Codex Alimentarius
Source: May Day
Codex Alimentarius is established by The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and The World Health Organization (WHO) as an instrument for international cooperation in the field of Food and Agriculture.
After applying for observer status several times MayDay was invited by the Danish Ministry of Food and Agriculture in the spring of 2000 to participate as an observer at the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses meetings every year in Germany.
This has given us access to more closely follow the work within the Codex Alimentarius, as it has given us the opportunity to meet new international health freedom colleagues, with whom we exchange information and insights into the complex world of international (restrictive) global legislation.
MayDay is sceptical towards this invention of WTO and FAO's meeting every year to discuss food recommendations which is being the basis of several unnecessary and very restrictive EU directives.
We are criticizing that:
- The Codex Alimentarius consists of a gathering of non-elected government bureaucrats from the whole worldMayDay has participated with two observers at the Codex Committe meeting in June 2000, with a single observer in November 2002 in Berlin, and we were at the Codex meeting in Bonn, November 2003 - working very closely together with British and American colleagues from the National Health Federation.
- Real consumer organizations are very poorly represented at these meetings
- Codex is creating food recommendations that usually turn out to be restrictive regulations on health promoting substances
- Codex under the pretence of wanting to promote free trade really is blocking free trade, when it comes to nutrients in the form of dietary supplements (and herbs)
- The Codex Alimentarius is highly centralized
- Codex works to create global standards called "harmonization" which do not at all honour the diversity of needs and interests of the world's many different peoples
- The Codex meetings are not open to the public
- International and national media is not showing any interest of such an important forum
- The Codex meetings are not discussed publicly in the media, which is why:
- Much too few people have actually heard of the existence and work of the Codex Alimentarius Committee
