Sounds like a variation on the curse, "May you be inflicted with a plague of lawyers!" I can't think of any other examples. I've kept hearing various rumors that Codex or something would take vitamins off the market and never paid much attention to it. From your description, it appears that what is transpiring is a liability issue. "So ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the defendant ADMITS that he was selling a product that HE KNEW did not comply with international standards as agreed to by the Federal Government." After that, how does the defendant explain that US law does not REQUIRE that your products comply with that standard?
And the way that current US courts are allowing suits of various kinds to proceed to "let the jury decide the merits," this one would be a real crapshoot (or worse). After all, the 9th Circus Court of Appeals has decided that a gun maker is responsible for a gun it sold to a dealer who sold it to a police department who traded it back in for a "newer, more powerful model" to the same dealer who sold it to another dealer who then committed a crime that made him ineligible to own a gun who then (after more than 6 months of inaction by local police) used the gun to commit a crime. Yeah, this vitamin/CAFTA/Codex thing starts to make sense. But I'm still not sure what, if anything, anyone can do about it. Lowell C. Savage It's the freedom, stupid! Gun control, tyrants' tool, fools' folly. > Last night we were discussing CAFTA and I was telling them I thought their > analysis and that of others in the movement on this subject was wrong. As > I pointed out here, the measures in question provide that no product can > be > kept out of trade between signatory nations if it would be allowed in > commerce according to the domestic (i.e. internal) regs of the importing > country, and CAFTA adopts Codex Alimentarius (the international food code) > in that no country may have stricter regs than it poses. Looks like it's > pro-freedom to me. > > Ralph & Kathy countered to the effect that this is an example wherein a > ceiling of regs becomes a floor. They say that the practical effect is to > have countries adopt Codex even where it's STRICTER than their current > regs > (resulting in limits on vitamin dosage units, in some cases making > supplements into ethical drugs), even though no signatory country is bound > to do so. They also say that the big companies have already limited their > products in response to Codex, and that the smaller companies won't be > able > to beat them out by reintroducing such products because insurance > companies > won't issue liability policies for products that don't conform, even > though > no law requires them to do so. > > So what are we to think? Can anyone think of other examples wherein the > application of a gov't measure is supposed to limit regulations and > increase choices, but wherein the voluntary actions of either signatory > nations or private businesses in response is to act as if certain new regs > were coming come into force? _______________________________________________ Libnw mailing list [email protected] List info and subscriber options: http://immosys.com/mailman/listinfo/libnw Archives: http://immosys.com/mailman//pipermail/libnw
