No one at the Codex Alimentarius Commission is as nice as the outgoing Chairman Guilherme da Costa, Jr. Even when he is kicking your feet out from under you by not allowing your spoken comments to go into the Final Report of the meeting, he is gentlemanly about it, even charming. He also is one of the most accommodating chairmen or -women when it comes to allowing a delegate to speak – just keep in mind that you will be strictly limited to two minutes and most likely your comments will never make it into the report. For that very reason, this article – not Codex’s carefully scripted Final Report – will give you the more complete story of what happened at that meeting on the two key issues confronting the National Health Federation (NHF).

    At this Codex meeting – the 44th session of the Codex Alimentarius Commission, and its second meeting held virtually – there were as many as 683 attendees “zooming in” from around the World at one time. Typically held for three-hour-long sessions on November 8-13, 15, 17, and 19, 2021, this two-week-long Codex meeting discussed many food- and feed-related issues; but the two main issues for NHF here were the toxic herbicide glyphosate and the animal growth-promoter Zilpaterol.

Glyphosate Standards

    The extremely toxic chemical herbicide glyphosate is the bête noir (“black beast”) of the health and health-freedom movements. NHF has consistently opposed its use in agricultural and other practices at every meeting where NHF has been present and standards permitting the use of glyphosate have been discussed and adopted. Almost always, NHF has been the single, lone voice in opposition.

    On the second day of this CAC meeting, the various pesticide standards created by the Codex Committee on Pesticide Residues were discussed and when NHF was called upon to speak, I stated NHF’s strong objection to glyphosate, “NHF expresses its continued objection to the use of glyphosate in any form for the reasons given in our CRD37 [Conference Room Document 37], that is, that glyphosate, among other things, is a major contributor to Anti-Microbial Resistance worldwide.” (See NHF’s CRD 37 at https://thenhf.com/joint-fao-who-food-standards-programme/; “Emergence of resistance in bacteria and fungi is correlated with glyphosate use in the World over the last 40 years.”)