CODEX Report From Oslo
Naturnal Solutions Foundation
The Contenders and The Contention
The main contenders in this issue are the EU in the "label all GM foods because consumers do not like them and their safety is far from established" and the US "label no GM foods because consumers will only be confused by the information and it is not our job to establish their safety anyway.T The US took the EU to a WTO trade dispute and won because the WTO found that the EU was creating a barrier to trade by keeping GM foods out.
Natural Solutions Foundation Stratgegy Verified by EU: Gets Out From Under WTO Sanctions!
The EU then changed its law so that, based on better science, it was free to protect its population from the dangers of GM foods. In other words, the EU followed the Natural Solutions Foundation's Two Step process after it got hit with trade sanctions. Now the EU and its member states are free to keep GM foods out if they choose to do so on the basis of its new law.
This is a strong and important corroboration of the correctness of our Codex Two Step process.
You can be assured that when we speak to the decision makers in developing countries about these issues (and present them with our Codex book) as we help them develop pro-health Codex stragegies. "Don't take it just from us: look at the success of the strategy when used by the EU!"
The Ballet of Dissent
The goings-on at this smallish meeting are a perfect example of the importance of what I call "the Ballet of Dissent". When countries band together and sustain their opposition to bad things in Codex (which are often the policies being pushed by the US) things change and the outcome has a high potential of being what they, not the US, wants.
At this session, convened because the anti-GMO nations were not about to let the US get away with taking the important topic of unlabeled GM food for international trade off the table, there is a truly fascinating process unfolding. If they had done so, there would have been nothing to stop the US from exporting unlabeled GM food to any country in the world and/or to stop the Codex Commission from taking up the issue and deciding it the way it usually does: the way the US wants it to. The pro-GM-labeling countries (who are also the anti-GM countries, of course) saw the danger and reacted quickly by calling for this meeting at last May's Codex Committee on Food Labeling when the US proposed ending the discussion on GM labeling alltogether.
The mandate of the working group is to find a way forward but before we get to the main story of today's session, a word about the preamble to this meeting:
Industry Says Consumer Issues a
"Waste of Resources"
When we arrived at the hotel (after about 20 hours of travel ) we saw an electronic sign-board listing a meeting of the US FDA already in progress. Unlike the usual pre-meeting held by the US before every Codex meeting, there had been no pre-meeting convened by the FDA about this session and the information on its location, date, etc., had not been sent out in the usual way. We dropped our luggage and hot footed it to the meeting where we were ejected but told that there was, however, a public meeting to be held later that afternoon.
While waiting outside the room for that meeting to begin, the representative of the US grocery manufacturers' association (ICGMA) informed me that their position was that the consumer's right-to-know they were eating GM food was not an issue, was not important and was, in fact,a waste of Codex and US time and resources. They have, she informed me, held this position for the last 13 years. They have been deeply involved in the Codex process for decades and help shape the US Codex positions.
When the pre-meeting convened, The Natural Solutions Foundation were the only folks there from our team. The other team had two heavy hitters, though. Sitting to my left was Monsanto's representative (and to her left, the grocery manufacturer's rep.) Dr. Schneeman, the US Delegate to this meeting (and many other Codex meetings) chaired the session but the real action came, to my observation, from the two ladies sitting to my left. The folks from the FDA, US Department of Agriculture and the Commerce Department appeared to be solely guided by the industry reps' interests which is, of course, exactly what the Natural Solutions Foundation has been saying about the US positions in every aspect of Codex.
As you know, it is the astonishing position of the US that there is no material difference between GM foods and conventional ones even though they generally contain novel protein and foreign DNA (whose impacts are not studied by the US government prior to approval to market these foods). The US takes holds that it is the responsibility of the industrial fox to guard the food safety hen house and if there is a problem, the courts can sort it out later. There is no government or 3rd party safety testing before a GM food enters the food supply. Even pharmaceutical foods, like the long grain drug-producing rice Beyer was growing in Louisiana which contaminated US conventional crops (and which was found in places as remote a Ghana and Norway) is only theoretically regulated.
And there is absolutely no US requirement for labeling to allow consumers to protect themselves from GM foods if they wish. Further, the US requires identification of novel characteristics produced by GM (e.g., "high omega 3 fatty acid okra" to make up an example) but NOT label the food as GM.
The US holds that the consumer does not need to know anything about GM origin of food since that is dismissed as a mere "means of production", only about a substantial change from the conventional contents or use of the [Franken] food.
Today's Main Event:
US Buddy Tag Team
Vs.
Consumer Protection
Lots of other countries do not agree. In fact, as today's proceedings clearly show, only Argentina, Canada, Mexico, Australia/New Zealand (which share common regulations on this and other areas) and a few other countries share this position, labeled by the EU as "odd".
Most of the other countries, including the 25 member nations of the EU, Norway, India and Japan, either have mandatory labeling requirements for foods with novel DNA and proteins (and for foods like oil which are so highly refined that there is no DNA or protein left but come from GM sources, that is, GM foods, or some modification thereof. Japan, for example, has strict mandatory GM labeling but does not identify oils from GM seeds as GM.
The first order of business was to adopt the agenda. Although that might sound simple, there was a huge amount of jousting for territory, so to speak, as the pro-GM countries fought for every inch of intellectual territory and, in response, so did the anti-GM side. (Remember, the stakes are huge here both in terms of national self-determination and financial gain.)
