The Codex Controversy

A United Nation’s commission’s moves towards placing global regulations on a wide range of products, from foods to nutritional supplements, has many consumers worried about their freedom of choice. Martin Oliver uncovers the realities. 

By now, many Australian consumers of nutritional supplements will have heard about Codex Alimentarius, a United Nations commission that was created in 1963 by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to govern international trade in food. During the past few years, it has been the subject of some alarming information circulated on the Internet and in the alternative media.

 

To date, the Codex body has agreed on more than 200 standards relating to food production, distribution and export. Extending beyond nutritional supplements, other potentially contentious areas include pesticide residues, GM foods, irradiation, food additives, and labelling.

What in these agreements should consumers be worried about?

Supplement crackdown

In developing its Guidelines for Vitamin and Mineral Food Supplements, Codex has come in for strong criticism from health freedom campaigners. While only government representatives can vote at meetings, international NGO’s (INGO’s) are permitted to attend and make comments. Some of these, such as Consumers International, have the public’s interests in mind, but others are industry associations with narrower commercial agendas.

For many years, drug industry delegations that would like to see tough rules applied to supplements have been working behind the scenes at Codex. Furthermore, some nutritional supplement trade associations are dominated by pharmaceutical sector members, and some of these trade bodies have been lobbying for rather than against the adoption of a restrictive framework. This makes sense from the point of view of profits, because {quotes}if consumers take inadequate quantities of some nutrients, they will be more likely to develop chronic diseases, thereby boosting the market for pharmaceutical drugs{/quotes}

In particular, the issue of maximum dosage limits has set alarm bells ringing. These have been accused of being based on scientifically flawed risk assessment models with a general bias towards a worst-case scenario.

Until a few years ago, it had been proposed that for each nutrient the Recommended Daily Amount (RDA) should be used as a maximum limit; but the RDA is considered to be the minimum amount of a particular nutrient needed to prevent disease, and the idea of using it as a safety limit was later scrapped because of objections. Another type of reference figure known in some countries as the Suggested Optimal Nutrient Allowance (SONA) is an intake level suitable for achieving optimum health, and is often many times higher.

Outdated medical model

The philosophical stance of Dr. Rolf Grossklaus, chairman of the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses, can be surmised from his 2003 statement that “nutrition has no place in medicine”. His views are echoed in the Codex introduction, which states that nutrients “may not be used to prevent, treat or cure any disease or condition”. Through such a stance, Codex is trying to impose an outdated medical model on a world that may be more interested in cutting-edge discoveries.

In July 2005, years of supplement negotiations at Codex culminated in a set of draconian supplement standards: vitamins will be regulated as drugs, and dosages exceeding levels naturally found in food will be prohibited. Ostensibly, the key reason for introducing these standards was to protect the consumer. This outcome was reached despite opposition from China, India and South Africa, which is interested in using traditional medicines as immune boosters for people living with AIDS.

The Alliance for Natural Health (ANH) is a British group lobbying internationally to protect the natural health sector from the various threats that it faces. While some information in circulation warns that Codex is scheduled to come into force at the end of 2009, the ANH believes that it is unlikely to be finalised until 2012 or 2013.

Influence in Australia

One hot topic for many years has been the possible extent of Codex influence in Australia.On its website, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) reassures us that Codex rules will only be applied in countries where supplements are regulated as “foods”. As they are treated as complementary medicines in Australia, we are told that Codex will not apply here. An amendment successfully moved by the Australian delegation at the 2005 Codex meeting added the word “only” to the following sentence: “These guidelines apply only in those jurisdictions where products defined in…are regulated as foods.”

This TGA position is echoed by such peak bodies as the Complementary Healthcare Council of Australia and the Australian Traditional Medicine Society. In the US, a similar message is being put out by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA.)

But the ANH believes that this is only part of the picture. Looking carefully at the Codex rules, it noticed that under Article 3 of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO’s) Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement, national laws must be ‘harmonised’ with Codex. As this falls within the scope of consumer protection legislation, the Alliance concludes that countries will be required to harmonise with Codex at a broader level.

Although Codex is reassuring the world that its standards are voluntary, they were adopted early on by the WTO as a reference in food-related international trade disputes. Countries found by the WTO to be non-compliant face heavy fines and sanctions, and while some countries and trading blocs can afford to pay these, they are beyond the financial means of smaller nations.

Another way in which Codex rules could become more universally adopted is via regional trade agreements such as NAFTA in North America. Trading bloc members with more liberal laws could be forced to harmonise with others that choose to take a tougher approach. In one recent example, under North America’s Trilateral Cooperation Charter, Mexico has begun clamping down on its natural cancer treatment sector that has thrived for several decades a few kilometres inside the border with the US.

So far, the TGA has not drawn attention to the fact that Australian supplement companies will be required to adopt Codex standards for the products they export. Furthermore, these standards will restrict for Australian consumers the availability of affordable, therapeutically effective supplements that are manufactured overseas.

Multinational interests

The interests of multinational food and drug companies are being advanced through the creation of an uneven playing field between large and small players. Often this can involve standards that are applied across an industry on a one-size-fits-all basis. Any health claims made for foods and dietary supplements will need to be backed up by rigorous science, which would mean expensive clinical trials. If no trial results already exist, such an ambitious project would probably be financially impossible for one small manufacturer.

Within the food sector, there is a risk that continued access to wholesome foods might be jeopardised. While Australians can rely on certification to be reassured that an organic product meets standards expected by consumers, the ANH warns of a risk that Codex organic standards might be watered down to allow synthetic chemical additives, irradiation and hidden non-organic ingredients. This would suit the entry of agribusiness interests into this increasingly lucrative market.

Organic spokesperson Andrew Monk from the Biological Farmers of Australia (BFA) is not quite so concerned, and doesn’t see a high likelihood of Codex standards being imposed on the global community. In international negotiations, it is inevitable that there will be trade-offs, and Monk sees Codex as a double-edge sword. Depending on which viewpoint you take, it could be regarded as either a diluter or upholder of organic standards.

Skewed priorities exposed

In 2004, the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) came into force, with a goal of eliminating, where possible, this dangerous class of chemicals. Although the Convention has been signed by every Codex member, it has emerged that Codex rules allow for the use of every POP with the exception of just two: toxaphene and DDT. This exposes skewed priorities that have nutrients being subjected to rigorous scrutiny while harmful chemicals are being given the thumbs-up.

Codex discussions concerning GM foods are still ongoing, with Australia among a small group of countries (with US, Canada, Argentina and New Zealand) opposing labelling for commercial reasons tied to their export food markets. Calls for GM labelling have been made by the EU, Africa, Brazil, and nearly all INGO’s.

In the ANH’s view, international liberalisation of GM technology would probably lead to the approval of “Terminator” seeds, which are now subject to a global moratorium. Because they yield sterile seeds at harvest, risks are posed by the possibility of cross-pollination and contamination of the regular seed supply. And despite consumer rejection of GM animals used for food, we may see these on the market.

One difficulty with Codex is that the slow timescales discourage involvement in the issue. Added to this, some of the information being circulated about Codex is inaccurate and unnecessarily alarmist, and with the viral nature of the Internet, it often gets relayed without being fact checked first. The ANH is valuable for being a credible source of news and analysis that avoids getting weighed down with conspiracy baggage while remaining tough, focused and hard-hitting.

A DVD that looks at the threats posed by Codex titled We Become Silent was released a few years ago by a company called Well TV, and can be downloaded from the Internet. The title was inspired by a quote from Martin Luther King, who once said: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”