Codex Alimentarius

The Codex Alimentarius (or "food code") is a compilation of safety guidelines and handling standards published by a branch of the World Health Organization. It contains general principles that are agreed upon by most health professionals, such as how meat should be processed and the dangers of pesticides, as well as more specific instructions for the collection of testing samples and statistical analyses.

The stated aim of the Codex Alimentarius is to be a "global reference point for consumers, food producers and processors, national food control agencies and the international food trade." Despite this aim, and the fact that none of the guidelines or standards in the Codex are binding on any country or its institutions, some people believe that it is part of a global conspiracy to make people eat their vegetables or something even more sinister.

The Alliance for Natural Health Europe, for instance, claims that it is a plan to destroy organic food, natural foods, food supplements and so on. They are joined by the usual band of Alex Jones nuts ranting about how everything from vaccines to water fluoridation is part of a secret conspiracy to kill them for knowing the truth. Part of this is undoubtedly due to the scary Latin name - "International Food Safety Standards" sounds much less like a scary, secretive Vatican-related plot device from a Dan Brown novel than "Codex Alimentarius" does.

According to Wiki4cam, "Codex Alimentarius is a set of rules that want to limit people's freedom of being healthy.[sic]"