “people”) are becoming active and organized to protect and expand their health rights. The threat to dietary supplements which DSHEA corrected in 1994 mobilized more letters to a pre-internet Congress than any other issue in the history of the United States, including the Viet Nam War.
Worldwide health is being significantly undermined by the Codex-created limits to nutrients available in many countries and regions when they make their regulations and laws “Codex Compliant”, according to official documents prepared jointly by the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization. Codex, by itself, cannot change U.S. law unless U.S. agencies adopt its regulations. To do so, US regulatory agencies would need to supersede US law. Indeed, FDA has done so on several occasions, most Codex’s upper potency limits, established for vitamins and minerals, will restrict U.S. consumer access to high-potency vitamins and minerals to which they are accustomed since US policy, legal or not, has been to “HARMonize with international standards in preference to US ones as articulated in the FDA statement on harmonization in the US Federal Register (October 11, 1995). “In a notice published in the Federal Register of October 11, 1995 (60 FR 53078), FDA articulated its policy regarding the development and use of standards with respect to the harmonization of various national and international regulatory requirements and guidelines” - http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~lrd/fr970707.html . Some U.S. companies are already choosing to “dumb down” their potencies to mirror their international formulations.
FDA’s highly restrictive and by their own analysis, crushingly expensive for small companies, unnecessary imposition of Current Good Manufacturing Procedures on the industry, more akin to drug industry rules than food industry in a sector which is filled with small Mom-and-Pop business providing innovation and leadership at low financial return, furthers this process. These cGMPs will become fully effective over the next year. FDA has admitted that about 2/3 of small nutrient companies will go out of business because of the cost and burdens of this imposition.
Codex Alimentarius standards and guidelines are enforced at the international level via trade sanctions imposed by the World Trade Organization (WTO) through its dispute resolution process. However, there is grave concern in many quarters that statements such as this, from the WTO web site, “the SPS Agreement explicitly permits governments to choose not to use the international standards. However, if the national requirement results in a greater restriction of trade, a country may be asked to provide scientific justification,” - http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/sps_e/spsund_e.htm - make it incumbent upon each member nation of the WTO to bring its domestic standards into conformity with Codex standards and guidelines in order to avoid the creation of hidden barriers to international trade. This would violate both DSHEA and with 19 USC 3512. Codex misapplies an inappropriate toxic chemicals risk assessment model to regulate helpful nutrients which have virtually no known toxicity and therefore, present virtually no consumer or environmental danger. Any assessment of vitamin and mineral usage should evaluate nutrients using nutritional science rather than with toxicological science which is properly used to evaluate toxin and dangerous industrial chemicals. Since supplements, including vitamins and minerals, are defined as foods under DSHEA, upper limits of any type are inappropriate, unnecessary and violate US law. They should therefore be opposed by the United States with vigor both in Codex meetings and otherwise rather than enthusiastically endorsed in violation of US law.
The Natural Solutions Foundation has publicized what we refer to as “The Codex Two Step Process” showing how any country can lawfully opt out of Codex restrictions to protect its national nutrition and food traditions, without WTO sanction. See our short video on the subject at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QNg3MD6BxM
A fully developed template of just how this would work, called the “Codex Book”, is available from the Natural Solutions Foundation at http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?page_id=220.
An essential principle to remember here is that, despite propagandistic junk science to the contrary, nutrients have no meaningful toxicity. The human body is able to rid itself of excess doses of nutrients or store them for future use in times of shortfall, whereas it is not able to rid itself adequately of toxic and dangerous chemicals. This difference, coupled with differential impact of nutrients and detrimental impact of toxins, is precisely the distinction upon which the determination that the latter are, in fact, toxic while the former are clearly non-toxic. The Codex Vitamin and Mineral Guideline (VMG) disregards the unique biological individuality which determines the basic nutritional needs of each individual. Biological requirements can vary widely (by orders of magnitude) during the life span since nutritional requirements are affected by climate, dietary supply, genetics, energy output, toxic load, emotional, organ and immune health, electromagnetic and geopathic stress as well as normal and pathological aging processes and enzymatic decline with aging. Codex disregards this and all other short and long term biological individuality. Codex fails in this fundamental requirement by erroneously disregarding biological, physiological and pathophysiologic variation in nutrient needs.
Codex was founded upon the initiative of pharmaceutical executives who stand to profit from under nutrition because it leads to diseases they make treatments for. It was not founded by nutritionists or humanitarians.
The US delegation to Codex is packed with representatives of, and people representing the interests of, corporate concerns who manufacture and market drugs for humans and animals, agricultural chemicals, industrialized food supply companies whose and other industrial sectors whose interests run counter to health and consumer protection. Consumers and health professionals are scant on Codex delegations and their positions are given virtually no weight either in the Codex deliberations or the preparation of US Codex positions.
Codex documents make it clear that the process of risk assessment does not properly apply to nutrients and that the process must be modified to account for the differences between nutrients and toxins. But whether or not Codex continued with its wrong-headed approach, the US is violating its own law when it presses for these strategies, approves them, does not oppose them and seeks to implement them at home.
The procedures employed to accomplish that modification are untested through scientific or clinical evaluations and are entirely theoretical. Their devastating impact upon the earth’s population, however, is easily predicted and devastating.
Briefly, Codex fails in its fundamental requirement of protecting consumers, as stated in its Mandate, by erroneously applying toxic chemical risk assessment principles to nutrients which are foods, not toxins, erroneously asserting that
1. Nutrients should be treated and evaluated as toxins.
2. Such evaluation requires and relies upon novel, non peer-reviewed and untested procedures whose accuracy and utility have not been evaluated through appropriate studies and trials.
3. Dietary Supplements, including vitamins and minerals are toxins, not foods, and therefore require upper limits on ingestion
4. Foods and nutrients are not useful in treating disease.
5. Dietary supplements have little value because people can get the limited amounts they need from food.
6. The nutritional quality of foods is due primarily to the vitamin and mineral content of those foods.
7. Rigid, low limits should be set for vitamins and nutrients because nutritional requirements do not change with biochemical, age-related, genetic and other assaults and do not vary from person to person, despite abundantly documented genetic and environmental variations within and between populations.
8. Theoretical reference values are more important than unique individual nutrient needs and clinical requirements.
9. Toxicology science is preferred to individual choice as the best control on access to foods such as Dietary Supplements.
10. Dietary Supplements require control on access despite the fact that they are foods under DSHEA.
The well documented safety of Dietary Supplements, as foods, is documented by La Leva di Archimede at http://www.laleva.cc/petizione/english/ronlaw_eng.html, with particular reference to http://www.laleva.cc/petizione/ron_law_tables/tabella.html, http://www.laleva.cc/petizione/ronlaw/australia_societal_vs_individual_risks2.pdf, http://www.laleva.cc/supplements/medical_injury_law.pdf, http://www.laleva.cc/petizione/ronlaw/leape_relative%20risks1.pdf, http://www.laleva.cc/petizione/ronlaw/relative_risk_boeing72.pdf , http://www.laleva.cc/petizione/ronlaw/relative_risks_bubbles3.pdf) and Dr. Andrew Saul’s presentation to the Canadian Parliament, “Where Are The Bodies?”, http://www.doctoryourself.com/testimony.htm .
Codex reinforces, in its Vitamin and Mineral Guidelines, related documents and positions, and numerous other texts, its already existing prohibition on preventing truthful information about the ability of foods and nutrients to treat, diagnose, prevent, mitigate and cure disease and prohibiting the truthful association of health benefits and food components. Codex prohibits supplemental nutritional feeding world wide with disastrous potential results and the dissemination of information on the positive impact of nutritional supplementation and support on chronic, degenerative disease. Codex rejects without scientific basis or support the position supporting access to nutrients strongly documented and endorsed by a vast scientific literature and numerous joint publications of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) which detail the essential contribution of nutrition to the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases in both the developing and developed world. World hunger experts recognize that nutrient supplementation can be extraordinarily useful in improving world health and eliminating disease (vitamin A supplements in developing countries can offer 30 times as much social improvement as millions of dollars of development aid), a fact the Codex Vitamin and Mineral Guideline (VMG) and related texts ignore without scientific support or validation for their position. Shockingly, the US is clearly the driving force behind this position, despite the fact that it violates US law.
Codex ignores the WHO-documented high costs of under nutrition in loss of life, degraded quality of life and economic loss created by the chronic diseases of nutrient-deficiency which are so abundantly documented in clinical, biochemistry and epidemiological literature. The human and economic impact/costs of under nutrition are recognized by the World Health Organization and the Food and the Food and Agriculture Organization who document that chronic disease (e.g., heart disease and stroke, diabetes, obesity, cancer, etc.) is a non-contagious epidemic problem which can be prevented, treated and cured through adequate nutrition. These sources further document that nutrition often cannot be provided by diet. Clinically necessary nutrient intake is, however, prohibited under the proposed Codex Vitamin and Mineral Guideline.
At loggerheads with the US positions at Codex and similar bodies, The United States Supreme Court has spoken forcefully, enforcing consumers’ right to truthful information about health care issues. See: Thompson v Western States Medical Centers - 535 U.S. 357, where Justice O’Connor wrote,
“If the First Amendment means anything, it means that regulating speech must be a last - not first - resort. . . We have previously rejected the notion that the Government has an interest in preventing the dissemination of truthful commercial information in order to prevent members of the public from making bad decisions with the information. . . Even if the Government did argue that it had an interest in preventing misleading advertisements, this interest could be satisfied by the far less restrictive alternative of requiring . . . a warning that . . . its risks were unknown.”
