Victory Dance Time!

May 3, 2007 Good News Travels Fast! Your activism just saved supplements from being turned into "untested drugs"! Big Pharma will be back, but today, we can do a victory dance! Thank you 435,005 times. That's the number of people who used our site to submit their comments to the FDA on their dangerous CAM Guidance through our site. 182,484 succeeded but, since our site was interfered with several times, 252,521 people did not. We were working feverishly to submit those comments manually.   Ready for Some Great News?   Although the FDA denied our request to extend the comment, failed to update its site or its comment tally, extended the comment period and then resinded the extension (!), our collective voice won us a huge victory in Congress today. Because we rallied behind our health freedom and access to natural health products, every member of the Senate voting today heard us loud and clear and acted -- without a single dissenting voice -- to protect our health freedom! Read what "the Vitamin Lawyer ", Ralph Fucetola, has to say about the impact of our activism in an email on the topic today: "And some very good news: Congress has accepted the following amendment to S.1082 - Enhancing Drug Safety and Innovation Act of 2007 - from Sen. Durbin. It appears that Congress heard our concerns! Hundreds of thousands of messages to FDA no doubt reverberated through the halls of Congress. The amendment was adopted by the Senate 94 to zero. Sec. X08. Rule of Construction Nothing in this title (or an amendment made by this title) shall be construed to affect-- (1) The regulation of dietary supplements under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act; or (2) The adverse event reporting system for dietary supplements created under the Dietary Supplement and Nonprescription Drug Consumer Protection Act. Like many victories in Congress, you hardly ever get everything you want. Leading supplement industry lawyer, J. Emord, originally proposed exempting all "foods" from the new law (Counsel stated: "It is a fundamental tenet of food and drug law that foods and food ingredients are presumed to be safe and have to be established to be adulterated only if they present a significant or unreasonable risk of illness or injury." This approach would have offered even greater protection for natural products, but we are grateful that enough members of Congress heard the loud shout from the public and responded so quickly to at least protect DSHEA products -- the power of Internet politics at its best."   Internet Politics at its best: That's YOU! And Now the Same Process is Taking Place in Codex!   The same thing is happening on the International level, in Codex Alimentarius. There is a roaring tide of empowered voices saying "We decide how we want our freedom served, thank you!" When the US once again tried to kill further consideration of mandatory labeling of genetically modified foods and ingredients (GMOs) at the Codex Committee on Food Labeling (CCFL) here in Ottawa, Canada, they got a rude surprise. Instead of letting the US/Canada/Australia/New Zealand/Argentina/Mexico/Brazil bloc of GMO grain exporters have their way and kill any international requirement for such labeling, which would be consistent with the US refusal to allow suceh labeling in the US, and very, very good for its friend, the Biotech industry, the story played out rather differently. False and Misleading Truth Continuing to work on the premise that the truth about GMO food would be false and misleading, the US has been trying to extend its own domestic policy of prohibiting GMO labeling to the rest of the world. The issue of labeling has been on CCFL's docket for 14 years. For that entire time, the hugely powerful US has prevented any forward progress toward required mandatory labeling of GMO foods in international trade.   Mad as Hell and Not Taking It Anymore! Last year, at the CCFL, the US proposed discontinuing any effort to reach an agreement on the labeling of GMO foods since no consensus had been reached (thanks in large part, of course, to the US). That would have meant that there were no international standards to which any biotech-importing country's products could be held and developing countries, without laboratory capacity to check food, would have no way of knowing what their people were getting. Norway, which has a strict non GMO policy, was not happy with that idea and proposed a Working Group to meet in Oslo early in 2007. The Natural Solutions Foundation attended that meeting (so did a representative of Monsanto and the Biotech industry group -- AS A MEMBER OF THE US DELEGATION) at which the desire of many countries not to allow the flawed US policy to determine its food safety in this area crystallized. In the US, as you know, GMO foods undergo NO mandatory government (or 3rd party) safety testing -- NONE -- and are permitted -- unlabeled and therefore untraceable -- in the food supply by the FDA and USDA. Their industry-friendly rationale was explained at that meeting. GMO foods are presumed to be safe according to FDA's Dr. Barbara Schneeman although their safety has not been tested. FDA and independent research, she said, consistently shows that consumers would not buy GMO foods if they knew they were genetically altered. Therefore, she explained, to keep consumers from making the "wrong decision" and rejecting GMO food, the FDA prevents labeling GMO foods to protect the consumer from "false and misleading information". This US policy was accurateley characterized by the EU delegate as "weird" (I kid you not! The Supreme Court of the United States, by the way, has ruled that the FDA cannot do that when it was considering a similar case. Undeterred, it does so anyway.) A Different Menu at Chez Codex This Year! This year, however, possibly because of the Working Group's strong report, things did not turn out the way the US was expecting. Instead of dropping the whole issue, the developing countries used their massive collective strength just the way we did in controlling the FDA's attack on our health freedom. Since they rightly regard knowing whether their food is genetically modified or not, the developing countries rose up en mass to protect their rights and health. Barbados, Benin, Gabon, C'ote D'Ivoire, Mali, Switzerland, Sweden, Vanuatu, Sudan, Nepal, India, Guyana, Ghana, Thailand, France, Italy, Bulgaria, Germany, the European Union as a whole, on and on and on went to roll call of developing countries that said they wanted an international policy on this issue to protect their people. The consumer rights group (like Consumers International) supported the right to know and, over the objections -- the strenuous objections -- of the US and its GMO buddies, the collective voices of the developing world and (its allies on this issue at least) prevailed. There WILL be a working group on this issue next January in Ghana. The Natural Solutions Foundation WILL be there! And, in the meantime, we will be providing scientific and legal input to the health friendly nations to assist them in their public policy development and their laboratory capacity (a critical issue). My Food Is Killing Me! Our food is globalizing so the higher the standards for that globalized food supply, the safer every forkful of food becomes. And the cleaner and more nutritious that food supply is the more people are spared the human tragedy of preventable non communicable diseases of under nutrition here and abroad. What you eat helps determine if you will suffer and die of cancer, cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes, etc., according to the World Health Organization. What's killing most of us in the developed world? Once you take out properly used prescription drugs (the leading killer of people in the developed world*), food related diseases are killing us. Add to that the diseases of immune suppression which develop when nutritional levels are inadequate and you have a perfect recipe for global disaster. Codex has, in our opinion, been cooking up exactly just such a disaster since its inception in 1952 by the former head of the German industrial war machine, IG Farben and its first committee meetings in 1963. The recipe for disaster is definitely being spoiled by the health friendly chefs who raised their voices collectively at Codex in precisely the same thrust that voters did in the US over this last month. My compliments to the Freedom Chef! Next the Natural Solutions Foundation is off to the Open International University of Complimentary Medicine in Santa Fe to share the good word: we, collectively, ARE powerful and our voices DO make a difference! Thanks for your freedom shouts! Yours in health and freedom, Dr. Rima Rima E. Laibow, MD Medical Director Natural Solutions Foundation www.HealthFreedomUSA.org PS: Have you considered making a recurring tax deductible donation (http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=189) to the Natural Solutions Foundation? Monthly donations of as little as $10 per month allows us to predict our income and budget accordingly. Just as your voices are strong collectively, your donations are, too! Health Freedom isn't free and your help is a critical element in allowing us to keep on keeping on! Thanks, Dr. Rima * Death by Medicine: http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2004/mar2004_awsi_death_01.htm

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