by The Dr. Rath Health Foundation - 10/27/2005
This WHO representative’s manner was a little different to that of Dr. Schlundt, and could arguably be described as ever so slightly “stern.” Indeed, some might even go so far as to describe it as just a little “sharp”. However, in no way could her speech be described as even remotely “scathing”, and at no point did she state that “things would be different in the future.”
Note too that she was actually sympathetic to the requests for more money to come from the WHO to Codex, as particularly shown by the final sentence of her speech. Her main point, however, was clearly that the WHO Executive Board and the World Health Assembly are the correct venues in which to frame requests for increased funding, and that a meeting of the Codex Alimentarius Commission was not the place to do this.
Finally, just before the end of this agenda item, Dr. Schlundt spoke up again, and talked about $1.6 million that WHO had put into Codex in 2001 for work on microbiological risk assessment. An except from this speech follows below:
…..I just have to add to this that when there is a reference to the level that we had in 0001, which was very high as you can see in table 1, it was 1.6 million, that was extra money put into this so that we could start up microbiological risk assessment.
So we did Salmonella, Camplylobacter, Vibrio…..and Lysteria. And we put them out very, very quickly into the Codex system. We initiated work on biotechnology, and we put it directly into the biotech task force.
Now, we also need, I think also, the World Health Assembly also needs to see that something is then happening to this extra influx of money. And it’s difficult if we cannot see that something is happening with this extra influx.
It would be difficult to make the arguments in the World Health Assembly where the countries, you, all your countries, also had to take all the other priorities into consideration.
So we hope, you know, that we can also really see some outcome out of the extra money that was actually put in here from WHO.
Transcript from part of a meeting held in Rome, Italy, on Tuesday 5th July, 2005
Apparently, therefore, Dr. Schlundt’s intention here was simply to make the point that it would be difficult to argue for more money from WHO at the World Health Assembly until such time as the work on microbiological risk assessment and biotechnology has been completed and its outcome apparent. As such it is clear that in his earlier speech, where he expressed the need to “ show the world that Codex is actually helping also in relation to public health”, he was almost certainly not thinking principally about nutrition.
Just as importantly, however, it can also be seen that once again Dr. Schlundt was neither criticizing Codex nor expressing displeasure with it.
The WHO Global Strategy on Diet Physical Activity and Health
The second discussion at the Codex meeting in Rome that has seemingly been widely misreported relates to the WHO Global Strategy on Diet Physical Activity and Health.