JULY 5

“The Struggle Begins”

by James S. Turner, Esq., Board Chair, Citizens for Health

Rome, July 4, 2005: “The struggle has just begun.” With these words, one dietary supplement activist expressed the outrage and resolve that dietary supplement activists present at the Codex Commission meeting feel about the Commission’s limiting of the international dietary supplement market to supplement products restricted by safety factors as if they were toxic chemicals.

Consumer activists present at the Rome meeting shared post-vote impressions at an informal ad hoc meeting during the FAO Deputy Director-General’s evening reception. On a balcony overlooking the Circus Maximus and the Roman Forum, the small band of activists wondered why no government or business official evaluated the effect of the Codex guidelines on the goal of ending world hunger. In the FAO world headquarters building, which proudly proclaims the organization’s mission as contributing to “an expanding world economy and ending world hunger,” it does not appear that world hunger ever appeared as a subject matter in the written or spoken argument for the vitamin and mineral guidelines that narrow the world economy in nutrient supplements. Correcting this oversight appeared as one goal of consumer activists reviewing the Codex supplement guidelines vote.

Activists also pointed out that the toxic chemical standard included in the guidelines, which severely limits consumer access to dietary supplements, replaces consumer choice with government fiat about which nutrients a consumer can consume, and creates a one-size-fits-all rejection of biochemical individuality, must now be developed by international food safety regulators. Their forums and procedures currently appear no more open to consumer/citizen input than the Codex processes, but they are calling for comments, holding meetings and in fact face an impossible task. Activists intend to exploit each of these opportunities to create a world-wide standard for trade in dietary supplements that will expand the world market in supplements and advance the goal of ending world hunger. The fifty years of USregulation of dietary supplements that culminated in the passage of the US Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 presents a road map and creates a regulatory regimen that the international regulators need to follow if they are to contribute to rather than retard world health.

The activists gathering at the FAO reception will hold further meetings while in Rome, with the intention of exploring strategies that can turn the adoption of a flawed supplement standard into the first step for creating world wide access to all the dietary supplement products necessary for advancing the health of each consumer who desires them. Thus the struggle begins.