The pro labeling countries note that their consumers distrust GM food and, for example, in the EU, although they have approved a few products which are GM, they find that consumer demand is very poor for them. In fact, consumers appear to take the "contains GM" information as a warning label. This was, in fact, a major contention of the US against labeling.
Following attempts much like a defense attorney to have a case dismissed in the court room before the trial can get started, the pro GM forces tried to get rid of the term "GM" or "GE" and substitute the banal "foods produced by modern biotechnology" instead. Since Norway was chairing the meeting (and has not one single GM product on the market because of a dedication to consumer protection), that did not fly very well.
What Do Other Counties Want?
A New Idea for Codex
The Norwegian Chair and the two Co-Chairs from Ghana and Argentina introduced a chart with national legislative positions (e.g., label all GM foods, lablel all but those with no remaining GM DNA or protein, label no GM foods, have regulations in progress, etc.) to get a feel for the varying national strategies in use and in development.
Astonishingly, although the Codex Committee on Food Labeling has been dealing with this issue since 1991, this was the FIRST TIME a survey was taken to find out what national strategies, law and concerns were! (As an important aside, how many other Codex standards and guidlines are created in this same dismal and destructive information vacuum? My guess is that they all are, based on my Codex observations. Maybe the Grocery Manufacturers' lady is partly right: perhaps Codex itself is just a huge waste of resources and time and the whole thing should be aborted).
A very contentious and lengthy discussion ensued in which many countries, especially the anti-GM labeling ones, seemed to want to argue the goodness of their positions and the badness of the pro-labeling position. The Co-Chairs tried to prevent this from happening, but frogs in a wheelbarrow, the discussion kept escaping. In fact, it looked like a tag team attack. The US and its "GM food is totally safe so we don't need to inform the consumer about anything that might confuse them" buddies clearly had the work of the attack divied up between them.
However, the Chairs did not allow that to go very far (a truly refreshing change in the behavior of Codex Chairpersons, I might add, since our previous experience has been with autocratic , brutal chairpersons with strong corporate agendas) and finally got the chart completed by the whole group so that it represented all of the options in a global patchwork quilt of GM regulatory strategies .
Next, the rationale followed by each country for the GM labeling position it has adopted was added to the chart. Their was a huge amount of difficulty accomplishing this task since a survey like this was totally new in the Codex process and a lot of countries had great difficulty simply identifying why the do what they do without either justifying it or attacking countries that do not do the same. Amusingly, the attacks all seemed to come from the US buddy tag team, notably the US, Argentina, Canada and Mexico wth Australia and New Zealand weighing in when the stragegy was flagging. Some feathers and fur did fly when the EU and the US spat at each other a bit (remember, they are refreshingly on opposite sides of this issue and fought a bitter trade dispute which the EU lost and then fixed its laws to get the upper hand again).
That finally got accomplished (hours into the tedious process, by the way) and we concluded the first day of the meeting. There was a reception for the attendees where we had the opportunity to continue building alliances to strengthen the global pro-health-freedom forces and explain our view of what Codex is, and what it should not be. During it, the Monsanto representative asked for my card and said, "Oh, yes! I recognize your name. Didn't you make a film at a nutrition meeting? " Well, yes, I did. It is called "Nutricide ". You can view it at google video or purchase it .
Back to Africa
During the lunch break I congratulated the Co-Chair from Ghana on her firm command of the unruly group she had been working with and on succeeding in the assigned task to that point. We got to talking and we told her what the Natural Solutions Foundation is doing. Since she is the Chair of a first-ever Ghanaian-hosted pan-African meeting on Biotech issues this June, she invited the Natural Solutions to present there. We offered a White Paper on GM foods which she accepted giving us an important opportunity to present our pro-health position to countries vulnerable to depredation by the GM producing countries.
Africa is justly wary of GM crops and has had bitter experiences with them. For example, in Ghana, we learned today, that same drug-contaminated long grain rice was found in every sample tested througout the entire country although Beyer and the US government said that all of the rice had been destroyed. Declared unfit for consumption because it was a drug-producing crop,we were told it had been shipped to Iraq to feed our troops, rejected and shipped to Dubai where it was illegally sold into Ghana. It was found at the border and rejected but somehow found its way into the total market supply of Ghana.
Countries Wait for Codex to
Tell Them What They Should Do
Oh, by the way, bolstering our contention that although Codex texts are advisory, although they carry enormous weight in the developing world,
Morocco made a very interesting point several times: they are waiting for Codex to take a position on GM labeling so that they could pass legislation and regulation which WOULD NOT PUT THEM IN LINE FOR WTO SANCTIONS and WOULD NOT PUT THEM AT ODDS WITH EITHER OF THEIR TWO TOP TRADING PARTNERS, THE US AND THE EU. Argentina and the US challenged this position saying that it was neither a rationale nor a position but it was allowed to stay on the chart since many developing nations are in this position. This makes our work of informing nations that they have choices about Codex texts without getting hit by WTO trade sanctions very important.
Gotta run. The final day of the meeting awaits.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Medical Director
Links:
Codex book: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=220
Nutricide :
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=Nutricide
Nutricide: the DVD:
http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=156