The basic rule, announced by the case, to determine constitutionally permitted government restrictions on Commercial Speech (speech that makes or is about an offer for a transaction, such as the sale of Dietary Supplements) is a Two Prong Test: the first prong is to ask two questions: (1) is the speech in question about unlawful activity and (2) is the speech misleading. If “no” to both, the speech is entitled to protection unless the Government can carry its burden and prove (1) the governmental interest involved is “substantial”, (2) the regulation must “directly advance” the governmental interest and (3) the regulation of Commercial Speech cannot be “more extensive than is necessary to serve that interest” (quoting Central Hudson v Public Service, 447 US 557, at 566).
B. Statement of Grounds - Legal Authority
1. The primary Legal Basis for the actions Congress should take to mandate a policy that “Health Freedom is Our First Freedom” is the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States: “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the . . . the right of the people . . .to the Freedom of Speech..” and of Association.
2. A further Legal Basis for the Proposed Policy is Section 3512 of Title 19 and specifically, 19 USC 3512(a)(1) and (a)(2) as applied to the protection of human life through DSHEA.
Section 3512. Relationship of agreements to United States law and State law
(a) Relationship of agreements to United States law
(1) United States law to prevail in conflict
No provision of any of the Uruguay Round Agreements, nor the application of any such provision to any person or circumstance, that is inconsistent with any law of the United States shall have effect.
(2) Construction
Nothing in this Act shall be construed -
(A) to amend or modify any law of the United States, including any law relating to -
(i) the protection of human, animal, or plant life or health,
(ii) the protection of the environment, or
(iii) worker safety, or
(B) to limit any authority conferred under any law of the United States, including section 2411 of this title, unless specifically provided for in this Act.
3. Additionally, the Statutes authorizing the various agencies involved contain general provisions that support the actions needed. Federal Law includes provisions that grant the relevant Secretary broad authority to promulgate rules and regulations “necessary to carry out the Act[s].”
4. Codex Alimentarius (“Codex”) is the World Food Code, an international agency under the joint sponsorship of WHO (World Health Organization) and FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization), two primary organs of the United Nations.
According to its Statute, the purposes of Codex are “protecting the health of the consumers and ensuring fair practices in the food trade.” (Codex Statute, Article 1(a)) Codex does this by promulgating standards, codes of practice and guidelines. Codex General Principles, 1 reads:
“The Codex Alimentarius is a collection of internationally adopted food standards presented in a uniform manner. These food standards aim at protecting consumers’ health and ensuring fair practices in the food trade. The Codex Alimentarius also includes provisions of an advisory nature in the form of codes of practice, guidelines and other recommended measures intended to assist in achieving the purposes of the Codex Alimentarius. The publication of the Codex Alimentarius is intended to guide and promote the elaboration and establishment of definitions and requirements for foods to assist in their harmonization and in doing so to facilitate international trade.”
Finalized standards, after “acceptance by governments” are published by Codex. (Codex Statute, Article 1(d)) It is clear from this language that Codex guidelines, being only advisory, do not impose any requirements on marketers unless and until they are adopted by individual national governments.
V The Findings of Fact that Congress Should Adopt
In acting to protect the Public from “HARMonization” to further protect Health Freedom as Our First Freedom, we urge Congress to find:
(a) The Vitamin and Mineral Guideline adopted by CODEX on July 4 2005 uses inappropriate science (i.e., Risk Assessment procedures [Toxicology]) rather than appropriate science (i.e., Nutritional Science [Biochemistry]) which is very likely to inappropriately mandate maximum permissible levels of nutrients so low that they are, by intention, without impact on any human being, the intended outcome of Risk Assessment procedures; a Fact Hearing must be, and petitioner hereby requests that a fact hearing be, held to determine the scientifically factual and appropriate basis for the use of Risk Analysis [Toxicology] rather than more appropriate nutritional [Biochemistry] scientific standards in all decisions pertaining to nutrition.
(b) Codex has accepted the use of Risk Assessment procedures for nutrients. However, Risk Assessment is a methodology relevant only to toxicology and both irrelevant and antithetical to Nutritional Science and biochemistry. The Risk Assessment methodology employed by CODEX has been arbitrarily modified without scientific validation or professional consensus to restrict permissible dosages of nutrients essential to life to levels which can, by intent, have no impact on any human being, no matter how sensitive. This misapplication, distortion and misconstruction of Risk Assessment is in clear contradiction to the principles of toxicology and scientific Risk Assessment procedures which have been developed to determine the highest dosages of dangerous industrial and natural toxins to which humans can be exposed to without discernible effect. For this reason, instead of evaluating vitamin and mineral upper limits using inappropriately modified and unscientific Risk Analysis, US Policy must further the use of Nutritional Science to support the liberal access to nutrients enjoyed under legislative protection in the US. Under the Dietary Supplements Health and Education Act, passed by unanimous Congressional consent in 1994, while a nutrient may be dealt with by the FDA if it is shown to pose a significant risk to health and safety, nutrients are treated as foods which, as such, may have no upper limits set upon their use.
(c) The United States has failed to oppose the use of these scientifically unsupported and unverified Risk Assessment techniques in the CODEX Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses. It has failed to note or oppose these procedures on the basis of the substantial Conflict of Interest represented by the publicly acknowledged personal, professional and financial involvement in commercial Risk Assessment by the Chairman of the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses as the head of the BfR, a commercial Risk Assessment company. The United States has failed to oppose the classification of nutrients as toxins in 1994, by that same committee despite the clear violation of US law which that classification represents. And, since 1994, the United States has failed to present any opposition to the use of Risk Analysis and other attempts to limit access to nutrients in order to prevent the restrictive (and illegal under US law) Vitamin and Mineral Guideline from reaching Step 8 and from being ratified on July 4, 2005 at the 28th Codex Alimentarius Commission meeting in Rome, Italy, contrary to DSHEA (Dietary Supplement health and Education Act of 1994) and the unanimous determination of Congress that Dietary Supplements are Foods, not toxic substances and, as foods, can have no upper limit set upon their intake or use.
(d) U.S. District Court Judge Campbell stated in April 2005 (Nutraceutical Corporation and Solaray, Inc. v. Lester Crawford, Acting Commissioner, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Case No. 2:04CV409 TC, USDC, Utah Central Division),
“…the legislative history of the DSHEA indicates that Congress generally intended to harmonize the treatment of dietary supplements with that of foods when it added the dietary supplement subsection…”
(e) The CODEX Technical Report discussing the application of Risk Assessment to nutrients makes it clear that this procedure does not apply to nutrients because, unlike drugs, they have minimum intake limits that are required for life and health. Risk Assessment procedures were modified for application to vitamin and mineral supplements without scientific validation, peer review or clinical testing.
There is a considerable body of established scientific literature supporting the nutritional harm caused by low-level intake of essential and vital nutrients. Has the United States held a public fact finding hearing to determine if this jerry-rigged statistical system has any applicability to Nutritional Science and what the risks to the US and global population are when Risk Assessment is applied to nutrients? If not, why has the US supported the use of this technique in the nutritional determinations made by the CCNFSDU when so many lives are at stake in this issue, estimated by public health scientists to exceed 3 Billion consequential deaths world-wide? Why has the US supported and adopted this scientifically, biologically and factually indefensible Policy which should be abandoned in favor of a Policy which supports and promotes nutrients as foods, as DSHEA mandates, as the domestic and international standard which are so strongly supported by both science and US Law? A fact Hearing must be, and petitioner hereby request that a fact hearing be, held to determine the impact on public health in the United States from the use of Risk Analysis [Toxicology] rather than more appropriate nutritional [Biochemistry] scientific standards.
The Natural Solutions Foundation entered a Citizens Petition and Comments to the USDA and FDA on this topic in 2005 and 2006. The Media Release of June 9,2006 stated:
“Gen. Albert N. Stubblebine III (US Army, Ret.) announced today that the Natural Solutions Foundation is Petitioning the U.S. Codex Office and the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) – Docket No. FSIS-2006-0004 (both agencies of the U.S. Department of Agriculture) to adopt support for international nutrient regulations (and any other international harmonization) only as it conforms to United States law and practice as the policy of the U.S. Codex Delegation.”
Neither USDA nor FDA responded to the Petition of the Citizens concerned with this issue, although several hundred thousand messages were sent to the agencies in support thereof.
Source: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/06/prweb397379.htm
(f) The Dietary Supplement Health Education Act (DSHEA), 1994 classifies supplements as foods which therefore may have no Safe Upper Limits, Maximum Permissible Upper Limits or other restrictions upon their use.
(g) FDA has improperly adopted a policy of harmonization with International Standards, even where those standards are not finalized when those standards are in violation of US law or regulatory practice. “In a notice published in the Federal Register of October 11, 1995 (60 FR 53078), FDA articulated its policy regarding the development and use of standards with respect to the harmonization of various national and international regulatory requirements and guidelines” - http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~lrd/fr970707.html .
(h) The adoption of the Risk Assessment Model and the anti-DSHEA harmonization Policy are ultra vires and premature; have occurred without sufficient Public Hearings and in direct contravention of the Public Policy of the United States as enacted by Congress. The appropriate US agencies must therefore assert a Nutritional Standard as the only lawful alternative to the inappropriate and unscientific use of toxicological Risk Assessment with regard to Dietary Substances. It is incumbent upon the United States therefore to ensure that the proper science is presented and considered in the process of attempting to set upper limits for nutrient supplements and to vigorously support the reopening of the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline to correct its scientific deficiencies since the science upon which it is based, relying on toxicology while ignoring the appropriate science, biochemistry, is flawed, creating a position that is contrary to US legal requirements and domestic (as well as global) health and well being of every man, woman and child on the planet.
