An interview with Dr. Rima E. Laibow founder of Natural Solutions Foundation

Dr. Rima E. Laibow, a graduate of Albert Einstein College of Medicine and a successful natural medicine physician since the 1970s, is the medical director of Natural Solutions Foundation (NSF), a not-for-profit tax exempt organization created to promote, protect and promulgate natural health options for health and health freedom. It serves as a vehicle for national and global efforts to bring to the forefront people’s freedom to choose natural health options and keep it there. Since founding NSF, Dr. Laibow and her husband, Retired Major General Albert Stubbelbine, have devoted their time to traveling the world educating interested citizens and governments on alternative solutions to impending negative impacts of the Codex Alimentarius juggernaut.

What is the Codex Alimentarius Commission and what is its function and purpose?

The Codex Alimentarius Commis  sion (CAC) formed by the United Nations in 1962 is an international food commission chartered to set the standards for governing international trade. The Commission has created the World Food Code, a collection of internationally adopted food standards designed to regulate and control every aspect of how food and nutritional supplements are produced and sold to the consumer. The agency is under the joint sponsorship of the World Health Organization and Food and Agriculture Organization, two primary organs of the United Nations. According to statute, Codex’s first purpose is to protect the health of consumers and ensure fair practices in the food trade.

In my opinion, people who consider Codex Alimentarius(Codex) as benevolent consumer protection or as harmless to their health freedom are seriously mistaken. It has nothing to do with consumer protection. It has everything to do with the economic ambitions of multi-national corporations, in particular the pharmaceutical industry, which fears the inevitable shift toward natural health care evidenced as more people are turning to natural health products. Unless we stop it, Codex is targeted to go into full global effect by 2010.

To what foods and substances does   Codex Alimentarius apply?

Codex does not apply to drugs. But it does apply to all other products we put in our mouth, including dietary supplements. Its provisions currently appear in an advisory, in the form of codes of practice, thousands of standards and guidelines, and other recommended measures intended to help achieve the harmonization of foods and facilitate international trading of foods.

Which Codex guidelines do you find particularly threatening to health?

In 2005 Codex ratified the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline (VMG), which is widely viewed as anti-nutrition. VMG is deeply flawed. Although herbs are not included in the guideline, the nutrients in herbs appear to be. Rather than recognize dietary supplements as safe food, it treats them as if they were dangerous industrial chemicals or toxins subject to “risk assessment,” a Toxicology practice for assessing poisons. Under such an assessment, promulgated by both the VMG and the subsequent World Health Organization’s Workshop on the Application of Risk Assessment to Nutrients, ‘safe’ upper limits for nutrients must be set so low that they will have no measurable effect on the consumer. The proper science for assessing nutrients is Biochemistry, not Toxicology. And Codex does not use Biochemistry.

You’ve said that Codex is based in the Napoleonic Code rather than Common Law. What does this mean to the public?

It means that under Codex Alimentarius, anything not explicitly permitted is forbidden. Codex would be able to ban supplements by default.

What will happen if Codex is implemented in the United States?

Nations are free to adopt what-  ever dietary supplement regulations they choose. If Codex is implemented here, therapeutic dosages of vitamins and minerals (and all other nutrients that will follow) will become unavailable because they will become illegal. Only intentionally ineffective, ultra low-dose supplements on the Codex Vitamin and Mineral Guideline list would be legal, with or without a prescription. Codex Alimentarius is a shrewd vehicle for protecting the pharmaceutical industry from loss of the income it stands to suffer due to the inevitable growth of natural health care.

Why are you so passionate about   educating other world governments about Codex?

Codex Alimentarius standards, which forbid the association of health benefits and food components and control commercial speech and food labeling, are considered ‘advisory’ only until after they are accepted by governments. After acceptance they are published by Codex.    No one paid much attention to Codex Alimentarius until 1994 when the World Trade Organization (WTO) accepted it as the standard for adjudicating trade disputes about food. WTO intends to force Codex on the nations of the world, including the United States. It would be done under the threat of massive economic sanctions if WTO member countries do not comply with Codex Alimentarius.

What part does the Dietary Supplement Health Education Act (DSHEA) play in keeping Codex from being implemented in the United States? In 1994 our U.S. Congress adopted DSHEA, which treats dietary supplements as foods not subject to upper limits or prior government approval through restrictive devices. With $758 million ploughed into declared Congressional lobbying by big pharmaceutical companies last year, some members of Congress are attempting to overturn DSHEA and allow industry-friendly interests free reign under Codex. If protective laws like DSHEA are destroyed, WTO’s sanctioning power kicks in, and it will be impossible to get out from under Codex Alimentarius. Health food stores and wellness companies would be hit hard.

We can protect our access to high potency nutrients and stave off an adulterated food supply only by continuing to put pressure on a U.S. Congress that has the power to keep America Codex-free. If Congressional representatives know that voting against health freedom means losing re-election, they’ll listen. That’s why it is important to send personalized emails and letters to Congress now directing them to vote against anything that would threaten DSHEA now or in the future.

What is “health freedom”?

Health freedom means the freedom to choose your own health products, treatments, and practitioners. No one, government or corporation, should dictate or limit these choices.

Health freedom means access to supplements (vitamins, minerals, amino acids, etc.), herbs, homeopathic remedies, nutritional medicine and clean food (untainted by pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics), without corporations (through the use of government coercion) dictating to you what dosages and treatments you are allowed to use. It is your health and it should rest in your hands, with the cooperation of a health care professional who is open to effective methods of healing.

Source: By Lee Walker

Additional Information: For more info and to sign Citizens Petition visit HealthFreedomUSA.org or phone 914-271-6792.