By Scott C. Tips, NHF President, #CodexAlimentarius
Beijing, July 27 2021
On Day Two of the virtual meeting of the Codex Committee on Pesticide Residues (CCPR), the National Health Federation (NHF) — the only consumer group represented at this CCPR meeting — spoke up against the following pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides as all posing public health concerns: Pyflubumide, Chlorothalonil, Glyphosate, Buprofezin, Bifenthrin, Cyprodinil*, Dicamba, Fluensulfone, and Tolfenpyrad.
Our objections to these toxins were not well-received by the Australian regional branch office for the Pesticide companies (otherwise known as the Australian Codex Office), which several times tried to get NHF’s comments deleted from the record. When NHF objected to Cyprodinil as carcinogenic and referred the committee back to our previously filed written comments made to CCPR, Australia had the sheer audacity to object because our science had not been “approved by the Joint FAO/WHO Meeting on Pesticide Residues” (JMPR)! Then, piling on top of NHF to add weight to Australia’s absurd argument were CropLife Int’l (admitted front-group for the pesticide industry — cute name though), the drug-happy World Health Organization, Uganda, and Kenya. When I was recognized to speak a second time to address the committee, I told them all what NONSENSE their argument was, that NHF has attended numerous different Codex committee and commission meetings over the last 20+ years and had never seen such a nonsensical argument made, and that no one needed a rubber-stamp approval by JMPR or JECFA to argue science at any Codex meeting and to ask that that science be mentioned in the Report of the meeting. Any concerns, I continued, could be addressed in the Report by starting out the sentence with something like “The NHF stated its view that ….” I ended up by asking the Codex Secretariat to confirm what I was saying and then by telling Australia and the others that they should be ashamed. The Codex Secretariat did, in fact, confirm what I said and thanks to it, and the very fair CCPR Chairman, NHF’s comments will be in the Report.
Speaking of captured regulatory agencies, on the international stage, I’ve long argued that Australia and New Zealand are two of the worst of the whole lot. They do not represent the interests of their citizens, certainly not their health; but they both do a great job of promoting the interests of the big pharmaceutical, agricultural, and pesticide interests. As I’ve said, if you one day just happened to stroll into a Codex meeting and knew nothing about what was being said or done, all you would have to do is adopt the exact opposite position to that espoused by Australia and New Zealand and you could be 99% sure that you were taking a position on the side of good health. (I wrote an article about Australia on this, which you can read on the NHF website or by clicking the link below.)
The saddest part of today’s meeting, though, is not the sheer ignorance & vindictiveness of the Australian, Ugandan, Kenya, and CropLife delegates (and I rather suspect that they are all new to Codex meetings), but that NHF was the only one out of the 389 people present to speak out against any Codex approval of Glyphosate. Yes, the European Union delegate did reserve the EU’s rights to not accept the MRLs for Glyphosate within the EU; but there was no general objection to this incredibly toxic poison being approved at all by Codex.
The meeting continues tomorrow and for the rest of this week. So, stay tuned as NHF continues to do its best to protect your health.
