Colloidal Silver Company's Fight for Health Freedom: An Interview With Ben Taylor (Part II)

Friday, November 21, 2008 by: Kira Adler
Tags: colloidal silver, health news, Natural News

(NewsTarget) Utopia Silver Supplements is a colloidal silver company based out of Utopia, Texas. This natural supplement company has been battling the FDA for 5 years. In this exclusive interview, Ben Taylor, Utopia Silver Supplement Company owner, discusses his fight to defend the company and the principles of health freedom that this country was founded on. Part 1 introduced the company as well as the health benefits of colloidal silver. Part 2 uncovers why the FDA targeted Utopia Silver and what their underlying tactic is.

A Little Background of FDA Regulation In Regards to Natural Health Companies

For the past decade, the FDA has unfairly targeted small natural health companies with the intent to shut them down. Because of this country`s health freedom laws, at least on paper, the FDA can`t close them down outright so they`ve been using their legal weight to bring court cases against these supplement companies with the hope that the legal system will rule against them. Then fear mongering is conducted by the mainstream media to make examples out of these cases. A common tactic is to try to "nab" the supplement company by punishing them for publishing health claims and testimonials of the effectiveness of their products. These health claims may very well be backed up by scientific studies and research, but it doesn`t matter to the FDA. A common target is natural health companies that sell colloidal silver products. This may be because of the competition that these silver products pose to pharmaceutical antibiotics.

Kira: I'm not very familiar with the rules of the FDA and how strict they can be with testimonials and what you can claim that your product can cure. Can you tell us a little bit about how you battled the FDA regarding testimonials?

Ben: The FDA, in my opinion, is a tool for the major pharmaceutical companies and I don't believe they're out to take care of the general health of the public. I think that they're running interference for the major pharmaceutical companies and no one else -- beyond that, they don't have the authority to do what they do. What they do is by presumption, nobody argues with them. The FDA act was passed in 1938 and it set up the food, drug, and cosmetic administrations. This act gave the FDA the right to regulate interstate commerce of food, drugs, and cosmetics but the term "regulate" meant to organize interstate commerce, which was defined at that time as transportation across state lines. The reason was so that the states wouldn't start making their own rules when it came to the movement and transportation of goods across state lines. If every state had different rules regarding interstate commerce, it could chaos. The feds organizing and coordinating this interstate transportation was intended to cause a more unimpeded flow of goods between states and was not intended to give the 'feds' authority to control every aspect of business. The 1995 Supreme Court case The United States vs. Lopez gives some of the more recent insight into this fact.

Kira: So basically the FDA was in charge of seeing that states fairly distributed these products... they weren't necessarily involved in blocking any products to certain areas?

Ben: No, they don't have any authority in my opinion to be involved in the manufacture or sale of any of these products and a good example of that is the 18th amendment and the 20th amendment. The 18th amendment was the amendment that supposedly prohibited the sale of intoxicating liquors and then the 21st supposedly repealed the 18th but that's not really what happened. If you go and read those two amendments you'll find that the 21st amendment simply brought the 18th amendment into compliance with the Constitution. You can put the 21st amendment side by side with it and all it did was take out the terms "manufacture" and "sale" but left in "transportation".

Kira: What you're saying is that the 21st amendment actually lessened the FDA's power?

Ben: Well yeah, it lessened their power by bringing the 18th amendment into compliance with the Constitution because regulating interstate commerce, in my opinion, was all the authority the FDA had and this is one of the things that we entered into evidence in our court case and it is one of the filed evidence that do not want revealed in a trial. The 18th prohibited the transportation, manufacture, and sale of intoxicating liquors, but the Federal 'government' did not have the Constitutional authority to do anything more than 'regulate/organize' interstate commerce.

Kira: When did the FDA start coming after your company and for what reasons?

Ben: Well, initially the TDH, by virtue of an email 'complaint' from the FDA to the TDH, approached the friend of mine that owned the Utopia Silver company and told him that there were problems with his website and he must correct them. Even though he made every effort to comply with their demands, they harassed him repeatedly. He would make 'corrections and revisions' and then they would find more issues for him to fix. The primary issue was his posting of customer testimonials and they said that since he had testimonials he was making claims of cures and prevention and by 'making claims' the supplements he was selling were now considered 'new drugs'. Because the supplements were 'magically' turned into drugs by the use of 'words', the TDH/FDA now claimed the right to regulate them. Anyway, it appeared that the lawsuit was going nowhere and that was what my friend's lawyer told him and that is where I steeped in and I bought some of his assets and opened Utopia Silver Supplements.

Kira: Okay, so let's talk about the hypothetical... even if they are drugs because of that definition then why is it that drugs by pharmaceutical companies, for example drugs that lower cholesterol or cure other conditions, are promoted while it seems that the FDA's intentions, once a supplement is considered a drug, is to block it from the market?

Ben: Now you see their real intent, because with drugs, generally speaking, large companies can afford to spend the kind of money that is required to get them to market and to get FDA approval; but a small company like Utopia Silver can't spend the millions of dollars on these so-called clinical studies which, by the way, have been done for decades using silver- but they ignore them. What I find interesting is the fact that the second that a food or supplement has the presumption, by claim, anecdote, or research, of a health benefit, it has to be classified as a drug by the FDA. I find that preposterous. What it does is that it takes the Right to personal healthcare choice using foods and supplements out of the control and discretion of the individual and puts it in the hands of a not so benevolent government agency.

