Please read this if you can, all the cleansing that I have done, and everything that is good about health is in jeopardy!  

Part 1 of Byron Richards’ “Understanding the Threat to Dietary Supplements.” Your right to have free access to safe and highly effective dietary supplements is under an intense multi-pronged FDA attack. On May 14, 2007 the Supreme Court sided with the FDA by deciding not to hear the case of Nutraceutical v FDA, letting stand a federal appeals court ruling that permits the FDA to use drug-related risk/benefit analysis to determine if a nutrient is safe. This is the exact same point the FDA is trying to get put into law through Senate bill S.1082 and HR.1561, which consumers have flooded the Senate on over the past few weeks. And it is the same point the FDA is seeking to help implement on an international basis through Codex. The Supreme Court denial to hear this case is a dramatic turn of events that means there is very little time left to act to preserve free access to dietary supplements.

The first part of this article explains this issue in depth so that Americans can understand what is taking place. The second part explains the steps Americans need to take to preserve their health freedom.

Regulatory trickery: The FDA’s strategy for outlawing supplements

Leading health freedom attorney, Jonathan Emord, has been handling the Supreme Court petition for Nutraceutical Corporation. He has also been helping us prepare amendments to neutralize the threat posed by current FDA reform legislation (S.1082/HR.1561). On May 11, 2007, I received an email from Mr. Emord explaining the significance of the Supreme Court case:

“In particular, FDA for the first time in its history now holds a dietary ingredient or dietary supplement adulterated at every dose level if at some dose level it can be shown to present even an infinitesimal risk if it concludes there to be no substantial health benefit from the supplement. Because all dietary ingredients, dietary supplements, and foods present a risk to health at some level of ingestion, the FDA’s new position permits the agency to declare any dietary ingredient or dietary supplement adulterated at its whim or caprice.”

This abhorrent FDA strategy is now the prevailing legal precedent in the land. The FDA has also launched a sneak attack on dietary supplements through Senate bill S1082, seeking to slip wording into the bill that would allow this exact strategy to become law. Language within the bill allows the FDA to use drug-related risk assessment to brand dietary supplements as unsafe, overturning fundamental principles of food and drug law.

Under current law, it is up to the FDA to show that a food, food ingredient, or dietary supplement is adulterated and poses a risk to human health. The FDA is seeking to redefine the term “adulterated.” Please take the time to read and understand the substance of these issues — the future of health freedom in America depends on enough people understanding what is at stake. Within 1-2 weeks the House is likely to take up the same legislation that the Senate recently passed (S.1082). We must be ready to take action.

Basic Food Adulteration

It is rather easy to understand that a food or food ingredient that is contaminated by bacteria, parasites, fungal toxins, lead, or other chemicals may pose a risk to human health and therefore be adulterated. One example is the infectious E. coli that caused the recall of spinach last summer.

Industries constantly lobby the EPA and the FDA to ensure that various levels of chemicals, whether used as pesticides (like organophosphate nerve toxins) or found in the water (like perchlorate or PCBs) will be acceptable at certain levels in the food supply. Natural health advocates argue that not only are many of the government-sanctioned levels of toxins acutely detrimental to health, but the bio-accumulation of these poisons over the course of a lifetime is a primary cause of obesity, cancer, and heart disease.

Government regulatory agencies invariably side with the profits of industry, and when they don’t industry files ridiculous law suits that tie issues up in court forever — all at the expense of human health. More insidiously, the FDA even acts to promote adulteration of food to support the economic priorities of the White House and its industry friends, as is the case with genetically modified crops wherein a toxin is now in every single cell of the genetically altered food.

It is FDA management’s opinion, whose employees are a revolving door with the industries they regulate, that such toxins in food are safe. The FDA shocked many people last fall when it approved an industry-favorable cocktail of live viruses be added to the food supply. Thus, the EPA and the FDA do a poor job of establishing criteria for and managing even obvious adulteration of food and food ingredients, a problem that has been part of FDA culture since its inception 100 years ago.

On an international basis, the FDA-supported Codex Alimentarius is seeking to set international standards for food adulteration so low, including the elimination of true organic standards, that many contaminants that are adverse to health (such as the level of mycotoxin allowed in food) will be sanctioned as legal for the purpose of international trade. While Codex is a United Nations group, the members concocting these international guidelines are typically responding to the wishes and financial interests of multi-national corporations.

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