- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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".
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- 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.
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- 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."
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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