Paul Anthony Taylor, Chairman of the NHF, and one of the three members on the NHF delegation in Bad Neuenahr, said:

"Although we made some important interventions during the Electronic Working Group last Sunday, it is worrying to see how fast the Committee's host country, Germany, is wanting to finalize a document that details the principles to be used by the Committee in its work on risk assessment. They got the document to Step 5 of the 8-step procedure this meeting, and, once finalized, it will be included in the Codex Procedural Manual. This could happen as early as the next session of the committee, due to be held in November 2008 in South Africa. What's particularly worrying for all of us working to protect health freedom is that the principles run so tightly with the approach used in Europe, which has itself been heavily influenced by the ultra-cautionary Federal Risk Assessment Institute in Germany, the very organization from which the Codex committee's chairman, Dr. Rolf Grossklaus, hails."

Another key issue being dealt with at last week's Codex committee session was the development of internationally agreed-upon Nutrient Reference Values (NRVs), which would establish the daily amounts of particular vitamins and minerals required by adults and infants. Speaking about one of the NHF's many interventions during the meeting, Scott Tips, both President and Legal Counsel for the NHF as well as its Codex delegation head, said:

"The Committee noted in its report our intervention suggesting that there should be an additional NRV for adults, one that caters to population groups with the greatest need. We were demonstrating that an average value simply doesn't work. For example, in the case of iron, most children need extra iron in supplementary form as do menstruating women. But most adult men do not; indeed, it is unhealthy for most men. If we could have at least one extra category, we could cater to the higher amounts required by pre-menopausal women rather than them having to accept the fact that half the population, in this case men, lower the value of the average that is then imposed on all adults. The bad news was that, despite the logic of this, and the fact that the intervention was recorded in the final report of the meeting, the Committee did not accept it. Codex, as so often happens, trundles on regardless of the needs of particular population groups who don't fit the law of averages."

Dr. Robert Verkerk, scientific advisor to the NHF and executive and scientific director of the ANH, indicated that this was a critical time to re-appraise the principles and methods applied to and in risk assessment. "This area of risk assessment is really the ticking time bomb for natural health," said Dr. Verkerk, "it's high time that we see some top academic groups contributing to this rapidly developing field, which is now at the mercy of politics and economics, more than it is to science. You can't expect regulators lacking a thorough grasp of the science to get it right, particularly when pressure by large food and pharmaceutical interests is pushing for such low nutrient dosages that they could never be used for health-promotion purposes. Governments need to recognize that health promotion using foods and food-based ingredients, in conjunction with modified lifestyles, is the new, sustainable paradigm in healthcare."