Because the US delegations to Codex have consistently acted against the interest of US law and the public interest, and because on the issue of the Codex Vitamin and Mineral Guideline the science used to support it is deeply flawed, and because the science which supports the use of high potency nutrients is abundant, Congress should direct the US delegation at Codex to call for the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline to be reopened and further direct it to press for adoption of a DSHEA-like standard to allow the world to harmonize to a health-promoting standard of nutritional sufficiency.
VI Conclusions
The Natural Solutions Foundation urges Congress to take urgent action with regard to CODEX and the International Food Safety Agency:
Specifically, Congress should hold Public Hearings on following Questions of Fact:
1. Whether or not the use of Toxic Risk Assessment to determine the allowable forms and dosages of Vitamins and Minerals will promote public health. We believe it will not, as the use of Risk Assessment is inappropriate science with reference to Foods, including Vitamins and Minerals
2. Whether forms and dosages of Vitamins and Minerals determined through Toxic Risk Assessment will adversely impact on the health and well-being of the residents and Citizens of the United States.
3. Whether Codex delegations acted against US legislative and regulatory policy and, if so, upon whose authority, whether Codex delegations should be free of industry personnel and include health, consumer and health freedom personnel and whether standards, including the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline and related texts, should be reopened upon application by the US to bring these standards into line with both science and US law.
Thereafter, Congress should adopt appropriate legislation further protecting the inalienable right of the People to “Health Freedom as Our First Freedom.”
The policy of FDA and the USDA in the various Codex Committees (and in other multinational arenas, such as the (sic) “North American Union”) should be a policy of strict support for the Dietary Supplement Health Education Act (DSHEA) food-based standard as the international standard for vitamin, minerals and all other dietary supplements as well as all other US laws. Additionally, all standards and regulations promulgated by the US should facilitate consumer choice and protection.
DSHEA, passed unanimously by the U.S. Congress in 1994, recognizes and protects the value of individuals making personal nutritional and health choices in a way that is rejected by the Codex guidelines. It also protects all speech concerning health benefits associated with nutrients or food. Any attempt to restrict or limit dosages, potency, information or access to supplements or information about nutrition, food and supplements denigrates their classification under DSHEA as foods and, hence, without need for access restriction.
The culmination of 50 years of U.S. legislation and litigation has refined the supplement policy of the United States ensuring that individual choice and desire play a key role in ensuring private and public health. The Codex guideline subordinates individual choice to scientifically inaccurate and unsupported, supposed professional expertise. The DSHEA balances professionals, science and people.
Members of the public have continually warned United States policy makers that pending international regulations fail to meet both the standards of United States law and the requirements of the international law.
See for example, Public Citizen’s comments regarding harmonization:
http://www.citizen.org/trade/harmonization/comments/articles.cfm?ID=4394
And the National Health Federation, “Codex Breaks its own Rules” http://www.thenhf.com/codex_may_2005_nhf_press_release.htm
Also, the European Alliance for Natural Health Submission on Risk Assessment at:
http://www.alliance-natural-health.org/_docs/ANHwebsiteDoc_120.pdf
See also these Media Releases from the Foundation:
June 3, 2005
Natural Solutions Foundation files Emergency Citizen Petition to Support DSHEA in CODEX Crisis
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/06/prweb246972.htm
July 5, 2006
Codex Chairman Seeks to Thwart Natural Solutions Foundation Pro Health Codex Initiative
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/07/prweb406560.htm
October 10, 2006:
US Urged by Natural Solutions Foundation to Alter Codex Course, Support WHO Global Strategy to End World Hunger, Promote World Health
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/10/prweb444957.htm
We therefore urge Congress to mandate that the U.S. Codex Office, FSIS and all other Federal agencies adopt as Public Policy support only for regional, multinational and international Standards,
HR 875/S 425: Farm to Fork Food Fascism Comes to America
Published March 16, 2009 @ 10:46AM PT
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.GlobalhealthFreedom.org
This message is from Dr. Rima E. Laibow, MD, Natural Solutions Foundation Medical Director and Trustee:
Food is becoming a battle ground like no other: freedom, survival, fascistic take over of a once-free people (more or less, at least), corporate triumph over independent producers - it’s all happening around food. And the mechanism is simple: a set of bills ostensibly devoted to “food safety” and “food security”.
Urgent Action Item: Click here - http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26714 - to tell Congress that the Farm Bills MUST be defeated. Time is short and the issue is of immense importance.
In essence, these bills are a sneak attack implementation of Codex Alimentarius. The Natural Solutions Foundation has been warning that organic farming and home growing, clean food and food freedom were under heavy attack. Here is the Mother of All Food Fascism Assaults and we still have some time to defeat it.
Congress often comes up with bad ideas. This is not just a bad idea: it is a catastrophically bad idea for health and freedom. In fact, it is nothing short of food tyranny and will kill not only organic farming, but lots of people as well, along with the entire private farming sector. Your own gardens are at risk as well.
I cannot urge you strongly enough to take action NOW (we have only a few days to create the urgent push-back needed to fend off this disastrous legislation. These are bad, deceptive and extraordinarily dangerous bills which make the eternal link between fascism and food crystal clear. But the bills are written in neutral, even calming tones. Please go to the articles below to read a brilliantly annotated version of the bills and a summary and learn just how dangerous they are. My thanks to Sue Diederich and Linn Cohen-Cole for their tireless work on this vital issue.
Just as -
~ “homeland security” is anything but assured by the Department of Homeland Security’s destruction of our rights,
~ “health” is not served by a healthcare system devoted to propagating illness for profit,
~ “democracy” is not served by corrupt voting machines and “man in the middle programs”
so food security and safety are not served by agencies and laws which -
~ drive independent farmers out of business,
~ forbid seed saving,
~ destroy safe food production and organic farming,
~ propagate dangerous and destructive industrial farming practices,
~ guarantee the total control of the food system by industrial forces known for unsafe food production while destroying the capacity of independent farmers to survive a regulatory onslaught created specifically to destroy them,
~ put home food production in jeopardy,
~ “HARMonize food production with pro-industry, pro-WTO controlled, lowest common denominator practices of Codex Alimentarius.
These are tragically solemn times calling for solemn re-dedication of each of us to the fight to retain and restore freedom. Food is just about the best place possible to start. Killing HR 875, S 425 and all related bills is the best place to start.
Click here - http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26714 - to tell Congress in no uncertain terms how imperative killing these dastardly bills is to you. Then tell everyone you know how important this push-back is.
Now think for a moment how important this information is to your life, your liberty and your society. Would you have had it without the Natural Solutions Foundation? We work very hard at being your health freedom advocates and we need your help. Please make regular donations, small or large, to the Natural Solutions Foundation - an astounding 100% of your donations goes directly to our work. People write to us to tell us that you need us and we certainly need you. Click here - http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?page_id=189 - to make your tax deductible donation to the Natural Solutions Foundation.
This action, and this issue, cannot wait.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org
www.ValleyoftheMoonCoffee.org
www.Organics4U.org
www.NaturalSolutionsMarketPlace.org
-----------------------------------------
Solemn Walk Through HR 875
By Sue Diederich and Linn Cohen-Cole
The Pennsylvania Sustainable Agriculture Association, PASA, sent out information about HR 875 which lists ‘facts’ to counter ‘myths’ and ‘rumors’ on the internet. It gives no specifics to back up its ‘facts,’ so the following close up view of the bill and accompanying commentary offers readers a chance to decide for themselves what is myth and what is fact. Neither of us are lawyers, but we both can read. Sue Diederich heads the Illinois Independent Consumers and Farmers Association, an organization formed to protect the rights of farmers and consumers to deal directly with each other without government interference.
PASA’s assertions are in regular lower case font, as are the inserted portions of the bill which have all been provided by Sue Diederich who also provides her own comments in italics usually. My comments are in bold face. [Note: these type faces have been altered from the original to permit publication in the program used to publish this blog which lacks color font options - Dr. Rima]
Occasionally, we feel something is essential for people to see and those comments are in CAPITAL LETTERS. (It should all be in CAPITAL LETTERS [font changed to allow publication in this program - Dr. Rima], really, since so few organizations appear to have read the bill or seem to know how to read the bill or have thought through its massive cumulative impact or been concerned at its endlessly broad reach and over incredibly vague things.)
People seem to expect the bill to be titled “The Criminalization of Organic Farming and the Take over of the US Food Supply,” and when they don’t see any words to that effect anywhere in the bill, they declare “this bill is fine” and those seeing dangers are “alarmists.” Do they think the industrial side is composed of fools? These are the same people who make cheery cereals with cartoon characters on the box when, inside, high fructose corn syrup is all over the cereal which comes from Bt-corn associated with diabetes. HFCS is, too, and there is an epidemic of diabetes here even among children. They know how to package. Why do people understand that industrial food inside a box can be a problem and yet are so innocent about looking at the bills, not realizing there is packaging there, too, or how much is at stake that the public and even legislators not see since this is about taking control. The industrial side isn’t stupid.
Understanding parts of the bill at times depends on smelling smoke as you read it. Here in the US, we still have only smoke … an Ohio state ag department SWAT team raid on an organic coop, Pennsylvania ag department raids on horse and buggy Mennonites, California setting coliform levels so low fresh milk dairy farmers would need cows that produced pasteurized milk right out the udder, arrest and handcuffing of a single mother in front of her children for selling goat milk, the USDA paying its agents bonuses for foreclosing on farms, … But in the EU where 60% of the Polish farmers are now gone because of identical bills enacted into law there, and 60 UK farmers have committed suicide, there is fire. And in Iraq, where they have been rendered helpless serfs by the theft of their country’s seeds and criminalization of farmers’ collection of their own seed, it is roaring. And in India where 182,000 farmers have committed suicide since the WTO and IMF got hold of agriculture and our Big Ag firms went in there, and 8 million farmers have left the land, it is out of control.
