A proposed change in federal law could reach right into Federal Way and have you visiting your doctor more often than you may like.

If you purchase and use minerals and supplements like Vitamins C, E, B, or D, the law could make vitamins and diet supplements available by prescription only.

On Wednesday of last week, CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, which had previously passed the U.S. Senate, has now passed in the House of Representatives, it's final hurdle toward becoming a law. This trade agreement is similar to the NAFTA agreement of 1993 in that it has the potential to displace American workers and empower corporations with new, extralegal rights in America as well as Central America. Since 1995, Big Medicine has spent billions of dollars trying to get Washington to regulate dietary supplements just as European governments do. So far, that effort has failed in America. But the battle for health freedom may be lost if CAFTA entangles the U.S. in Europe's Codex Alimentarius (Codex).

Now that CAFTA has passed both the House of Representatives and the Senate, the US government may be forced, by the terms of that CAFTA agreement, to restrict vitamin and supplement sales in accordance with the "German Model" of health care.

The German Federal Institute of Risk Assessment has already implemented the full extrapolation called for by Codex, and their projected "Maximum Safe Permitted Levels" include just 225 milligrams for vitamin C, 5 micrograms for Vitamin D, 15 mg for vitamin E and just 5.4 mg for Vitamin B-6.

These are vastly diminished dosages, according to William Grigg, the Senior Editor of The New American online magazine, and would render most vitamin supplements to a level of '..potency that would make them practically useless.'

The Codex Alimentarius Commission was created in 1963 by FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization and WHO (World Health Organization) to develop food standards, guidelines and related texts such as codes of practice under the Joint FAO/WHO Food Standards Program.

Ostensibly, the purposes of this Program are protecting health of the consumers and ensuring fair trade practices in the food trade, and promoting coordination of all food standards work undertaken by international governmental and non-governmental organizations.

But under the Codex guidelines, vitamins and minerals will be evaluated for safety as if they were toxic chemicals.

At least one local purveyor of the targeted products, Marlene Beadle, owner of Marlene's Market and Deli is not worried about the new law. "The whole world is saying that they're going to take our supplements away...but we're not bound to it (CODEX) because of DSHEA."

The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA), was passed because 2.5 million ordinary citizens wanted to make sure dietary supplements such as herbs, vitamins, minerals and other food-based supplements could stay on the over-the-counter market. Movement to create this law started when a 1992 FDA task force published a report announcing the FDA's desire to remove these products from the shelves as they represented a "disincentive for patented drug research".

In support of Beadle's position is Alexander G. Schauss, Ph.D., clinical professor of natural products research at the National College of Naturopathic Medicine in Portland, Ore., and chairman of the safety committee for the National Nutritional Foods Association. From an interview in Vegetarian Times, Schauss explains the role of Codex this way: "If you're a public health officer in India and a Swiss company tries to sell you a product, you need Codex. You may not be sure how much iron is safe in a product and you need a neutral body to turn to."

Further, Schauss states, ""We know that minerals have a window of safety. Something that should be consumed in microgram amounts should not be sold in gram amounts," says Schauss. "But this is a consensus process and it'll take years to move forward."

Dr. Terry Grossman, MD, founder and medical director of Frontier Medical Institute in Denver, Colorado, states on his website, www.fmiclinic.com that if Codex is adopted in the U.S., it could possibly... "seriously undermine the ability of the public to purchase vitamins and other nutritional supplements over-the-counter and at affordable prices." Dr. Grossman downplays an immediate threat for purchasing nutritional supplements, however... "these new actions taken by the CAC in Italy represent a serious threat to these freedoms in the near future...without massive public outcry, most vitamins and supplements will become prescription drugs and your freedom to purchase and use nutritional supplements to ensure the health of yourself and your family will be seriously eroded."

Oppenents of CAFTA say that now that the trade agreement has passed into law it will extend to Central America the disastrous job loss and environmental damage caused by 10 years of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). U.S. workers lost 879,280 jobs and real wages in Mexico have fallen as a result of NAFTA in the past 10 years, according to the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute. According to consumer advocate, Tim Bolen, 'If and when this happens, (CAFTA becomes law) the hard won 1994 DSHEA (Dietary Supplement Health & Education Act) will be nullified, and the dismantling of the North American supplement Industry will begin.

As of press time, a statement released from the National Nutritional Foods Association (NNFA) said, "The adoption of final Codex Supplement Guidelines by the Codex Commission on July 4, 2005 does not threaten the freedom to access dietary supplements and information about supplements that are guaranteed in the United States by the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA). No amendment, repeal or other change to DSHEA is required, as a matter of U.S. law. Since the Codex Supplement Guidelines do not require any change to DSHEA, the guidelines will not have any practical impact on sales of dietary supplements in the United States, by either suppliers or retailers. DSHEA will continue to govern domestic sales."

Consumers may rest more easily at this, and that's fine with Marlene Beadle. In regard to the regulation of vitamins and minerals, she said, "This is big business, and it's important to me..(but) these things are part of our history, whether it will go away completely, I don't know."

Our digging into this matter at local sales outlets for vitamins and diet supplements turned up little awareness of the proposed legislation with the exception of Marlene's, where the proprietor said she has had many inquires from customers and has been developing an information file on the subject.

(Marlene has been in the dietary supplement business in this community longer than most business have been operating here. Her orginal store opened in 1976 in the old Federal Shopping Way between Payless and Bert's Men's Wear. Now, Marlene's occupies the sunny 22,000 square foot space formerly used by REI.)