United States Attorney, Jonathan Emord

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. My name is Jonathan Emord. I am an attorney who practices constitutional and administrative law before the federal courts and agencies in the United States.

I am very grateful for the opportunity to speak with you today because I share your concern about access to dietary supplements and about access to information concerning supplements.

Jonathan Emord

Dr. Matthias Rath has been a major contributor in this effort in Europe. He has broken down barriers to access that the Codex Alimentarius would have established before and he is dedicated to doing that again.

In the United States, we have also succeeded in breaking down barriers that the government has attempted to place on access to dietary supplements.

In fact, in 1994, there was a significant legislative achievement in the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, which prevented the government from denying people access to health enhancing dietary supplements.

You know, dietary supplements are by and large, constituents of food; food that has been consumed by people safely for thousands of years.

The scientific evidence concerning the health enhancing effects of ingredients in foods that become supplements is extraordinary and the notion that government should be depriving individuals of access to supplements, or information about supplements, is an offense to one of our most fundamental rights, the right to self-determination, to control our own destiny.

Before us today is a proposal in the Codex Alimentarius Commission to restrict access to dietary supplements by limiting the quantitative amounts that can be sold and in certain instances by denying access to supplements altogether. These are decisions that individuals should be free to make, based on full information. Rather than suppress access to dietary supplements, the governments of the world would do better to inform people of these health enhancing effects that are reported in the scientific literature and to enable people to make fully informed choices concerning the dietary supplements they wish to consume.

Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. I appreciate the chance to address these critical issues. I am confident that if you dedicate yourself to achieving the objective of preventing the Codex Alimentarius from limiting your access to dietary supplements that you will prevail because this is a human issue that touches everyone and the leaders of the nations of the world must hear your voice and respond to it, and I am sure that if that voice is expressed in a clear way, and is expressed directly in your efforts, you will succeed.

Congratulations on all your work.