Codex Alimentarius (Part 1)—Evil as a Medieval Cabal

by Heidi Stevenson

11 May 2009

Codex Alimentarius sounds like a medieval cabal. It is, though, quite thoroughly modern, chartered in 1963 by two United Nations agencies—the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO). Its stated purpose is "protecting health of the consumers and ensuring fair trade practices in the food trade, and promoting coordination of all food standards work undertaken by international governmental and non-governmental organizations," which sounds good. Appearances, though, can be deceiving, and Codex's policies in action demonstrate something entirely different and, frankly, frightening. What Codex Alimentarius has in common with a medieval cabal is its nature—evil.

The name, Codex Alimentarius, simply means food code, and can also be translated as food law. It's interesting that something as natural as preparing and eating food has become so wound up with codes and rules. Control is being taken from people in their everyday lives and given over to an unelected body that most people don't even know exists. Then, consider that it's developing the rules by which every country is expected to live, with threats of trade embargos backing it up. Without most people even noticing, eating has been changed from a natural process into a subspecialty of biotechnology.

Trying to pin down exactly who and what Codex are can be a daunting task. That alone, though, should give pause. Why? Why should an organization with so much power be so nebulous?

To examine that, let's take a look at one, among thousands, of rulings Codex has made. The pesticide carbofuran, sold as Furadan by FMC, has been banned in Europe and is nearly banned in the US, with the EPA saying that they are hazardous to humans and animals and won't be allowed to reregister for ongoing use, as documented in FMC Product Banned in U.S. Kills Lions in Africa. Yet, the Codex Alimentarius website directs to information that effectively whitewashes the chemical, giving "safe" levels of use and information about "safe" handling.

Codex Alimentarius is closely allied with agencies aligned with the food-as-agribusiness view. These include:

• World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE, Organisation Mondiale de la Santé Animale): Despite the implication of its name, this is not an agency for the protection of animals. Its focus is on international trade of animal and animal products. In other words, their concern is with the welfare of corporate animal agribusiness.
• Standards and Trade Development Facility (STDF): The grant-providing arm of OIE.
• International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC): Supports irradiation of food and genetic modification, for which they use the euphemism, LMO, for "living modified organism".
• International Portal on Food Safety, Animal and Plant Health (IPFSAPH): Created by the FAO, it handles the rules for world-wide food handling, processing, and trade. It includes things like the acceptable labeling of "refined" oils and fats, that is, natural oils and fats that have been adulterated by processes like hydrogenation, which creates trans fats—products that are always dangerous to health and serve only to improve the bottom line of agribusiness.
• World Trade Organisation (WTO): The WTO is the agency that has ruled that protection of sea turtles is a barrier to free trade and that it's illegal for the European Union to ban hormone-treated beef.

From this, it's clear that Codex Alimentarius doesn't represent the health needs of the general public, nor does it seem to have any interest in the environment. That leaves little beyond corporate greed as its master.

The USDA, which is documented in FMC Product Banned in U.S. Kills Lions in Africa as supporting corporate wishes over the needs of American citizens, defines Codex Alimentarius as "the major international mechanism for encouraging fair international trade in food while promoting the health and economic interest of consumers." Still, we don't really know exactly what Codex Alimentarius is.

The FAO describes Codex Alimentarius as simply "the food code", ignoring the fact that it's an organization that meets and makes decisions. It appears that the FAO's goal is to give an impression of a fait accompli, a completed act, without there being any recourse to an already-established food code, one that everyone in the world and every country must follow. In their document, Understanding the Codex Alimentarius, the FAO states,

Food-borne illnesses are at best unpleasant – at worst they can be fatal. But there are other consequences. Outbreaks of food-borne illness can damage trade and tourism and can lead to loss of earnings, unemployment and litigation. Poor-quality food can destroy the commercial credibility of suppliers, both nationally and internationally, while food spoilage is wasteful and costly and can adversely affect trade and consumer confdence.

Certainly, we don't want people to get sick or die from food, but damaging tourism, losing commercial credibility, affecting trade and consumer confidence—these things seem, somehow, to be the issues that are really at the core of Codex's remit. On learning how it supports the use of known-harmful pesticides and trans fats, it's a bit difficult to believe that the most serious concern of Codex is anything other than corporate profits.

To clarify the involvement of the USDA in Codex, it houses the U.S. Codex Office. It is not simply following its rulings; it's integral in their creation.

So what is Codex Alimentarius, really? It's a subcommittee of the United Nations with the charge of developing guidelines on issues of food trade. Notice the emphasis on trade, rather than food. That's the real point. Codex Alimentarius is a commission set up by two agencies of the United Nations, the FAO and WHO, tasked with developing so-called guideliness that can be unofficially enforced by the WTO through its ability to assess trade sanctions on member nations. 139 nations are members of the WTO. In today's world, it's very difficult for any nation to survive without being a member. The WTO's richest nations control most of its determinations. Thus, the wealthiest nations effectively control enforcement of Codex Alimentarius.

After climate change, the paramount issue of our time is Codex Alimentarius. It has taken its plans on food trade to amazing heights, as described by the Alliance for Natural Health:

...Codex operates a number of intergovernmental task forces dealing with things like biotechnology and GM foods. All of this is a far cry from Codex's purported original objectives which centred around the need to protect consumers by ensuring foods were free from contaminants such as pesticide residues. Now it mandates 'acceptable' levels of everything from pesticides, to chemical additives, GMOs and heavy metal contaminants.

Note that it doesn't look at whether such things as genetically engineered foods are acceptable. Instead, it starts with the assumption that they are.

Codex Alimentarius (Part 2)—Food Defined As A Bunch of Chemicals. discusses how Codex adulterates even the meanings of food and drugs.

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