Trading on Codex-approved low-balling of nutrient content, DSM could, for example, launch a wholesale line of minimally fortified foods, plus a line of low-dosage supplement products for retail consumption, and a separate line of high-dose “therapeutic” vitamins, such as 1,000 mg tabs of Vitamin C, as prescription-only medicine for the rich. This is not idle speculation: DSM is rapidly expanding its fortified food market, reaching into Central America, the Philippines, Indonesia, Costa Rica, Chile and beyond with the help of United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-approved plans (published on DSM’s Web site) for micro-managing the nutritive content of multiple human and animal ecosystems. Meanwhile, DSM’s futurists assume that the diets of emerging economies will continue to become Americanized: chock full of sugar, carbs, transfats, and nutrient-deprived grains. Meanwhile, DSM (under the nose of Codex) is growing a global business that adds vitamins and minerals back into processed foods after these nutrients have been stripped out to make “tasty” products. (DSM’s manipulation of the food supply is being marketed under the guise of promoting “sustainability,” but that is another story.)

Also in documents available on its Web site, DSM, in partnership with USAID, reports that fortifying Third World food staples at 50 percent of the recommended daily allowance “reduces the need to provide supplements in pharmaceutical forms on a widespread basis.” This remarkable statement is revealing of intent because it predicts that dietary supplements are slated to become “pharmaceutical,” i.e. prescriptive drugs; and that they will not be available for everybody (“widespread basis”).

Meanwhile, Glaxo’s obvious marketing strategy is to continue selling sugary “health” drinks to third world peasants (who cannot afford to eat the whole foods that they harvest for export to the financial metropoles). Glaxo is also marketing more than a dozen low-dose supplement products to the increasingly vitamin- and mineral-starved masses of the Third World. It is not in the corporate self-interest of Glaxo or DSM to leverage their capital resources and political clout to provide the planet with a healthy diet, quite the opposite. And as collateral damage to their transnational marketing strategies small supplement producers and mom & pop retail outlets in the Third World will keel over from lack of muscle. In relatively affluent America, however, the political power of established supplement distributors may forestall, for a time, maybe for a long time, the liquidation of DSHEA and the demise of small producers. (The reader may or may not realize that we, in America, enjoy a very high level of health freedom compared to other countries. We have something good and it should be defended.)

In summary, Codex observers say it is highly probable that the commission will eventually codify a regimen of upper limits on the amounts of vitamins and minerals allowed to be defined as dietary supplements. These upper limits will, if the Codex deliberations continue to proceed in tandem with the current agenda, be lower than the dosages available in many of today’s popular health products. But because the biological need for supplement intake varies tremendously from person to person and from group to group and from country to country it is fundamentally illogical to set maximum dose levels on an international basis. For that matter, it looks like an academic exercise to set upper limits for any population.

Clearly, the Codex agenda is governed by the needs of the food and drug industry, and not the needs of the average consumer. As a case in point: Dr. Grossklaus, who chairs the nutrition committee, is an employee of a German agency, BfR, that is contracted to render scientific advice on vitamin levels to the Codex committee chaired by … Grossklaus. The chairman’s advice to himself echoes the public comments of the pharmaceutical firms that are powerfully embedded inside the committee proceedings—and they want low upper limits in line with the recommended daily allowance method, as does BfR. And BfR (echoing the food-pharma company concerns) wants to scientifically validate these low limits by treating vitamins as dangerous chemicals, not as proven boons to humankind.

But an even bigger conflict of interest than Grossklaus’ is that, due to its umbilical ties to the World Trade Organization, the Codex Alimentarius as a whole has largely ceased to function as a genuine advocate for world health and has become a force in the fashioning of trade agreements designed by corporate lobbies. Setting worldwide levels for dietary supplements is not about ensuring public health and safety; it is about advancing the agenda of profit-driven corporations like DSM and Glaxo. Of course supplements are not the only target of the Codex Alimentarius regime: as Verkerk points out: Codex aims to regulate the nutritive content of all foods. And so do DSM and its cohorts.

* For a detailed description of the Codex Alimentarius, see Smart Publications (2005), “The History of Codex and the Fate of Vitamins.” In a subsequent article, we will look closely at what the developing Codex agenda means for First World consumers.

Peter Byrne is a national award-winning investigative reporter and science writer based in Northern California. He can be reached in cyberspace at www.peterbyrne.info

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