August 2005 | Clean Living
Losing Access to Our Dietary Supplements?
By Rebecca Ephraim, R.D., C.C.N.
The stage is being set
It’s confusing, complicated, esoteric and really hard to get your brain around. But the bottom line isn’t. We are in danger of losing our (nearly) unfettered access to dietary supplements—which in turn would devastate our right to natural medicine here in the United States.
In early July, a United Nations trade commission, Codex Alimentarius (Latin for “food code”), meeting in Rome, approved a severely restrictive regulatory code for dietary supplements. Without counter-action, that code is destined to be enforced by many government regulatory agencies around the world in order to “harmonize” food trade.
The issue is obscured within a maze of assorted bureaucracies, which has prevented even the smartest and most informed industry observers from understanding what is happening. But there now appears to be a critical mass, including those who earlier discounted the specter of losing our right to supplements, who are now calling it a real possibility.
Worse, as investigative reporter Peter Byrne puts it, “…the emerging Codex regulations on vitamins and mineral supplements have almost nothing to do with promoting human health, and everything to do with facilitating the profits of multinational food and chemical corporations.” (Read Byrne’s detailed expose “The Fate of Vitamins” at www.smart-publications.com/articles.)
Although the Codex Commission has been setting rules on the manufacture and distribution of foods for more than 40 years, it’s the “Draft Guidelines for Vitamin and Mineral Supplements” just passed that’s expected to thrust into motion a cascade of events that, without intervention, could eventually override our Dietary Supplement, Health and Education Act (DSHEA) of 1994. Health observers fear that the levels will be set so low that doses of many vital nutrients that provide health benefits would be essentially outlawed.
In the months ahead, activists both here and abroad will be trying to figure out what the options are to head off this multi-headed agency behemoth intent on banning access to thousands of dietary supplements worldwide. (Byrne says it would effectively ban 300 of the 420 forms of vitamins and minerals present in the United Kingdom market). The perspective of many is that this is ultimately the grand design—engineered by multinational companies in order to edge out competition and to reap the biggest rewards from “harmonization.” Reportedly, it is being fueled by an active disinformation campaign to keep the confusion roiling.
I prefer to stay positive about our chances of maintaining our health freedoms—but we’re going to have to rally. We have a smart friend in Jim Turner—an action-oriented regulatory lawyer who walks tall in the food and supplements industry. As the board chair of the watchdog organization, Citizens for Health, he’s been in Rome plotting strategy with health advocates from other countries.
The health benefits of high-dose vitamins and mineral supplements along with herbs and other naturally occurring substances have been thoroughly established in both their efficacy and safety. To imagine that “forward thinking” industrialized countries would reject solid science in order to promote the economic interests of multinational pharmaceutical, food and agricultural corporations is consistent with many other troubling aspects of the globalization process.
Turner’s group, Citizens for Health, has ongoing news of developments on its website (www.citizens.org) and does a good job of marshalling forces to take action. There are no clear-cut answers at this time, but we need to galvanize support and be ready, as Citizens for Health puts it: “The Codex recommended vitamin and mineral guidelines could begin the process of undermining American law unless consumers get organized now to support DSHEA for adoption as the international vitamin and mineral trade standard.”
Rebecca Ephraim is a registered dietitian and certified clinical nutritionist
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