Organic Food and Natural Medicines under threat

Here is a talk that looks like it is worth going to - on the threat to our food and medicines - an issue I've raised before on this blog - sadly I'll miss the meeting as it is a Full Council night but it is great the issue is getting more coverage locally.

Photo: Crow in Ruscombe

Here are the details plus the press release from Transition Stroud and Biodynamic Association below:

Thursday 15th May 7.30 pm at Painswick Inn Project, Gloucester Street, Stroud - Cost £4/£3 conc.

Ian R Crane a self confessed truth campaigner is visiting Stroud to speak about the threat posed to organic foods and natural medicines by global regulations being drafted by this Commission behind closed doors on behalf of large corporate interests. The continued availability of natural, herbal and homeopathic medicines is being threatened throughout the world by carefully crafted legislation which is slowly but surely finding its way on to the statute book. Unless we wake up to what is going on it will be too late and the only medicines available in Europe and ultimately world wide will be products of the pharmaceutical companies.

Further proposals are being prepared that will require all imported food to be irradiated (ostensibly to prevent disease spread) while at the same time allowing unimpeded market access to unlabelled genetically modified products. "For many people this agenda is so outrageous, they cannot believe such goals are achievable" says Ian R Crane "Yet, this may be the reality as soon as December 31st 2009".

Codex Alimentarius is a global commission set up in 1963 by the WHO (World Health Organisation) and FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation) to develop standards, guidelines and codes of practice in relation to foods and medicines. Its stated objective is to protect the health of consumers, ensure fair trading practices and promote the coordination of all food standards work undertaken by international governmental and non-governmental organisations.

It is now integrated within the WTO (World Trade Organisation) whose power is such that all signed up governments are required to implement its directives without need for parliamentary scrutiny. Working with and dominated by multinational interests, this strange creation is preparing global regulations that will negatively impact on the health and well being of the world's people. The EU Food Supplements Regulation introduced last year was conceived by Codex. It has been adopted by the EU and is already being implemented in several countries. As a result many effective and long used herbal remedies can no longer be sold. It will also be illegal soon to sell certain herbs as food - they are equated with illegal drugs. Fear of disease and contamination (from natural microbes) combined with a contradictory faith in new and untested technologies can only result in more massive and irreversible genetic, biological and pollution.

"If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny." Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the U.S.A., writer of Declaration of Independence