Will European health claims restrictions rub off on US? - NewsGrabs Sunday, 10 January 2010
Europe is very restrictive in what it allows to be said about the health properties of foods on product labels. In their latest article, the Alliance for Natural Health points out that there is a campaign for US regulations to follow the European directives in this instance. If we think about the high level meetings to establish a common EU/US market, such a step would not seem too strange - things have to meet somewhere. On food-health-information, Europe is not likely to cede ground which, in a way, is a pity. There is a real lack of information on the healthy properties of food - courtesy of pharma-engineered restrictions of what can and cannot be said for certain foods. This is part of a medical monopoly on health. According to their monopolistic thinking, food has NOTHING to do with health ... a patently false statement.
US health claims regime under Euro-threat
The passage of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) of 1994 gave unique status to dietary supplements, allowing their marketing to include the use of health claims that provide the consumer with information about the benefits of particular products.
"Food Rules": A Completely Different Way To Fix The Health Care Crisis
By Michael Pollan
Make no mistake: our health care crisis is in large part a crisis of the American diet -- roughly three quarters of the two-trillion plus we spend on health care in this country goes to treat chronic diseases, most of which can be prevented by a change in lifestyle, especially diet. And a healthy diet is a whole lot simpler than the food industry and many nutritional scientists -- what I call the Nutritional Industrial Complex -- would have us believe. After spending several years trying to answer the supposedly incredibly complicated question of how we should eat in order to be maximally healthy, I discovered the answer was shockingly simple: eat real food, not too much of it, and more plants than meat. Or, put another way, get off the modern western diet, with its abundance of processed food, refined grains and sugars, and its sore lack of vegetables, whole grains and fruit.
EU to probe pharma over “false pandemic”
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) is to hold an emergency debate and inquiry this month into the “influence” exerted by drug makers on the World Health Organisation’s global H1N1 flu campaign.The text of the resolution approved by the Assembly calling for the debate and inquiry states that: “in order to promote their patented drugs and vaccines against flu, pharmaceutical companies influenced scientists and official agencies responsible for public health standards to alarm governments worldwide and make them squander tight health resources for inefficient vaccine strategies, and needlessly expose millions of healthy people to the risk of an unknown amount of side-effects of insufficiently tested vaccines.”
The Council of Europe is a thing that's quite separate from the European Union, although with much membership overlap. For a simple explanation of the differences, see Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg's page on What's What in terms of the European Institutions. Dr. Wodarg is a parliamentarian and a driving force behind this quite unusual investigation. (Council of Europe will investigate and debate on "Faked Pandemics")
Codex: Don’t allow yourself to be fooled by the agents of disinformation and confusion
Laibow and Stubblebine almost never cite proper references or provide hyperlinks to the relevant Codex documents in their online writings. As such, anybody coming across their internet material is expected to simply take their word that “under Codex, all cows are to be treated with Monsanto’s recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone and there are no upper limits”, or that Codex mandates that “all food must be irradiated unless eaten locally and raw”, as they don’t provide any proof – in the form of references to the 16,000 pages of official Codex documentation that Laibow claims to have studied – to substantiate their absurd claims.
Help End the Government’s Shameful Silence About Vitamin D - The Natural Way to Prevent and Treat Flu Including Swine Flu!
Our goal is to persuade the CDC, FDA, NIH, and HHS to step up to the plate and help educate the public about the critical role Vitamin D plays in preventing and treating the seasonal and H1N1 flus along with many other health problems. In particular, we are asking the CDC, FDA, HHS, and NIH to issue statements outlining the immense benefits to be gained from supplementation during the flu season.
A Fish Oil Story
The deal with fish oil, I found out, is that a considerable portion of it comes from a creature upon which the entire Atlantic coastal ecosystem relies, a big-headed, smelly, foot-long member of the herring family called menhaden, which a recent book identifies in its title as "The Most Important Fish in the Sea."
Three Types of Approved GMO Corn Linked to Organ Damage
In what is being described as the first ever and most comprehensive study of the effects of genetically modified foods on mammalian health, researchers have linked organ damage with consumption of Monsanto’s GM maize.All three varieties of GM corn, Mon 810, Mon 863 and NK 603, were approved for consumption by US, European and several other national food safety authorities. Made public by European authorities in 2005, Monsanto’s confidential raw data of its 2002 feeding trials on rats that these researchers analyzed is the same data, ironically, that was used to approve them in different parts of the world.
