Codex—government and corporate control of our food supply.
http://www.anh-europe.org/campaigns/codex
The Codex Alimentarius Commission, Latin for 'food code', is an inter-governmental body that sets guidelines and standards to ensure ‘fair trade practices’ and consumer protection in relation to the global trade of food. It was established for this purpose in 1963 so has more than 40 years’ experience controlling food in an ever-more globalized world. It has over 170 member countries within the framework of the Joint FAO/WHO Food Standards Programme established by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO).
Its primary stated purpose is “protecting the health of consumers and ensuring fair practices in the food trade.” The Commission also promotes coordination of all food standards work undertaken by international governmental and non-governmental organizations (INGO’s).
The guidelines and standards are used as a benchmark for regional/national legislation and in World Trade Orgaization (WTO) diputes. Work is conducted through nearly 30 committees, each dealing with specific areas of food, and decisions are based on consensus voting by member countries. INGO’s do not have voting rights, but may influence proceedings. Most INGO’s present at Codex meetings represent transnational corporation interests.
And if you read on down the page, you come to this.
Government delegations that sit in the committees and task forces of Codex are not democratically elected representatives; they are bureaucrats. One of the over-riding changes we have witnessed in recent years is the increasing influence of bureaucrats in rule making, for example, even the USA, which prides itself as a true democracy, has seen massive growth in the influence of federal agencies as compared with democratically elected Congress. Jonathan Emord, in his book The Rise of Tyranny, estimates that as much as 75% of all laws in the USA are now created by agencies, completely bypassing the democratic process.
so did i blow every ones mine with this story or are some of you in the know. ?
Hi Beth
I was aware of a great deal of it, as being a small farmer, I have to keep up with all the latest rules and regs in regards to tagging and tracking, when I did all the research on the new from farm to plate tracking they are bringing in, (which by the way is not just for animals, they want it for veggies to) I became aware that many things going in the states (which are fighting it better at a state level then we are in canada by the way) all come back to meeting international standards bla, bla, bla, which no matter how much concern or voices of reasonable examples are given, comes down to "food safety" which really comes down to companies and goverments controling food production on massive scale.
http://livingmydreamlifeonthefarm.wordpress.com/2011/03/22/food-traceability/
http://livingmydreamlifeonthefarm.wordpress.com/
I see what your saying farmgal, read link, by the way I love your blog. But what I see is a very big scary scenario playing out on the world stage. I would love to know were the pig I ate last night was raised. But also don't want the piglets I buy know to my government. I want to raise them and sell them under the table. I don't want any government getting any cash from me, in any energy I need to deal with them, or fees to pay. I also want to grow and make my own home heath care and herbal teas with out government intervention. My fear is our continued access to natural health products and wholesome foods will be gone, and we will become outlaw organic extremist food terrorist. and that's no joke, sort of. 🙂