From the January 2001 Idaho Observer:

Pharmaceutical corp-dominated CRN pushing for adoption of Codex

By The Idaho Observer

The Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) has been outspokenly in favor of global regulation of dietary supplements as proposed by the international Codex Alimentarius Commission and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. CRN's membership is a who's who of the world's most powerful foods and pharmaceutical interests. According to International Advocates for Health Freedom President John Hammell, the pharmaceutical-interests-dominated CRN is working with the little known group, “Transatlantic Business Dialogue(TABD),” to “illegally force the harmonization of our dietary supplement laws to grossly restrictive, totally unscientific international standards.”

TABD is an association of over 120 American and European corporations that is outspokenly supportive of international standards and regulations for dietary supplements and the creation of an international body to enforce them.

Evidence that Hammell's presumptions are correct are found in CRN's posting of TABD's press release following its annual CEO meeting in Cincinnati last Nov. 16-18. “The recommendations we have developed at this meeting will, if adopted by the governments, expand trade and investment opportunities for large, medium, and small companies by removing obstacles and inefficiencies in the U.S. and European regulatory regimes,” said George David, chairman and CEO of United Technologies Corporation and US TABD chair for 2000. “Adoption of these recommendations will create jobs, raise living standards, lower costs and improve access to goods -- that is, provide concrete benefits for business, for labor, and for consumers,” he explained.

CRN's membership

The following list highlights some of CRN's most notorious members: American Home Products Corporation, American Laboratories, Inc, Archer Daniels Midland Company, BASF Corp., Bayer Corp., Biotron Laboratories, Inc., Cargill, Inc., Hoffman-La Roche, Inc., Monsanto Life Sciences Co., Nestle USA, Inc., SmithKline Beecham Specialty Minerals, Inc. and the Warner-Lambert Company.

In 1999 Hoffman La Roche was fined a record $500,000,000 by the Federal Trade Commission for engaging in illegal price fixing in the sale of vitamin raw materials.

Monsanto is the manufacturer of the controversial bovine growth hormone that has been proven to cause cancer in rats and makes cows sick. Monsanto also holds the patent on the “terminator gene” which forces farmers to purchase seed from them year after year because hybrid row crops are no longer capable of producing viable seed for replanting.

Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill are two of the three major corporations in the world that ultimately control the distribution of the world's food supply.

The pharmaceutical companies listed produce the vaccines, cancer chemotherapy drugs, pain killers and mood-altering drugs that are directly competing with the dietary supplements CRN wishes to be controlled by international regulatory apparatus.

Between members of the U.S. Codex Alimentarius Delegation, the FDA, TABD and the CRN, the “.USA is being very skillfully set up for the forced harmonization of our dietary supplement laws to a grossly restrictive, totally unscientific international 'standard' that is being slowly shoved down our throats at Codex,” said Hammell.

Hammell, whose own life was saved by having access to high-potency vitamins, has been on the front lines of health freedom for the last 10 years. The manner in which he has proceeded in exposing the complex and well-financed conspiracy to gain regulatory control of our access to dietary supplements is the product of a decade of dedicated research. To find out more and to aid Hammell in his mission to protect your right to take vitamin C without a prescription from your doctor, he can be contacted via email at: jhammell@iahf.com or by visiting the IAHF website at: http://www.iahf.com.