Big Win for Bees: Judge Pulls Pesticide
(link from stephentvedten.blogspot.com - blog censored by Blogger. Check out his other site at http://www.stephentvedten.com/ )
Bee toxic Movento pulled from market for proper evaluation
“EPA admitted to approving the pesticide illegally, but argued that its violations of the law should have no consequences. The Court disagreed and ordered the pesticide to be taken off the market until it has been properly evaluated.In June 2008, EPA approved Movento for nationwide use on hundreds of different crops, including apples, pears, peaches, oranges, tomatoes, grapes, strawberries, almonds, and spinach. The approval process went forward without the advance notice and opportunity for public comment that is required by federal law and EPA’s own regulations. In addition, EPA failed to evaluate fully the potential damage to the nation’s already beleaguered bee populations or conduct the required analysis of the pesticide’s economic, environmental, and social costs.
Vaccinating for profit: Boys in USA to get papillomavirus vaccine
It seems one of the key drivers in the ever increasing push for childhood vaccination, in the face of limited or sometimes no good evidence of efficacy—and often at least some evidence of risk—is profit. Blog sites are awash with purported evidence of corrupt tie-ups between vaccine manufacturers and governments and only the foolhardy, or those with particular vested interests, would be inclined to dismiss all these reports.It is obvious, for example, that with the decision to select boys for inclusion in the HPV vaccination schedule, the potential market for the vaccine among children doubled overnight! But just how evidence-based is this decision?
Drug Companies Now Pushing Vaccines for All Kinds of Health Conditions
Since prescription drug sales have been steadily declining, Big Pharma has been frantically looking for new avenues to keep raking in massive profits. Vaccines fit the bill as drug companies can work to create one for every type of ailment known to man. Many existing vaccines are being pushed more heavily upon people as well.Vaccine sales are expected to double in the next five years, leaping from $19 billion in 2008 to $39 billion in 2013.
“HIV” has infected virology with cancer-causing viruses
Duesberg (Inventing the AIDS Virus, Regnery, 1996) described in detail how the unsuccessful, decades-long search for human-cancer-causing viruses stimulated frustrated virologists to hunt for and insist on a viral cause for AIDS. That has produced a thriving industry that’s highly lucrative for researchers and drug companies and government agencies and non-governmental entities — albeit unfortunate for millions of healthy and innocent people. That model now seems to be enticing virologists to discover new viruses associated with a variety of conditions, including human cancers, and to market expensive tests to detect those postulated viruses and expensive vaccines to ward them off.
FDA Review Info Unavailable For Popular Drugs
A review found that safety and effectiveness info analyzed as part of the drug approval process isn’t available on the FDA web site for nine of the top 25 prescribed brand name drugs in the US, such as Lipitor, Plavix, and Synthroid.
Video: Marketing of Madness
There is no denying that psychological and emotional problems, even severe mental distress, can affect most anyone. But does this mean we are all insane?
Are Mobile Phones to unleash a pandemic?
Considering the evidence from scientific studies which almost all come to the same alarming conclusions, it is highly probable that a genuine pandemic is brewing that will impact 400 million phone users, a stupendous number.
Wikipedia Woes - Pending Crisis as Editors Leave in Droves
It must be made clear that this article is NOT an attack on Wiklipedia, but an attempt to highlight the danger of collapse that this wonderful resource is likely to face if those running the show cannot curtail the actions of editors who have taken it upon themselves to exorcise any and all challenges to the present consensus. Challenges to the consensus are the lifeblood of progress in the sciences.
The Fairy-Tale Cult of Wikipedia
“Neutral point of view (NPOV) is a fundamental Wikimedia principle and a cornerstone of Wikipedia. All Wikipedia articles and other encyclopedic content must be written from a neutral point of view, representing fairly, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources. This is non-negotiable and expected of all articles and all editors.”— Right. Anonymous and pseudonymous contributors all have neutral points of view. Their strong motivation to contribute is a natural corollary of possessing a neutral point of view on all matters significant (“notable”) enough to be in Wikipedia. Non-negotiable!
- - -If you would like to contribute to these newsgrabs...
just tell me about a link to an article or a site you think is interesting. Email me at (sepp -at- lastrega -dot- com)
facebook (facebook.com/hasslberger)And, by the way, there is much more information out there...
There is a lot I cannot cover but other sources for this kind of information exist.
Dr Mercola's health blog, Mike Adams' Natural News and the One Click Group in the UK have good health information. The Dr Rath Foundation is also putting out a weekly collection of health related news. Here is the link to their Newsletter Archive.
For the influence of electromagnetic waves from radio, mobile phones and other radio emitting devices, check out the emr-updates group on Yahoo. Genetic modification and issues around agriculture and foods are reported on the Organic Consumers Association site.
A few sites to keep up to date with the other side of world affairs, the stuff you won't necessarily find on your tv or in the papers:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com
http://www.commondreams.org
http://www.globalresearch.ca/
http://www.truthout.org/- - -
and remember...
The individual is supreme and finds its way through intuition
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Sunday January 10 2010
updated on Friday November 26 2010URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2010/01/10/will_european_health_claims_restrictions_rub_off_on_us_newsgrabs_sunday_10_january_2010.htm