MP calls for ban on 'unsafe' sweetener

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Hallelujah, at last!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! J

 

 

MP calls for ban on 'unsafe' sweetener

 

Felicity Lawrence, consumer affairs correspondent

Thursday December 15, 2005

 

_http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,2763,1667734,00.html_

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,2763,1667734,00.html)

 

 

_The Guardian_ (http://www.guardian.co.uk/)

 

 

 

A member of the parliamentary select committee on food and the environment

yesterday called for emergency action to ban the artificial sweetener

aspartame, used in 6,000 food, drink and medicinal products.

The Liberal Democrat MP Roger Williams said in an adjournment debate in the

Commons that there was " compelling and reliable evidence for this

carcinogenic

substance to be banned from the UK food and drinks market altogether " . In

licensing aspartame for use, regulators around the world had failed in their

 

main task of protecting the public, he told MPs.

 

 

 

 

Mr Williams highlighted new concerns about the additive's safety, raised by

a recent Italian study that linked it to cancer in rats. He said the

history

of aspartame's licensing put " regulators and politicians to shame " , with

the

likes of Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary and former head of

Searle,

the company that discovered the sweetener, " calling in his markers " to get

it approved.

Responding for the government, the public health minister, Caroline Flint,

said a thorough independent review of safety data had been conducted as

recently as 2001 and the Food Standards Agency advice remained the same:

aspartame

is safe for use in food. She said the government took food safety very

seriously.

The European Food Safety Authority would be reviewing the Italian study as

soon as it had full data on it, but an initial review by the UK's expert

committee on toxicity had not been convinced by its authors' interpretation

of

their data. " I am advised that aspartame does not cause cancer, " she said,

adding that artificial sweeteners also help to control obesity.

Aspartame is now consumed on average every day by one in 15 people

worldwide,

most of whom are children, according to the MP. It is used to sweeten no

fewer than 6,000 products, from crisps, confectionery, chewing gums, diet

and

sports drinks to vitamin pills and medicines, including those for children.

Yet

the science that supported its approval was " biased, inconclusive and

incompetent " .

Mr Williams said he was using the immunity he was afforded under

parliamentary privilege to initiate a debate about aspartame's safety which

had been

largely repressed since the early 1980s, with the help of the sweetener

industry's lawyers.

Independent research published last month by the European Ramazzini

Foundation showed moderate regular consumption of aspartame led to a

repeated

incidence of malignant tumours in rats and " should have set alarm bells

ringing in

health departments around the world " , he said. " The World Health

Organisation

recognises such findings in rats as being highly predictive of a

carcinogenic

risk for humans. The contrast between the quality of the science in the

Ramazzini study and the industry studies could not be more clear and more

damaging to the industry. "

Mr Williams, the MP for Brecon and Radnorshire and a Cambridge science

graduate, said he had been looking into the safety of aspartame for more

than a

year. At first he had been unconvinced by the " internet conspiracy theories "

but

he said what he had found had " truly horrified " him.

Sound science and proper regulatory and political independence had been

notable by their absence from the approval of aspartame, he said. In

addition to

Mr Rumsfeld being instrumental in securing aspartame's approval, with the

support of the then newly elected president Ronald Reagan, there had been

numerous examples of decision makers who were worried about aspartame's

safety

being discredited or being removed from their positions. Industry

sympathisers

had been appointed to replace them and were in turn recompensed with

lucrative

jobs working for the sweetener industry.

The European Food Safety Authority said last night that it planned to review

 

the safety of aspartame as " a matter of high priority " in the light of the

Ramazzini Foundation study. The foundation's director, Dr Morando Soffritti,

 

said he expected to send the authority a 1,000-page dossier by the end of

the

month.

The industry's Aspartame Information Service said Mr Williams' material

brought no new information to the public. " The minister's response was

accurate

and on point, " a statement said.