The WTO, run by the multinational meat packers and genetic engineering corporations, want HR 875, here. The bills are “harmonized” rules for globalization of food and lower food safety standards to allow for it. Those corporations are members of NIAA, a corporate consortium that brought NAIS, created by Anne Veneman, to the USDA to be made into law.
We begin with PASA offering FWW’s take on the bills to its members:
Myths and Facts? H.R. 875 – The Food Safety Modernization Act
PASA members: The following information about a bill now before Congress, HR 875, was developed by our friends at Food and Water Watch, and forwarded to us by the National Sustainable Ag Coalition (NSAC), of which PASA is a member.
This Myth/Fact sheet was developed to help answer some of the rumors that are fairly rampant on the Internet right now. We will keep a close eye on the situation, and share further updates from NSAC as they become available. ?
MYTH: H.R. 875 “makes it illegal to grow your own garden” and would result in the “criminalization of the backyard gardner.”
FACT: There is no language in the bill that would regulate, penalize, or shut down backyard gardens. This bill is focused on ensuring the safety of foods sold in supermarkets.
Though private residences are not specifically included, nor are they specifically excluded. While this does not immediately affect home owners growing tomatoes in the backyard, entered testimony leaves the door open for just that in the future. Referring back to the Bio-Terrorism Act, in a discussion on this very topic and entered in the official record of debate on the interim rule, (bold/underline = mine), the same argument exists here and no new definitions or exclusions have been provided in HR 875 - and “reasonable” is a subjective term in theory as well as practice…
(13) FOOD ESTABLISHMENT-
(A) IN GENERAL- The term ‘food establishment’ means a
Slaughterhouse (except those regulated under the Federal Meat
Inspection Act or the Poultry Products Inspection Act), factory,
Warehouse, or facility owned or operated by a person located in
Any State that processes food or a facility that holds, stores,
Or transports food or food ingredients.
Now, every home in the country holds food after buying it from the
Grocery store. Will they be included too?
—————————-
Hell, no. They’re going to be magnanimous and say that, while they could,
They won’t right now.
Excerpted from the same Interim Rule:
“(Response) FDA has concluded that private individual residences are
Not ”facilities” for purposes of the registration provision of the
Bioterrorism Act. Under the Bioterrorism Act, the term ”facility”
Includes ”any factory, warehouse, or establishment.” Congress did not Specify any definition for these terms.
Under their common meanings,
The terms can include private residences. For example, according to Webster’s II New Riverside University Dictionary (1994), the most
Relevant definition of ”establishment” is ”a business firm, club,
Institution, or residence, including its possessions and employees.”
However, ”[I]n determining whether Congress has specifically addressed
The question at issue, the court should not confine itself to examining
A particular statutory provision in isolation * * *.
It is a fundamental canon of statutory construction that the words of a
Statute must be read in their context and with a view to their place in
The overall statutory scheme.”’ FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco
Corp., 529 U.S. 120, 121 (2000).
Other parts of the registration Provisions in section 415 of the FD&C Act indicate that Congress only Intended businesses to register, and raise a question as to whether Congress intended that private individual residences, even though food Is manufactured/processed, packed, or held at such residences, be Considered facilities.
For instance, a registrant is required to submit”the name and address of each facility at which, and all trade names Under which, the registrant conducts business * * * ” (21 U.S.C.
350d(a)(2)).
Thus it is unclear whether Congress intended all Individual private residences at which food is manufactured/processed, Packed, or held to be included in the term ”facility.” Furthermore, The requirement that a facility submit its ”name” as well as its ”trade names” raises a question as to whether Congress intended ”facility” to include private individual residences since it is Unlikely that a home would have a name or a trade name.
Where the words Of the statute are ambiguous, an agency may make a reasonable Interpretation of the statute. Chevron, USA, Inc. V. NRDC, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 842-843 (1984); Brown & Williamson, supra, at 132.
Consistent with the language of section 415(a)(2) discussed
Previously, the agency concludes that interpreting the term
”facility” to exclude private individual residences is a reasonable
Construction for purposes of registration.
This interpretation, However, does not necessarily preclude a reasonable construction of Other provisions of the FD&C Act to include such residences.”
[I do get that residences are easily included.]
MYTH: H.R. 875 would mean a “goodbye to farmers markets” because the bill would “require such a burdensome complexity of rules, inspections, licensing, fees, and penalties for each farmer who wishes to sell locally - a fruit stand, at a farmers market.” ?
FACT: There is no language in the bill that would result in farmers markets being regulated, penalized any fines, or shut down. Farmers markets would be able to continue to flourish under the bill. In fact, the bill would insist that imported foods meet strict safety standards to ensure that unsafe imported foods are not competing with locally-grown foods.
SECTION 406 CLEARLY STATES ALL FOOD OFFERED FOR SALE WILL BE VIEWED AS BEING IN INTERSTATE COMMERCE AND SUBJECT TOT HE PROVISIONS OF THIS BILL.
C. 406. PRESUMPTION.
In any action to enforce the requirements of the food safety law, the connection with interstate commerce required for jurisdiction shall be presumed to exist
8) CATEGORY 4 FOOD ESTABLISHMENT- The term ‘category 4 food establishment’ means a food establishment that processes all other categories of food products not described in paragraphs (5) through (7).
(9) CATEGORY 5 FOOD ESTABLISHMENT- The term ‘category 5 food establishment’ means a food establishment that stores, holds, or transports food products prior to delivery for retail sale.
14) FOOD PRODUCTION FACILITY- The term ‘food production facility’ means any farm, ranch, orchard, vineyard, aquaculture facility, or confined animal-feeding operation.
[SUE, say it again and again, "this applies to farms and can apply to homes." It certainly looks to me that families baking cookies for bake sales could easily be included.]
SEC. 206. FOOD PRODUCTION FACILITIES.
(a) Authorities- In carrying out the duties of the Administrator and the purposes of this Act, the Administrator shall have the authority, with respect to food production facilities, to–
(1) visit and inspect food production facilities in the United States and in foreign countries to determine if they are operating in compliance with the requirements of the food safety law;
(2) review food safety records as required to be kept by the Administrator under section 210 and for other food safety purposes;
(3) set good practice standards to protect the public and animal health and promote food safety;
(4) conduct monitoring and surveillance of animals, plants, products, or the environment, as appropriate; and
(5) collect and maintain information relevant to public health and farm practices.
(b) Inspection of Records- A food production facility shall permit the Administrator upon presentation of appropriate credentials and at reasonable times and in a reasonable manner, to have access to and ability to copy all records maintained by or on behalf of such food production establishment in any format (including paper or electronic) and at any location, that are necessary to assist the Administrator–
(1) to determine whether the food is contaminated, adulterated, or otherwise not in compliance with the food safety law; or
(2) to track the food in commerce.
(c) Regulations- Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Administrator, in consultation with the Secretary of Agriculture and representatives of State departments of agriculture, shall promulgate regulations to establish science-based minimum standards for the safe production of food by food production facilities. Such regulations shall–
(1) consider all relevant hazards, including those occurring naturally, and those that may be unintentionally or intentionally introduced;
(2) require each food production facility to have a written food safety plan that describes the likely hazards and preventive controls implemented to address those hazards;
(3) include, with respect to growing, harvesting, sorting, and storage operations, minimum standards related to fertilizer use, nutrients, hygiene, packaging, temperature controls, animal encroachment, and water;
THEY NEVER MENTION SEEDS BUT THIS IS PRECISELY HOW THEY WILL CRIMINALIZE SEED BANKING AND ALL HOLDINGS OF SEEDS.
[Notice they mention harvesting, sorting and storage operations, then watch below.
To follow how this will be done, you must understand that:
1. there is a small list inside the FDA called "sources of seed contamination"
2. in which they have now defined "seed" as food,
3. so seeds can be controlled under "food safety."
Those seeds (so far) include:
seeds eaten raw such as flax, poppy sesame, etc.;
sprouting seeds such as wheat, beans, alfalfa, most greens, etc.;
seeds pressed into oils such as corn, sunflower, canola, etc.;
seeds used as animal feed such as soy ....
That is most seeds. Seeds are essential to life and thus to freedom.
The "sources of seed contamination" include six little items:
agricultural water
manure (but NOT chemical pesticides or fertilizers)
harvesting, transporting and seed cleaning equipment
seed storage facilities
What you must realize is that seed cleaning equipment is THE single most critical piece of equipment for sustainable agriculture. It is how we save organic seed. It is the machinery used after plants "go to seed" to separate out (sort) the seeds from the plant material so the farmer can collect (harvest) and then save (put in storage) seed for the next year at little cost. With his own seed, the farmer stays free of patented, genetically engineered, corporately privatized seeds.
You must also understand that Monsanto is getting rid of the people who do the seed cleaning and many other means of our having access to seed .
This year, 2009, seed cleaning equipment is now illegal in some parts of the country which tips us off to both the intent to control seeds in this way and to how they could do things under this bill.
How can they make such vital equipment illegal? Quietly, and by saying it contaminates food.
"Contaminate" is their favorite word since the public fears the deadly contamination that industry itself - not farmers - has caused. Scare the public and thus push for "food safety standards" to be set.
And to eliminate seed cleaning equipment, they haven now set the standards so seed cleaning (the simple separation of seed from plant) will now require a million to a million and a half dollar building and/or equipment ... per line of seed.
So, a farmer who has been seed cleaning flax for 40 years with a hand made seed cleaner can't sell flax on the market anymore, though there are NO instances of anyone ever having gotten sick from seed cleaning equipment. A farmer who has been cleaning wheat, corn and soy each year with the same perfectly fine equipment would now need three to four and half million dollars for three pieces of equipment to continue.
