If you take dietary supplements or use them for your dogs, y’know coat conditioners, whelping aids (raspberry tea leaves are incredible!) or herbal preparations, you better get a cuppa coffee and settle in for a short read.

Received the following email, which prompted this Editorial:

>> Your right to choose your vitamin, mineral and other supplements may end in June of this year (2005). After that U.S. supplements will be defined and controlled by the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Health Organization (WHO). The CODEX ALIMENTARIUS (Food Code) is setting the supplement standards for all countries in the WTO. They will be enforced by the WTO and will over ride U.S. laws. The U.S. President and Congress agreed to this take-over when the WTO Treaty was signed. Violations are punished by WTO trade sanctions. CODEX drastically restricts vitamins, minerals, herbs and other supplements. CODEX met secretly in November, 2004 and finalized "Step 8 (the final stage)" to begin implementation in June, 2005.

The CODE includes:

> (1) No supplement can be sold for preventive or therapeutic use.

> (2) Any potency higher than RDA (minimal strength) is a "drug" requiring a prescription and must be produced by drug companies. Over 5000 safe items now in health stores will be banned, terminating health stores as we now know them.

> (3) CODEX regulations become binding internationally.

> (4) New supplements are banned unless given very expensive CODEX testing and approval.

CODEX now applies to Norway and Germany, among others, where zinc tablets rose from $4 per bottle to $52. Echinacea (an ancient immune-enhancement herb) rose from $14 to $153 (both examples are now allowed by prescription only). They are now "drugs". Vitamin C above 200 mg, niacin above 32 mg, vitamin B6 above 4 mg-all are banned over-the-counter as drugs. No amino acids (arginine, lysine, carnitine, etc. = essential amino acids!), essential fatty acids (omegas 3, 6, 9, etc.), or other essential supplements such as DMEA, DHEA, CoQ10, MSM, beta-carotene, etc. are allowed.

The CODEX rules are not based on real science. They are made by a few people meeting in secret (see web sites below), not necessarily scientists. In 1993 the FDA and drug corporations tried to put all supplements under restriction and prescription. But over 4 million Americans told Congress and the President to protect their freedom of choice on health supplements. The DSHEA Law was passed in 1994, which does so. But this will be over ruled by CODEX and the World Trade Organization.

Virtually nothing about it has been in the media. What the drug corporations have failed to do through Congress they have gotten by sneak attack through CODEX with the help of a silent media. >>

So okay, why then do you need to read it? There is a lot of controversy about the World Trade Organization and agreements. Some of the debunking of the “rumor” surrounding the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) and the impending crisis CODEX ALIMENTARIUS (Food Code) is pretty frightening if you read between the lines.

From Snopes.com, considered a credible debunker of urban legends: “ Two bills put before Congress in 2003 looked to regulate dietary nostrums by imposing quality and safety standards on them, and giving the FDA the ability to take them off the market before a great number of folks have been harmed by them. In March 2003, Senator Richard Durbin introduced bill S. 722, the "Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2003" in the U.S. Senate. The purpose of this legislation was to "protect consumers from dangerous dietary supplements such as ephedra and other stimulants by requiring manufacturers to submit proof that their product is safe prior to bringing it to market."

The assumption that ephedra is a “dangerous dietary supplement” jumped from the page. Emphasis mine. In the minds of many in the industry, that was never proven. True, there was a lot of press about the healthy young athlete who suffered a heart attack. Unknown is how much ephedra he took prior to the game, if any heart defect was revealed, or any drug use or other stimulants, etc. Millions upon millions of people in this country took ephedra in diet pills and other form with no ill effects over decades.

The bill would require manufacturers of the most dangerous types of dietary supplements (stimulants) to submit proof of their products' safety prior to bringing them to market.

The cost to prove supplements safe, natural stuff made by God and therefore, not patentable, is out of the question. TCM is but one example of herbal supplements that would be gone, unavailable. Traditional Chinese Medicine has been practiced and used for thousands of years by trillions of people. What would it take to “prove” it save to the FDA?

There’s more in the bill but when a wordsmith dissembles it, there is cause for concern if you are at all informed about herbal and natural remedies. If you are forced to trust pharmaceuticals because the natural supplements, homeopathic and herbal remedies that have survived centuries of “clinical trials” are also taken away, how will you treat yourself and your pets?  This is not sensationalism, and it could take effect as early as August 2005. 

Here’s some statistics you can get your teeth into. In the U.S. an average of 106,000 hospitalized patients per year (290 per day) die from Adverse Drug Reactions and 2,200,000 need more hospitalization for recovery. These were FDA approved drugs, properly administered by competent professionals in hospitals--none were considered malpractice. This is the number four cause of death in the U.S. When combined, these account for 7% of all hospitalized patients. This is equivalent to a 9-11 attack every ten days. There are very few fatalities from supplements or the news would be on every front page. There is no need for more FDA control of supplements than is already in place, which is substantial. Instead of drastically restricting supplements, why doesn't the FDA better control and restrict the extremely dangerous pharmaceutical drugs which are now killing us at the rate of a major airline crash per day?

Did you go to the link we provided for ADR in animals? It is even more shocking and far more go unreported because the owners don’t know what happened.

What can you do? Learn more before pushing this unpleasant thought from your mind. You can start at http://www.ahha.org and http://www.alliance-natural-health.org/ and other such organizations.

If you are politically active, Oppose bills S.722 and H.R.3377 which support the CODEX restrictions with U.S. laws, changing the DSHEA law. And by all means support H. R.1146 which would restore the sovereignty of the U.S. Constitution over CODEX, etc.

Oh and as the writer suggests, let your President, Senators and Representatives know how you feel about being sold out and tricked into this because they got us into this!

Barbara J. Andrews