Global Vitamin Takeover — This sounds like a crackpot story, but apparently there is something brewing.
Already makers of vitamin pills in Britain have withdrawn certain unapproved supplements, relabeled some and reduced the dosage in others. The manufacturers can%u2019t afford to have all their products impounded by the vitamin police when new regulations take effect. US dietary supplement manufacturers may also fold rather than fight upcoming restrictions to be imposed by a worldwide trade organization called CODEX.
Restrictions already in place in other European countries are difficult for Americans to fathom. In Germany, ginkgo biloba and alpha lipoic acid are prescription drugs. In Norway and Germany, vitamin C above 200 milligrams and vitamin E above 45 IU are drugs. In the USA consumers can walk right into a pharmacy or health food store and purchase these items without a doctor%u2019s script.
Why is there a push to convert relatively harmless dietary supplements into drugs? It’s not a safety issue. The National Poison Control Centers annual report has recorded nary a death from vitamins or mineral supplements for the past 8 years and few deaths from herbal products, with the exception of ephedra diet pills.
Meanwhile the American Herbal Products Association is less concerned saying we are protected from this sort of onerous demand by US laws. Read this.
That said there is this open letter describes how all this can happen once we are fully entrenched in the WTO and have to abide by certain world governance authorities:
Note about how the WTO is part of the problem
The FTAA sets up a literal international organization, containing a governing council, an executive committee, a series of other committees, a secretariat, and a dispute settlement body. This template is already in place in the World Trade Organization (WTO). As a member of the WTO, the U.S. is legally obligated to insure that our national laws do not conflict with WTO rules.
The Codex Alimentarius calls for strict control of dietary supplements. Germany, the largest pharmaceutical manufacturing nation on earth, currently dominates the European Union, which hosts the Codex committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Use. It is leading the charge to model the United States dietary supplement laws into international harmonization. (Source: Huge Supplement Ban Coming to Europe, Crusader December-January 2003-04)