(The FDA isn't so bar-setting when it comes to other things like melamine in baby formula, though it is proven to sicken and kill infants), initially denying the melamine was in our baby formula and then quickly inventing a "foods safety" standard to okay it.)
Organic farmers are not aware of this happening, perhaps because the left is being treated with kid gloves until HR 875 and related bills are/were passed. Meanwhile, the FDA and USDA have been tromping on traditional (many of them farming organically, by the way) farmers for years. The organic community is disconnected from them so hasn't been aware of what is happening to them. Indie farmers have a history of no one listening to them, which is too bad because it is they who are the ones bringing the warning that these bills are deadly. The organic community, measuring against its own seeming safety, hasn't heard or understood.
NOTICE, THOUGH, THAT BECAUSE A SINGLE "FOODS SAFETY" BAR HAS BEEN RAISED, IN TIME ON ONE WILL BE ABLE TO GET ORGANIC SEEDS IN ANY NUMBER BECAUSE IT WILL BE ILLEGAL FOR ALL FARMERS TO SELL THEM TO ANYONE.
Now, look at the last item on the list - seed storage facilities.
They would be careful not to ban them all outright given the extreme reaction they would get. But now the method is more clear. "Food safety" is the weapon and public fear is the driver and they only need to set the bar at the level that is impossible to meet.
Farmers, gardeners, seed saving exchanges, seed companies, scientific seed projects, and seed banks, all require "seed storage facilities." All are working overtime to protect biodiversity that is rapidly disappearing because of ... genetic engineering.
Set the standard for "food safety" and certification high enough that no one can afford it and punish anyone who tries to save seed in a multitude of ways that have worked fine for thousands of years, and PRESTO, YOU HAVE JUST CRIMINALIZED SEED BANKING.
The penalties, I will assume, will be tremendous, the better to protect us from nothing dangerous whatever, but to make monopoly over seed more absolute. One is left with control over farmers, and end to seed exchanges, to organic seed companies, to university programs developing nice normal hybrids.
When you know that Monsanto with the help of the US government plundered ancient and rare seed banks in Iraq that held seeds with a genetic heritage (a biohistory belonging to all of us) going back 1000s of years and then made it a crime for farmers there to collect or use their own normal and non-patented seeds off their own land, you see how extreme the intent to control is.
Now, perhaps it is possible to see how the identical thing is being done here, only it comes in a heavily, heavily disguised way - through "food safety" that isn't at all - and in only one tiny little paragraph within a very large bill.
The Iraqis are now abjectly dependent on Monsanto and the US for survival itself and will have to pay whatever prices are set for food. They cannot just grow their own and be free. So, no matter what form of government they may have, they are now slaves because the control over them is that extreme. Kissinger was right - control food and you control people.
WE ARE INCHES FROM THIS OURSELVES. THE LEFT NEEDS TO WAKE UP.
This trick of setting bars above any ability to be in the game, is similar to how blacks had been treated. Click here. This trick of setting bars above any ability to be in the game while imposing fines that destroy people who fail to meet that standard, is sadistic. Then, taking the land as confiscatory payment, is theft by government become totalitarian and colonizing its own people.
There are other items of the list which surely will be controlled as well. In toto, that little list is the deconstruction of farming itself and given the inclusion of manure, especially of organic farming.]
(4) include, with respect to animals raised for food, minimum standards related to the animal’s health, feed, and environment which bear on the safety of food for human consumption;
(5) provide a reasonable period of time for compliance, taking into account the needs of small businesses for additional time to comply;
(6) provide for coordination of education and enforcement activities by State and local officials, as designated by the Governors of the respective States; and
(7) include a description of the variance process under subsection (d) and the types of permissible variances which the Administrator may grant under such process.
(d) Variances- States and foreign countries that export produce intended for consumption in the United States may request from the Administrator variances from the requirements of the regulations under subsection (c). A request shall–
(1) be in writing;
(2) describe the reasons the variance is necessary;
(3) describe the procedures, processes, and practices that will be followed under the variance to ensure produce is not adulterated; and
(4) contain any other information required by the Administrator.
(e) Approval or Disapproval of Variances- If the Administrator determines after review of a request under subsection (d) that the requested variance provides equivalent protections to those promulgated under subsection (c), the Administrator may approve the request. The Administrator shall deny a request if it is–
(1) not sufficiently detailed to permit a determination;
(2) fails to cite sufficient grounds for allowing a variance; or
(3) does not provide reasonable assurances that the produce will not be adulterated.
(f) Enforcement- The Administrator may coordinate with the agency or department designated by the Governor of each State to perform activities to ensure compliance with this section.
(g) Imported Produce- Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Administrator shall promulgate regulations to ensure that raw agricultural commodities and minimally processed produce imported into the United States can meet standards for food safety, inspection, labeling, and consumer protection that are at least equal to standards applicable to such commodities and produce produced in the United States.
Administrator shall have authority to grant exclusions to foreign producers.
[While it may be obvious to us that this is onerous beyond any capability of coping with it, it needs to be said and described in some detail what it would actually mean for farmers or for us. Here in story form is a taste of it, so anyone could feel the insanity of it:
SEC. 201. ADMINISTRATION OF NATIONAL PROGRAM.
(a) In General- The Administrator shall--
(1) develop, administer, and annually update a national food safety program (referred to in this section as the ‘program’) to protect public health; and
(2) ensure that persons who produce, process, or distribute food meet their responsibility to prevent or minimize food safety hazards related to their products.
[This is where I think it would be very helpful if you explained how astoundingly onerous that long list is and what its impact would be on any farmer who previously only needed to load up his goods and bringing them to a farmers market - though that in itself is a time consuming, physically effortful job that often begins pre-dawn on those mornings and ends late in the day, all of it separate from growing the food and boxing it up to bring.
A small farm is not an industry with staff to fill out paperwork, handle licensing, manage all the industrial bureaucracy that is being loaded on here, but is most often a couple who is also taking care of a family in addition to growing crops and raising animals. These are precisely the people who we need most as part of our food system and how will clearly be crushed by the grossly inappropriate application of such rules to small farms.]
· MYTH: H.R. 875 would result in the “death of organic farming.”
FACT: There is no language in the bill that would stop organic farming. The National Organic Program (NOP) is under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The Food Safety Modernization Act only addresses food safety issues under the jurisdiction of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
[Of course, they are not going to come straight out and say it. But breaking this down to what is actually involved, you find that:]
The administrator is charged with developing minimum standards, not maximum limits on feed, fertilizers, nutrients etc- right here goes organics.
Secondly, this act creates a new agency, and the FDA becomes the Federal Drug and Device Agency. It combines offices currently under FDA and Commerce Department (National Marine Fisheries).
Third, FSA is to cooperate with the USDA in “promulgating rules and orders” which will have the bearing and impact of law.
To refer back to the previous “Myth”
[The one about foreign food having to meet our standard, right?]
- Alaska, Hawaii, US territories and foreign countries may apply for variances, so… NO… Imported foods do NOT necessarily have to meet the same standards. In fact, many countries have had to lower their standards due to WTO rules and trade agreements, and Australia had to further lower their regulatory standards when they instituted the NLIS program (their version of NAIS). There is no reason to think we would not have to do the same.
[NOW, COMES THE RESPONSE TO WHETHER THE BILLS WILL MEAN THE END OF ORGANIC FARMING.]
I’m going to format this differently to accentuate your points, Sue. This section should be a major education for people in how things have been working. This is in response to the myth that the bills will not affect organic farming, right?]
Animal health has traditionally meant medication and hormones, petroleum-based fly sprays and all sorts of other goodies.
Feed can be anything (GMO SOY OR CORN, ANYONE?),
environment can mean PESTICIDES, HERBICIDES USED ON PASTURES (IF pasturing is deemed “healthy” - internationally this is NOT so for poultry, in fact in many countries there is NO outdoor poultry anymore - by law).
Nutrients are not necessarily whole food based, many are produced SYNTHETICally, and again, PETROLEUM BASED …
Animal encroachment prevention can be anything from a scarecrow or plastic owl to POISON BATES AND BULLETS. Not one of these things is specified, yet there is no place for real public opinion in the decision making process provided. I will grant that there is usually a public comment period for federal register entries, for whatever that has been worth in the past.
[Meaning, it has been worth little to nothing. And obviously, the public is left having to respond ad infinitum to one issue after another. Someone compared the numbers of things being thrown at us to try to stop, to carpet bombing so you can't comment on everything, even if it helped which is clearly often doesn't.]
SEC. 206. FOOD PRODUCTION FACILITIES.
(a) AUTHORITIES.—In carrying out the duties of the Administrator and the purposes of this Act, the Administrator shall have the authority, with respect to food production facilities, to
(1) visit and inspect food production facilities in the United States and in foreign countries to determine if they are operating in compliance with the requirements of the food safety law;
(2) review food safety records as required to be kept by the Administrator under section 210 and for other food safety purposes;
(3) SET GOOD PRACTICE STANDARDS to protect the public and animal health and promote food safety;
[This is where words that sound so friendly and innocuous and even good are code words for international rules set by the WTO that actually define industrial requirements which do not fit real farming in the least, much less organic farming, would be applied.
[This is where insane, anti-nature, anti-farming rules like "animals and crops can't exist on the same farm" come into play. Where wild animals aren't ever supposed to be near crops so the government has been poisoning deer and frogs. The list of such manufacturing rules for farming is long, and each very much "efficiency manager comes and wrecks the farm."]
