JULY 4
Codex Commission Adopts Supplement Guideline
Rome July 4 2005: The Codex Alementarius Commission, consisting of 85 of 171 country members (one short of a quorum) assembled in Rome today adopted without objection the restrictive Vitamins and Minerals Guidelines recommended by its Nutrition and Food for Special Dietary Foods Committee. While expected the action disappointed American dietary supplement consumer group representatives and observers resent. Attorney Scott Tips of the National Health Federation made a last minute plea to return, for technical and substantive reasons, the guideline to its authoring committee. His plea fell on deaf ears. No country objected to adoption of the guideline.
Mr. Tips was followed by a representative for the International Alliance of Dietary/Food Supplement Associations (IADSA) refuting concerns about the guidelines and seeking approval from the Commission for "ten years of concerted effort" to bring the guideline to fruition.
Industry representatives from the Council for Responsible Nutrition and other trade groups appeared elated and on their way to partying.
Consumer representatives in attendance at the Rome Codex session announced that they will meet to prepare strategies for continuing the battle to maintain worldwide access to all currently available dietary supplements products and to remove the barriers to innovation they see created by the adopted guideline. More action will follow.
Jim Turner
JULY 3
Codex Commission Executive Committee Endorses
Restrictive Vitamin-Mineral Guidelines
by James S. Turner, Esq., Board Chair, Citizens for Health
Rome, July 3, 2005. Dr. Ed Scarbrough, US Codex Office administrator and administrative leader of the US Delegation to the 28th session of the Codex Alimentarius Commission, today told the delegation at its pre-meeting session that the Codex Commission Executive Committee had endorsed the vitamin and mineral guidelines recommended to it for adoption by its Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU). The endorsed guidelines call for upper intake limits based on toxic chemical risk assessment, prohibit health claims for foods, and urge consumers to restrict their intake of nutrients to the foods they eat. The endorsement of the guidelines by the Executive Committee virtually ensures their adoption by the full Commission at its July 4 meeting.
Dr. Scarbrough commented on Chinese and other Asian country desires to have greater flexibility, based on unique dietary habits, to add other categories than vitamins and minerals to the guidelines, and Australia’s “perennial” desire to restrict the guidelines to countries that treat vitamins and minerals only as foods. These arguments, he reported, did not move the Codex Executive Committee away from endorsing the guidelines. Nor did Canada’s lack of support for the guidelines. Canadaargued that “given the differences in diets, food supplies, attitudes, and consumption patterns around the world, such guidelines were best left to national governments.” This argument failed to move the Executive Committee to recommend delay or rejection of the guidelines. In the opinion of the Canadian government, the guidelines will not apply to Canadabecause it regulates vitamin and minerals supplements as “natural health products, not as foods.”