Kira: At what point do you think that they can consider food a drug?

Ben: Here is what the prosecuting assistant of the Attorney General told me in the judge's chambers -- he said that, "if you are selling water and you claim that water has a health benefit, like it cures dehydration, then it becomes a drug and you must have a drug license to sell that water." And I believe that is their true position; he was not being facetious. In fact, there was a case in the mid-west with a cherry farmer who had a website where they posted some research that they had found on a government website, I think, about the benefits of cherries. I mean this was scientific research, it was fact. Well, once they posted it, the FDA came after them and said that they couldn't do that. The cherry farmer's argument was that they were just exercising their First Amendment right by stating the fact, but the FDA came after them anyway and confiscated their cherries, jam, and all of their products and shut them down. That shows you right there what they're willing to do regarding this insane interpretation of 'the law'.

Kira: That's amazing! We grow up with the belief that we have freedom of speech, that we can state facts and not be persecuted for it and yet that freedom of speech can be trumped by the interpretations made by the FDA and their pursuit to regulate these types of products...

Ben: It is presumed that they can be trumped, and the problem is that everybody goes along with it, but I didn't go along with them (the FDA and the TDH) and that is the only reason why I had any success. If I had gotten an attorney and if I had gotten a manufacturers license and if I agreed to what they were saying about these supplements being drugs, then I would've been shut down by now; but the fact is, the only chance we have is to resist them with the truth and the truth is that there are all kinds of things that are good for us -- vitamin C prevents scurvy, Vitamin D prevents rickets and cancer. You can go on and on with examples of health benefits from foods and supplements-- just because I speak the truth should not mean under any circumstance that it turns these supplements into drugs. It is preposterous that they make such non-scientific and 'flat earth' claims, but it is the way they operate. You can't speak or write of any factual benefits and sell the product at the same time.

Kira: So it's almost a kind of censorship of advertising -- you can make the product but you can't advertise what it does.

Ben: Well, you know what's worse than that is the censorship of freedom of speech -- to speak the simple truth, even when it's an accepted scientific fact, can get you in trouble.

Kira: I would like to go into your court case in terms of your friend's supplement company. At this point, they received a notice from the FDA about the testimonials on their website...

Ben: Yes, the testimonials were on the website and at this point, I was not involved yet. What I was told was that they tried to work with the TDH for a period of about 8-12 months to try and make adjustments to satisfy them and they made numerous changes. But every time they made the change, the Attorney General, TDH, FDA came back and made more changes so they were never satisfied and in fact, the assistant attorney general told my friend the intent was really to shut them down period. So they were never going to be satisfied. The only thing is they had set a couple of court dates, which had passed with no trial, so it appeared that the case was over -- that's when I bought some of the assets of my friend's company and opened Utopia Silver Supplements. Needless to say, I naively bought a lawsuit.

Kira: So, basically what you did was you bought out the remainder of your friend's company and made it into a new business entity altogether?

Ben: What I created was a new company; my friend primarily had been selling colloidal silver and colloidal gold and I wanted to sell a broader range of supplements; so that's what I did. I still sell colloidal silver, colloidal gold, and colloidal copper, but I also have a whole range of other supplements too.

Kira: How did you get involved with this FDA court case?

Ben: Well, within a couple of months after I bought the assets and opened up the new company, The Texas Attorney General joined me and my company to the old court case as Defendants.

Kira: And that was when?

Ben: That was in February of 2005.

Kira: Did you have any idea what you were getting yourself into?

Ben: No I didn't, I was kind of naïve (laughing), very naïve. I thought that the court case wasn't going anywhere and my friend had started to move on to another business endeavor and he needed money to put that business in the black, so I stepped in and lo and behold, next thing I know I'm getting blindsided by the government.

Kira: So at this point you had no choice but to go forward, you just couldn't back out... were you really up to this?

Ben: Not really, I couldn't back out of it. I had mortgaged my house to buy the assets to start my company so I had no choice but to fight.

In the next article of this series, Ben Taylor will be talking about the strategy that he used to beat the FDA as well as little known concepts about the real way that the U.S. government is structured. To learn more about Ben Taylor`s fight for health freedom and about colloidal silver products, please visit (http://utopiasilver.com/) . You can read a review about Utopia Silver`s Colloidal Gold and Colloidal Silver Skin and Scalp Bar Soaps, written by Aria Milan, here (https://www.naturalnews.com/024713.html) . Any purchase made from Utopia Silver strengthens this natural health company`s resolve to stand up to the tyranny inflicted by the FDA.

Ben has set up a special discount just for Natural News readers: With the purchase of Advanced Colloidal Silver and both of the colloidal silver and colloidal gold soap bars, the buyer will receive an extra bottle of colloidal silver and a bottle of colloidal gold (a $48 value). In other words, for $35.90 plus shipping, the purchaser will also get $83.90 worth of products. Plus, Utopia Silver has created a discount code just for Natural News readers which will give them a 15% discount on any items not on sale -- this deal doesn`t expire. To take advantage of this special offer, go to (http://www.utopiasilver.com/naturalnews.htm) . Copy this discount code for any additional or future orders: NN001.

About the author

Kira is a freelance writer and journalist always interested in getting to the truth. She enjoys being outdoors and living a natural lifestyle. Kira's hobbies include hiking, swimming, and internatinal travel.