(4) conduct monitoring and surveillance of animals, plants, products, or the environment, as appropriate; and
[Please, those of you who find the idea of NSA-spying intolerable, look carefully at those words. Now, imagine it were your farm, your home on that farm, and realize that the USDA and FDA have been run by and the new agency will be run by Monsanto, Cargill, Tysons, ADM. Their interest in helping consumers have safer food is nil The bills are meant to eliminate farmers as is now rapidly occurring in the EU with identical ("harmonized") bills, now law there.
(5) collect and maintain information relevant to public health and farm practices.
[There needs to be a pause here to consider the implications of each of those on someone's home - their family's farm. This is quite different from applying them to industrial sites where no one lives, and beyond that, these powers are so broad and vague, they are dangerous if only in that.
Those things listed open the door to total control, warrantless entry and perpetual surveillance. Notice how innocuous they have made it appear, even beneficial - always about public health. Yet, the insincerity of this is boggling - the USDA and Big Ag have worked to prevent inspections to the point where farmers have had to actully sue to get them done , even after offering to pay for them.]
(b) INSPECTION OF RECORDS.—A food production facility shall permit the Administrator upon presentation of appropriate credentials and at reasonable times and in a reasonable manner
[Who defines "reasonable"? Does a farmer have to go to court each time there is an "unreasonable" manner and time? How wide open do we push the door to Big Ag-corrupted government control over farmers - the people creating the only safe food?
Look carefully and realize the USDA right now is countenancing state ag departments conducting terrorizing raids on non-corporate farms across the country. Imagine it were your home and USDA agents banging on your door to demand paper work and if you don't have it, facing fines that would bankrupt you in a moment and lose you your land and home.]
, to have access to and ability to copy all records maintained by or on behalf of such food production establishment in any format (including paper or electronic) and at any location, that are necessary to assist the Administrator—
[Imagine again.]
(1) to determine whether the food is contaminated, adulterated, or otherwise not in compliance with the food safety law; or
[Be aware that in Pennsylvania where there has been an aggressive effort to destroy fresh milk dairy farmers, the tests by the states repeatedly do not match those of independent testers but the harm to farmers from such false tests and reporting of them is done and can't be undone. Be aware that the USDA has a record of creating test results damaging to small farmers while it refuses to inspect even when farmers ask to pay.]
(2) to track the food in commerce.
[This could mean farmers bringing food to markets with USDA agents surveilling.]
(c) REGULATIONS.—Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Administrator, in consultation with the Secretary of Agriculture and representatives of State departments of agriculture, shall promulgate regulations to establish science-based minimum standards for the safe production of food by food production facilities. Such regulations shall—
[Everything in this bill is being left to be filled in however the "Food Safety Tsar" - "the Administrator" decides? Right now, to give people pause and to wake them up a bit to how this is not a wise idea but in fact absurd, it appears that person could be Michael Taylor, a Monsanto lawyer infamous for approving rBGH - the first genetically engineered product ever approved - over the objections of doctors, scientists who said the numbers were being rigged, and the public.
How can anyone leave a bill so utterly vague in the hands of anyone to decide later what it all means? Do we not make laws here with specific meaning anymore? Or do we simply let totalitarian rules be applied by industry against non-industrial entities like farms and homes in any way they wish and with immense police power behind what they, for their own interests, decide?]
(1) consider all relevant hazards, including those occurring naturally, and those that may be unintentionally or intentionally introduced;
[GOODBY RAW MILK.]
(2) require each food production facility to have a written food safety plan that describes the likely hazards and preventive controls implemented to address those hazards;
(3) include, with respect to growing, harvesting, sorting, and storage operations, minimum standards related to fertilizer use, NUTRIENTS, HYGIENE, PACKAGING, TEMPERATURE CONTROLS, ANIMAL ENCROACHMENT, AND WATER;
[GOODBYE ORGANIC FARMING.]
(4) include, with respect to animals raised for food, MINIMUM STANDARDS related to the animal’s HEALTH, FEED AND ENVIRONMENT which bear on the safety of food for human consumption;
[GOODBYE ORGANIC FARMING AND GRASS FED ANIMALS.]
(5) provide a reasonable period of time for compliance, taking into account the needs of small businesses for additional time to comply;
[Oh, heavens, this looks like padding to throw in the word "reasonable" again but it has no explicit meaning whatever and so no safety for a soul.]
(6) provide for coordination of education and enforcement activities by State and local officials, as designated by the Governors of the respective States; and
[This appears to be where Homeland Security works with the USDA for such things as "depopulation of animals" - for which 6 meetings are already scheduled in June and into which livestock owners are not allowed though foreigners are.
These "depopulation" plans look like what is happening in Asia where animal disease caused by industry (and worth a fortune to the pharmaceutical industry ) are then used by industry to wipe out its competition in heritage breeds of animals on small farms and to substitute genetically engineered animals that are patented by industry and thus owned by industry.
(7) include a description of the variance process under subsection (d) and the types of permissible variances which the Administrator may grant under such process.
(d) VARIANCES.—
States and foreign countries that export produce intended for consumption in the United States may request from the Administrator variances from the requirements of the regulations under subsection (c)
.
[This is where the "fact" that foreign countries must meet our food safety requirements collapses by simply reading the bill.]
MYTH: The bill would implement a national animal ID system.?
FACT: There is no language in the bill that would implement a national animal ID system. Animal identification issues are under the jurisdiction of the USDA. The Food Safety Modernization Act addresses issues under the jurisdiction of the FDA.
This bill mandates NAIS BY claiming that it is already law,
then contradicts itself by citing COOL, which specifically prohibits mandatory tracking.
It justifies NAIS by claiming that the AHPA gives authority - but this is a bill (and supposedly a program) concerning interstate commerce (though any item of food for sale is “presumed” to be in interstate commerce, whether it is in reality or not.) and AHPA does not regulate interstate commerce.
How many contradictions in a single section do we need before red flags go up?
[YES, AND PUT UP RED FLAGS FOR WHOLE BILLS IF THIS CENTRAL PART IS SO CORRUPTLY BEING PUSHED.]
Below in CAPITALS [fonts altered - Dr. Rima] , Sue answers the absurd claim that NAIS is not mandatory. FWW has gotten this and many other items wrong. That would be fine if the whole organic movement and all our farms and freedom were not riding on our seeing these very real threats and stopping those bills completely - not compromising on them but demanding their complete withdrawal.]
(a) IN GENERAL - THE ADMINISTRATOR, IN ORDER TO PROTECT THE PUBLIC HEALTH, SHALL ESTABLISH A NATIONAL TRACEABILITY SYSTEM THAT ENABLES THE ADMINISTRATOR TO RETRIEVE THE HISTORY, USE AND LOCATION OF AN ARTICLE OF FOOD THROUGH ALL STAGES OF ITSPRODUCTION, PROCESSIN, AND DISTRIBUTION.
(b) APPLICABILITY - TRACEABILITY REQUIREMENTS UNDER THIS SECTION SHALL APPLY TO FOOD FROM FOOD PRODUCTION FACILITIES, FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS, AND FOREIGN FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS.
(c) REQUIREMENTS-
(1) STANDARDS- THE ADMINISTRATOR SHALL ESTABLISH STANDARDS FOR THE TYPE OF INFORMATION, FORMAT, AND TIMEFRAME FOR FOOD PRODUCTION FACILTITIES AND FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS TO SUBMIT RECORDS TO AID THE ADMINISTRATOR IN EFFECTIVELY RETRIEVING THE HISTORY, USE AND LOCATION OF AN ITEM OF FOOD.
(2) RULE OF CONSTRUCTION- Nothing in this section shall be construed as requiring the Administrator to prescribe a specific technology for the maintenance of records or labeling of food to carry out the requirements of this section.
(3) AVAILABILITY OF RECORDS FOR INSPECTION- Any records that are required by the Administrator under this section shall be available for inspection by the Administrator upon oral or written request.
(4) DEMONSTRATION OF ABILITY- The Administrator, during any inspection, may require a food establishment to demonstrate its ability to trace an item of food and submit the information in the format and time frame required under paragraph (1).
(d) Relationship to Other Requirements-
(1) CONSISTENCY WITH EXISTING STATUTES AND REGULATIONS- To the extent possible, the Administrator should establish the national traceability system under this section to be consistent with existing statutes and regulations that require recordkeeping or labeling for identifying the origin or history of food or food animals.
[Does this mean consistent with international laws under the WTO? Is this a means of locking everything together into Smart Grid or NAFTA or CAFTA or GATT and even, the worst of all,
CODEX
?]
(2) EXISTING LAWS- For purposes of this subsection, the Administrator should review the following:
(A) Country of origin labeling requirements of subtitle D of the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1946 (7 U.S.C. 1638 et seq.).
(B) The Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act of 1930 (7 U.S.C. 499a-t).
(C) Country of origin labeling requirements of section 304 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (19 U.S.C. 1340).
(D) The National Animal Identification System as authorized by the Animal Health Protection Act of 2002 (7 U.S.C. 8301 et seq.).
EC. 210. TRACEBACK REQUIREMENTS.
MYTH: The bill is supported by the large agribusiness industry.?
FACT: No large agribusiness companies have expressed support for this bill.
This bill is being supported by several Members of Congress who have strong progressive records on issues involving farmers markets, organic farming, and locally-grown foods.
[Who almost certainly have not read the bills or can't interpret how it will work to destroy farmers, organic food, seed banking, and all of us.]
Also, H.R. 875 is the only food safety legislation that has been supported by all the major consumer and food safety groups, including:
[Perhaps others know details on each organization and why they might be supporting a bill that is so threatening to real food safety and to the survival of our farms and organic farming.]
