Big Pharma’s next target: Health supplements

Special to WorldTribune.com, June 17, 2022

Corporate WATCH

Commentary by Joe Schaeffer

“Get the jab or lose your job” may be on the wane but the medical war to transform humanity goes on. A big congressional push is underway to put natural health supplements further under the screws of the Food and Drug Administration.

The Washington Examiner reported June 14:

[T]he Food and Drug Administration Safety and Landmark Advancements Act passed out of the Senate HELP Committee, which has jurisdiction over healthcare policies, by a vote of 14-8 Tuesday afternoon…

The FDASLA would hand over more regulatory authority to the FDA. It would require supplement manufacturers to list all of the ingredients and their finished products with the FDA. The bill also directs the FDA to maintain an electronic database that includes product-specific information for use by manufacturers and the public.

The Examiner referenced an organization that ostensibly defends the rights of health supplement manufacturers, noting its discomfort with certain aspects of the proposed bill. Only this group is in favor of the original legislation requiring the FDA listing:

The Council for Responsible Nutrition [CRN], which supports federal mandatory product listing as proposed in an April bill from Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), also had considerable concerns about the legislation. The trade organization said the bill was missing guarantees that the FDA would not be able to reject a product submission and did not include assurances that proprietary business information is protected from release to the public.

CRN may be concerned about “proprietary business information” being protected, but it otherwise appears to be fully aligned with those seeking more control over natural health options by the notoriously Big Pharma-dominated FDA. Why would that be? As we have seen so often with the forces of bigness in America and the world today, there is a network involved.

The Council for Responsible Nutrition is quoted again, rather benignly, in this May Chicago Tribune pro-FDASLA op-ed:

Today, nearly three-quarters of U.S. consumers take regular doses of vitamins, fish oil, herbs and similar products, the Council for Responsible Nutrition reports. The Food and Drug Administration is tasked with overseeing the booming supplement industry, but the agency has less insight and exerts far less oversight than many Americans say they want and expect.

The author of the Tribune piece, Liz Richardson, “directs The Pew Charitable Trusts’ health care products project.” Pew literally created this project with the specific aim of pushing increased federal control over health supplements:

Pew has succeeded in advancing policies that have improved the oversight and safety of food, drug compounding, the drug supply chain, and medical devices as well as fostering the innovation of new technologies. This initiative will take those efforts further, focusing on the products that many Americans take without their doctor’s supervision: over-the-counter drugs and dietary supplements.

Current FDA Director of the Office of Regulatory Policy Elizabeth Jungman is a former director of the Public Health Programs at Pew.

Pew is fully plugged into the globalist progressive “philanthropic” foundation funding machine epitomized by George Soros and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

This is mentioned to highlight the globalist cartel’s eagerness to exert control over the natural health market.

But the real worm in the organic apple appears to be the Council for Responsible Nutrition.

The CRN Board of Directors for years has included Big Pharma personnel.

Here is a list for 2016, starring executives from Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, Bayer and Abbott Nutrition.

2017 is much the same.

The 2020 CRN “Chairman’s Address” was made by then-Board Chairman David Campbell of Bayer, formerly of Pfizer.

Along with Dick Durbin, the group fondly thanks Mitt Romney for his work on the new legislation:

“We remain committed to engaging congressional leaders and their staffs on this issue and thank, in particular, Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL), Mike Braun (R-IN), and Mitt Romney (R-Utah), for their leadership on this issue. CRN cannot support FDASLA as advanced by the Senate HELP Committee.”

Think about it: Is ultra-establishment politician Mitt Romney really on the side of mom-and-pop herbalists seeking to keep people off of dangerous prescription drugs and healthy via natural means?

Or is he laboring for Bigness yet again?

A history lesson is in order.

An extremely interesting Natural News article in 2007 by Byron J. Richards, Founder/Director of Wellness Resources, was written at a time when natural health groups were once again battling to fight off increased FDA regulation:

The Natural Products Association (formerly the National Nutritional Food Association – NNFA) and the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) have been instrumental in forcing these drug-like rules on dietary supplements. These globalist organizations are selling out America, destroying American jobs, undermining the U.S. Constitution, and working in conjunction with pharmaceutical companies to usher in Codex and the New World Order. Consumers of dietary supplements should learn who these companies are before buying their products and helping to inadvertently fund the destruction of health freedom in this country.

Richards elaborates:

When [the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act] was passed in 1994 part of that law required the FDA to establish current good manufacturing practices (CGMPs) for the dietary supplement industry. During a period of FDA outreach to the industry the FDA was surprised to learn that CRN and NPA were in favor of drug-like CGMPs for the dietary supplement industry. These trade groups, working closely with Senators Orin Hatch (R-UT) and Tom Harkin (D-IA), have intentionally taken the supplement industry down a slippery slope.

Richards asserted that CRN was leading this stealth attack on independent health supplement providers:

The CRN has been taken over by multinational drug and food companies. Key players are the nutritional divisions of Bayer, BASF, Cargill, Monsanto, Wyeth, and Archer Daniels Midland. Nutrition companies that participate are in most cases owned by pharmaceutical companies, heavily invested in pharmaceutical companies, or jockeying for position in the international market as part of the New World Order. Key names include Mannatech, [Shaklee], Herbalife, GNLD International, The Vitamin Shoppe, and GNC. These companies are glad to eliminate competition from small companies and start up ventures.

Fast forward to today, and the game continues.

CRN enthusiastically endorsed the Durbin bill in April and cited its cohorts at Pew as helping in the fight:

U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) and U.S. Senator Mike Braun (R-IN) introduced the Dietary Supplement Listing Act of 2022, bipartisan legislation to require dietary supplement manufacturers to list their products with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).  In 1994, Congress passed the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), which provided FDA with authorities to regulate dietary supplements. However, DSHEA did not require dietary supplement companies to register their products with FDA—leaving the agency without the much-needed authority or information to properly understand or oversee the market.

[…]

The legislation is endorsed by the Council for Responsible Nutrition, Pew Charitable Trusts, the American Medical Association, and U.S. Pharmacopeia.

CRN’s chief executive could not be more clear: the group keenly desires more FDA control over health supplements:

“Transparency is the best disinfectant, and a mandatory product listing will give FDA and consumers visibility into the dietary supplement marketplace,” said Steve Mister, President & CEO Council for Responsible Nutrition. “CRN member companies produce a large portion of the dietary supplements marketed in the United States, so we know responsible industry supports mandatory product listing for supplements. We appreciate the opportunity to work with Sens. Durbin and Braun on this critical legislation.”

What Mister is really saying in the second half of the above paragraph: Large companies know increased FDA red tape can cripple small companies, while mega-corporations such as Bayer, Pfizer and Vitamin Shoppe will be able to easily comply, thus reducing competition for the big fish in the health supplement marketplace.

As Richards wrote in 2007 of the FDA’s “good manufacturing processes” power play:

Within this 800-page rule the FDA states, “We find that this final rule will have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities… Establishments with above average costs, and even establishments with average costs, could be hard pressed to continue to operate. Some of these may decide it is too costly and either change product lines or go out of business… 140 very small [less than 20 employees] and 32 small dietary supplement manufacturers [less than 500 employees] will be at risk of going out of business… costs per establishment are proportionally higher for very small than for large establishments… The regulatory costs of this final rule will also discourage new small businesses from entering the industry.”

As anyone who lived through the coronavirus vaccine hysteria of the past two years should be able to figure out by now, there is a war being waged by our globalist elites against God’s natural law. Vaccines are only part of the battlefront. Real food and the healing power of nature must also be eradicated if the new synthetic transhuman order is to become fully operational.


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