How Codex Could
Work with International Trade Rules to Limit Access to Vitamins in the United States.

A myth is being propagated by many well-meaning organizations in the alternative medicine community that the Codex Alimentarius guidelines and the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) pose no threat to dietary supplements in the United States.

The Codex Alimentarius Commission is the international body acting under the United Nations and World Health Organization to set global food standards -- and their guidelines for dietary supplements are way out of sync and more restrictive than the current standards in the United States.

The fantasy storyline propagated by Codex “denialists” here is that the body’s guidelines on vitamin and mineral food supplements do not bind the United States and therefore will not affect U.S. law. Some optimistically quote a Congressional Service Report that states, “Codex guidelines are not binding on any nation, unless the guidelines are incorporated into the laws of that nation.”

But vitamin freedom activists like Dr. Matthias Rath point out that Codex’s guidelines are required of any member of the World Trade Organization. Dr. Rath --- the protégé of two-time Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling -- has been warning the world about the threat Codex poses to the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) for close to a decade. DSHEA is the law that has protected the rights of Americans to purchase dietary supplements.

“These plans of the pharmaceutical corporations and the Codex Commission are in direct opposition to the overwhelming importance of vitamins and other essential nutrients for human health …” Dr. Rath said in an open letter in 1996.

Nine years later, Codex adopted the guidelines that Dr. Rath warned about, recommending that governments evaluate dietary supplements using a toxicology model. While following Codex is technically “optional” for any country, the World Trade Organization long ago decided to use Codex guidelines to resolve trade disputes between any of its members. Not following Codex could be considered an unfair international trade practice under the rules of the WTO or CAFTA.

For instance, WTO member nations such as Germany and Brazil (which are more in line with Codex) do not enjoy the vitamin and dietary supplement freedoms enjoyed by Americans under the DSHEA. In those countries, dietary supplements and vitamins are sold in dosages so low that there would be no demand for these products in the United States. So these foreign dietary supplement makers can’t do business in the U.S. Our liberal standards are simply too out-of-harmony with the Codex standards. It’s an unfair trade barrier.

As a member of the WTO or CAFTA, we are not supposed to allow this to happen. They are complying with WTO rules, while we are not. In a worst-case scenario for U.S. dietary supplement manufacturers and health food stores, other WTO nations would sue the United States in the WTO courts, arguing that DSHEA is a trade barrier for them. After all, they can’t hope to sell their products in the U.S.

DSHEA would also be a violation of CAFTA, which states quite clearly: "Member nations shall base their food safety [supplement safety included] measures on international [Codex] standards, guidelines or recommendations." DSHEA is contrary to those Codex standards.

If DSHEA is challenged as an anti-WTO “trade barrier” that violated Codex guidelines, the fight would take place within the WTO, not the United States. The U.S. could still defy the WTO if it demands the country ditch DSHEA, but at a heavy price.

“True, Codex cannot directly impose a finalized standard on the USA because harmonization works indirectly,” warns John Hammell of the International Advocates for Health Freedom. “The U.S. could refuse harmonization and mount a challenge before the WTO's Dispute Settlement Body, but then we would be hit with trade sanctions. In theory, Congress could accept the sanctions and refuse to harmonize, but the sanctions can be imposed across a broad spectrum of industries unrelated to supplements, so the reality is that no country can afford to accept this penalty. This threat would put immense lobbying pressures on Congress to change our laws.”

This harmonization process will not take place overnight, but over years.

A likely result of Codex is that Congress will act in advance to harmonize U.S. dietary supplement policy with the rest of the world, before we are taken to task in the WTO. DSHEA would be scrapped and replaced with the Codex standards that the WTO and CAFTA require.

So why do some groups still claim that Codex is not a threat? As put by Scott Tips, attorney for the National Health Federation: “I think a lot of these organizations and others, to be charitable here, are in a sense suffering from a sense of denial and they’re wishing that Codex won’t affect us here.”

Codex will certainly affect us. Codex is not a powerless club, but an international organization whose standards are enforced by the WTO. Saying Codex won’t affect us is essentially the same as saying the WTO doesn’t affect us.

Health food stores will not be shut down tomorrow, or even the day after a WTO demand for the U.S. to dismantle the DSHEA trade barrier. It will be a slow process, but a very real one. Codex is a danger to DSHEA, and a risk to the long-term health of every dietary supplement business in the United States.

In 1999, Dr. Rath led a protest in Berlin outside a Codex meeting, attracting more than a thousand activists. “The most visible grass roots effort at the meeting was led by Dr. Matthias Rath, who staged a courageous anti-Codex demonstration outside the gates,” wrote John Hammell in Life Extension Magazine. “Rath assembled a crowd of more than 1,000 angry German consumers in front of the steel barricade that blocked the entrance to the compound.”

A similar outpouring of protest needs to take place in the United States.

Stay informed about the TRUTH.
Join Dr. Rath’s Health Alliance today!