?– Center for Foodborne Illness Research & Prevention
?– Center for Science in the Public Interest
?– Consumer Federation of America
The Consumer Federation of America (CFA) is a long-standing consumer organization based in Washington, DC. However, it has accepted funding fromthe ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION to “develop an optimum regulatory regime” for genetically engineered food.
?– Consumers Union?– Food & Water Watch
[Food and Water Watch just put out a description of the bill in which it is apparent they do not understand what is in it and what it will do. With that as their starting point, they support it.]
?– The Pew Charitable Trusts
[They are also connected to the ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION, and involved with them in mandatory vaccinations programs around the world and issues of reducing population.]
?– Safe Tables Our Priority ?– Trust for America’s Health
[There is no list here of groups opposing this bill, which include the people whose lives are most at risk from it and who know its dangers the best and who should have been the first people consulted. Instead, they have been shut out and when they have tried to report extreme dangers, they have ignored, dismissed, marginalized. Perhaps the other organizations listed here are as unfamiliar with the bill's contents and ramifications as FWW.]
If you consider that not only is Rosa DeLauro married to Stanley Greenberg, who boasts Monsanto as one of his clients, but also that she receives the largest donations from agribusiness PAC’s of just about anyone in Congress, does industry NEED to come out and say they support this particular bill? If cash to the sponsor doesn’t count, and if formal positions supporting various specific aspects of the bill do not count, then what does? Would there not be massive public backlash against it if industry DID take a formal stand on every bill they want to see passed?
By the same token, I’ve not seen a single industrial ag company come out and oppose this bill, either. They have all been conspicuously silent. I seem to remember that they threw up quite a fuss over COOL, and caused enforcement to fall behind by more than 7 years… Not to mention the garbage with loopholes we’ve had to deal with since enforcement began. (What good does a “Canada, US, Mexico” label do for anybody? Especially with BSE in Canada and TB coming in daily from Mexico?) Where’s the hoot and holler over this?
MYTH: The bill will pass the Congress next week without amendments or debate.?
FACT: Food safety legislation has yet to be considered by any Congressional committee.?
I can’t speak to the time frame.
[It came from those who first discovered the bills were there, inserted only one week after Vilsack had said the USDA wasn't even considering centralizing the FDA and USDA at this time, so people saw how similar the bills were, knew who fast other things were being shoved through Congress without even reading those bills, and estimated how fast this could happen.
Perhaps with people alerted now, these bogus "food safety" bills can be stopped by the organic community once it realizes they will utterly destroy it.]
However, since I did have the luxury of listening to the farce taking place on the floor of the House of Representatives on March 11 concerning HR1105 (which FUNDS NAIS among its hundreds of other projects) while awaiting the Livestock, Dairy and Poultry subcommittee hearing on NAIS - I have no doubt that this bill will move quickly now that 1105 has passed and since it has so many co-sponsors.
Especially since the Representatives were honest enough to admit that though the Senators claimed everybill in the Omnibus Act had been heard and passed in the previous session, when in actuality, some 100 of the 170 bills in the package had NOT.
But this is my personal opinion.
The “ominous Omnibus Act” as several Representatives called it, went from introduction to the President in less than 13 working days.
I really have to question just who’s side those groups are really on that are in support of this bill…..
And finally,
WHAT THE NEW “FOOD SAFETY” BILLS MEAN TO YOU
by Gail Combs
Our food safety system was trashed in 1995 by Sec of Ag Ann Veneman (Board member of Monsanto). She appointed Dan Amstutz (VP of Cargill) who wrote the World Trade Organization Agreement on Agriculture (WTO AoA). Unlike GATT, WTO has major clout from trade sanctions and control of 90% of the international trade. http://www.publiceyeonscience.ch/images/the_wto_and_the_politics_of_gmo.doc
“Aims to ensure that governments do not use quarantine and food safety requirements as Unjustified trade barriers.. It provides Member countries with a right to implement traceability {NAIS} as an SPS measure.” WTO
In other words the WTO did away with “quarantine and food safety requirements” that gave us “the safest food in the world” and is graciously going to allow Farmers to track AND COUNT the world’s livestock for them instead. Now HR 875 and an FDA release indicate All food will be tracked and all food producers will have Food inspections and the threat of fines up to $1,000,000 a day will eliminate all the independent farms that have acted as a check on Corporate AG.
The FDA wants
to implement a more effective trace-back process, using technologies to rapidly and precisely track the origin and destination of contaminated foods, feed and ingredients
Nanotech in Food can make it happen “California’s Oxonica makes Nanobarcodes from nano-particles that contain silver and gold stripes varying in width, length and amount, such that billions of combinations can be created to tag individual products. The barcodes have been primarily used to assure brand and authenticity in pharmaceuticals, but applications could be forthcoming in tracing food batches”.
In regard to pets:
HR 875 uses “animals” and then “animals raised for food” and there are no exclusions. The Animal Welfare Act had exclusions for livestock, pets and people raising three or less litters of puppies a year. Therefore pets are not excluded.
“set good practice standards to protect the public and animal health and promote food safety”
“conduct monitoring and surveillance of animals, plants, products, or the environment, as appropriate”
“with respect to animals raised for food, minimum standards related to the animal’s health, feed, and environment which bear on the safety of food for human consumption;
In regard to gardens:
The Feds Already have plans for controlling food “FROM FARM TO FORK” including home preparation since September of 1995 (WTO ratified in 1995)
HR 875
“require each food production facility to have a written food safety plan that describes the likely hazards and preventive controls implemented to address those hazards;”
“include, with respect to growing, harvesting, sorting, and storage operations, minimum standards related to fertilizer use, nutrients, hygiene, packaging, temperature controls, animal encroachment, and water”
“include, with respect to animals raised for food, minimum standards related to the animal’s health, feed, and environment which bear on the safety of food for human consumption;”
“set good practice standards to protect the public and animal health and promote food safety”
“..facility owned or operated by a person located in any State that processes food or a facility that holds, stores, or transports food or food ingredients.”
Notice it does not say a person SELLING food, it says a person holds, stores, or transports food or food ingredients. The bill specifically states it covers commerce with in state but again there is no exclusion for food raised for home use. The fact you are growing veggies for your and friends and not selling them does not exclude you.
“in any action to enforce the requirements of the food safety law, the connection with interstate commerce required for jurisdiction SHALL BE PRESUMED TO EXIST.”
Under Ag Sec. Veneman …
in September, 1995, the USDA’s Food Safety & Inspection Service presented a 600-page document “Farm-To-Table” intended to control of every step in the food chain from production to home preparation.
This is a real life example of what has already occurred and what people may have in store:
Today a state Ag inspector and two county officials show up and scare the bee-jesus out of me. First they accuse me of selling products and milk, then explain that even “giving milk products away” is illegal in California. Now everything is pasteurized, but it is illegal to share milk products in any form! They explained it was even ILLEGAL to give it to my own children if they did not live under my roof! I can’t even take a lasagna dish to my grown sons home without risk of being fined, arrested and or jailed! This is OUTRAGEOUS!!!!…..” Donna Tue Aug 12, 2008 http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/Americans_Against_NAIS/message/26452
More stories on Feds raiding farms and co-ops
—————————————————————————————————-
Conclusion
The related package of “food safety” bills are totalitarian. There are no two ways about it.
They allow government warrantless intrusion into and extreme, detailed, surveilled control over every aspect of farmers’ land and home, straight-jacketing them into a bureaucratic nightmare which precludes their even functioning as farmers. And yet for real food safety and for food security, it is exactly farmers we need.
We need the real food they produce and the farmland they spare and protect from industrialization and the heritage animals and seeds they raise and their knowledge about nature and animals, and we need the way of life they represent. Free. How interesting that to have real and clean and wholesome food, it requires that farmers have freedom.
These bills which claim to be about “food safety” but are proven in the EU already to be about the destruction of farmers, are so frighteningly broad, they allow the government to take over our lives, too. They allow the government to use rules written by multinational corporations within the WTO, to control whether we can garden or how, whether we chip our pets, even what happens inside our homes in our kitchens.
These controls all all for mandating things that make money for corporations just as we are all trying to get off the corporate grid of power, fuel, food, … Now it is easy to appreciate people’ resistance to mandated vaccines (and they keep adding more kinds).
There is point at which we must say stop. Our lives are our own, our property is our own, our decisions on what to eat and how to heal ourselves are our own. We must protect our own freedom and now it is apparent how intimately tied it is those who have been providing for us for ever - our farmers.
HR 875, SR 425, HR 814, HR 759 and all related bills must be withdrawn immediately and then trashed.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/A-solemn-walk-through-HR-8-by-Linn-Cohen-Cole-090314-67.html
Health Freedom: Our First Freedom in Europe too
Published March 02, 2009 @ 07:25AM PT
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
Foundation President, Maj Gen Bert Stubblebine (USA, ret) and Medical Director Rima E. Laibow MD are on a fact-finding, private diplomacy mission to Europe. Here Dr. Laibow reports on their activities.
The report includes their presentation to a 2,000 person anti-censorship gathering in Switzerland and work with videographers and health freedom advocates in Germany. Dr. Laibow discusses the new allignment developing in the EU and how what happens in Europe will effect our freedoms here in the US and the rest of the Americas.
Submitted by:
Ralph Fucetola JD
NSF Trustee
www.VitaminLawyer.com
PS - Thanks to Change.org for providing the FlipShot camera that was used to video Dr. Laibow's report from a computer screen via Skype. While we could have better quality with direct videography, using Skype allows us to post video reports within a couple hours of taping.
-------------------
Dr. Laibow's report:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmMXIfYZ6AE
European supporters of Natural Solutions are invited to join the new Yahoo!Group, NSF-EU at:
Medical Fascism Came to US Yesterday...
Published February 12, 2009 @ 08:13AM PT
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
Health Freedom Action eAlert
February 11, 2009
Welcome! In This Issue:
Medical Fascism Came to US Yesterday
It was hidden in the “stimulus” bill…
* eAlert Action: Speaking Truth to the President: End Medical Fascism
* Video : Trustee at Health Freedom Event: Divest the FDA
* The General’s Communiqué: What are we Fighting For?
* Dr. Rima Recommends: Recipe for Freedom
Don’t forget our Health Freedom Blog on our website, www.HealthFreedomUSA.org This is a shortened version of the blog entry. The entire blog can be found at: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=2073
Video of NSF Trustee Speaking at Health Freedom Event: Divest the FDA
Why should we get the government out of our pantries and off our dinner plates? Watch Foundation Trustee Ralph Fucetola’s new 2 part video as he spoke with other health freedom advocates at a Health Freedom Rally - Hunterdon Central High, Flemington, NJ. Watch now http://vitaminlawyerhealthfreedom.blogspot.com/2009/02/health-freedom-is-our-first-freedom.html A recent Government Accountability Office Study -and common sense - has powerful members of Congress agreeing that the FDA is doing a worse-than-wretched job of keeping your food safe, and you healthy. Why does the Chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee on the FDA agrees with Natural Solutions Foundation? Click here (http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=2038<) to find out now.
Health Freedom Webinars
For updates about our the Webinars: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?page_id=2002
Speaking Truth to the President and Other Urgent Action Items
It’s really simple, you know. If enough people demand it, the government will behave itself. We saw that a couple years ago when 598,000 of us sought to tell the FDA to leave our natural remedies alone… and the infamous anti-CAM guidance remains in limbo to this day. It comes down to taking simple actions to make sure the agencies, Congress, the President and other decision makers get your message loud and clear. Now that Health Freedom made it among the Top Ten social issues on Change.org and Change.gov, we are ready to push even harder.
That’s where these Health Freedom Action eAlerts make a difference. Please take these actions:
1. Tell the President about Change ~ Health Freedom is Our First Freedom
Please read the discussion at the Action Item below regarding the very serious threat to Health Care Freedom of Choice hidden in the most recent bailout (the so-called “stimulus” bill). Then get ready to tell President Obama that we want real change — which means more freedom and choice in our lives, not more control over needed medical treatments by yet another overblown, impossible to approach Federal bureaucracy!
Action Item: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26671
For more information about this issue, click here - http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?page_id=2060 - to read an article from Bloomberg written by Betsy McCaughey, former lieutenant governor of New York.
2. Right to Use ~ Right to Choose
Use Nano Silver, Retain the Right to Choose Nano Silver
Questionable “Consumer Organizations” Petition EPA to Ban Nano Silver - Deadline extended to March 20th.
Action Item: Tell EPA Not to Ban Nano Silver of Any Type - http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26405
Defending Nano Silver
http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=1773
Good work! Your vigorous response to the approaching deadline caught the attention of the EPA. So many of your responded that the deadline was extended by 2 months. Now, Mighty Mouse Warriors, keep on clicking! And remember to tell your entire contact list that health freedom is under attack - again!
Urge elected officials to take action now:
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/112/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26405
3. DIVEST THE FDA - and all government agencies of their regularly - and dangerously - misused power to deny us access to wholesome nutrition and natural remedies.
Protect Food from FDA/USDA Regulation!
Action Item: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26314
4. Please consider joining our new Food and Farming Yahoo!Groups forum. Check it out at: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/natural-solutions-food-and-farming/
And don’t forget our other very active forums:
NO to GMO
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/no-genetically-modified-foods/join
No Forced Vaccinations
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/no-forced-vaccination/join
The General’s Communiqué
Maj. Gen. Albert N. Stubblebine III (US Army, Ret.) What Are We Fighting For?
There is a special term for those who cannot control what happens to their bodies. The word is “slave”. A land of men and women who cannot protect either their children or themselves from enforced dangers and who cannot make the health choices they value do not own their bodies. We are fighting an enemy bound and determined to take away our first freedom: our ownership of our bodies, expressed through our health freedom. Call the enemy tyranny, call it greed, call it Multinational Corporate Globalist Genocide. Call it what you like, it wants your body ill and it wants you subservient. We are fighting an enemy which not only cares if you do not live or dies, but prefers that, after generating vast amounts of money through your suffering, you die promptly and with as little fuss as possible. This enemy wants to take away your first, most precious, and most fundamental freedom: the freedom to All my life I have been eager to live in peace, and ready to fight to defend it. That is the way of the warrior and I am proud of my service to what I believed in over so many years when I defended my country. Now the way of the warrior is still my way, but, with you as my ally, we are fighting a far different enemy than the one that my soldiers and I have faced before.
This enemy is merciless and brutal, ready to leave us standing in place, but enslaved; working, but weak. The enemy is merciless, relentless greed (and worse) which wants us as sick as possible for as long as possible so that we are as profitable as possible. And then the enemy wants most of us dead. The enemy is the New Feudalism, that terrifying system designed to replace our current economy and nation states with a depopulated hierarchy with a few pampered neo-aristocrats at the top of the heap with their servants and servitors around them to keep them comfortable and their technicians to keep their world humming. The rest of us, having served our purpose of generating unimaginable wealth, will have been disposed of through planned depopulation. Does every one of their minions understand the ultimate goal? No, I think not.
Has every one of the multinational corporate CEOs been read into the program? Again, I think not.
Or the corrupt and dishonest government regulators? The greedy business men who put plastic in baby formula and chocolate bars? I think not.
But is the goal of weaponizing food to make us healthy and strong? I think not.
Is criminalizing 13 simple herbs and plants (like ginger, lemongrass and turmeric) used for millennia to control pests safely and cheaply in Thailand (but which compete with expensive and dangerous chemical preparations) designed to empower the farmer and keep him, his family, and his food’s consumers healthy? No, again I think not. (http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/11379/farmers-up-in-arms-at-herb-listing).
How about increasing the amount of insanely toxic materials we inject into babies and children, watching them deteriorate and die in record numbers and then branding those who use rational science to resist them “conspiracy theorists”? Is that designed to help the collective immune system or to destroy it? Is the fact that so far every case of whooping cough in New Jersey’s pertussis epidemic has been in a fully vaccinated child an isolated fluke? I think not.
The evidence is overwhelming, and the authorities make it clear (in the fine print) that vaccination does NOT prevent the disease being addressed. What they do not make clear is that vaccines irritate and stimulate the immune system, but its response does NOT convey immunity to the item injected, no matter how many irritants, adjuvants, toxins, metals, stray viruses and other horrors are injected along with it. Is the fact that vaccines have never, no never, been proven safe OR effective, yet they are foisted upon us as if they were an accident? I think not.
Is it an accident that simple, effective, inexpensive and gentle cures, yes, cures, for cancer (like the ones that cured my potentially lethal prostate cancer 15 years ago and an unrelated paroted gland cancer 38 years ago) are ruthlessly and viciously suppressed while tragically ineffective, expensive and dangerous “treatments” for cancer are touted and trumpeted? I think not.
What are we fighting for? Freedom from slavery, pure and simple. Freedom or ourselves, our children and our right to be free men and women making our own health choices and exercising our basic, first freedom: health freedom.
Dr. Rima Recommends The Cure for Medical Health Care Fascism
By now you probably know that the Economic Stimulus Bill President Obama is proposing, unless millions of us act promptly, signals the end of any health freedom in the United States and those countries insane enough to clone themselves after our deadly “HealthCare System”.
If you want to find out exactly why, click here - http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?page_id=2060 - to read an article from Bloomberg written by Betsy McCaughey, former lieutenant governor of New York, about the coming enslavement of doctors that will enslave you so that you - and they - can make no health care choices, have no medical privacy, and select no course of treatment that the new Federal bureaucratic overlords of “HealthCare” do not authorize for you, at your age, and at your financial ‘worth’ to society. When the slaves cannot produce for the masters, it is time to let them (us) just die…
You know that I am an MD who uses only natural means to help people feel better. So if you feel sick when your read about the threat to Medical Freedom of Choice hidden in the new “stimulus” bill, here is my Prescription for you and 10 neighbors: Combine...
Read more at:
http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=2073
Action Item: Tell President Obama:
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26671
Please share this message with your friends and contacts and ask them to help protect food and freedom, too. Let them know that they can get their very own free subscription to the Health Freedom Action eAlerts at http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?page_id=187.
Thanks!
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
PS - And don't forget to stock-up on Nano Silver - www.nutronix.com/naturalsolutions
Copyright 2009
Health Freedom is Our First Freedom: Threat Analysis
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
Welcome to the Health Freedom Blog
Published February 06, 2009 @ 08:04PM PT
The Health Freedom posse on Change.org, Rima, Bill, Bert and Ralph, would like to welcome you to the Health Freedom Blog on Change.org. We invite you to participate in making change by supporting the idea of Health Freedom. And what is that idea? As defined on Change.org, it is:
Health Freedom means the right to control what happens to your body, choosing your own health path, making our own health choices as you see fit.
We welcome all positive contributions to the idea that as free adults Health Freedom is one of our fundamental civil rights. That is why we say: Health Freedom is Our First Freedom.
More information: http://www.change.org/ideas/view_idea/health_freedom
Please check back here for additional blog postings and check out our other sites:
Health Freedom is Our First Freedom:
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
Natural Solutions Foundation:
www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org
Ralph's Blog:
http://vitaminlawyerhealthfreedom.blogspot.com/
Thank you!
Ralph Fucetola JD
Natural Solutions Foundation Trustee
About Health Freedom
Health Freedom means the right to control what happens to your body, choosing your own health path, making our own health choices as you see fit.
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