Day 039 - 20 Oct 94 - Page 42


     
     1        and a partly decomposed version of that called degraded
     2        Carrageenan.
     3
     4        Most of the tests which have been conducted in this field
     5        have been conducted using degraded Carrageenan rather than
     6        of the native form.  Some serious adverse effects have been
     7        shown in animals from degraded Carrageenan, but to a far
     8        lesser extent from Carrageenan itself.  Therefore, the
     9        debate focuses, understandably, on the question of to what
    10        extent, if at all, does Carrageenan degrade in the human
    11        digestive tract?
    12
    13        Various claims have been made in this area suggesting that
    14        Carrageenan gets degraded to a relatively slight degree.
    15        However, in the most recent report from the Scientific
    16        Committee for Food of the European Community, there is a
    17        statement, a rather enigmatic statement, about Carrageenan
    18        which is not graced by any references, but it suggests that
    19        there might be problems.  My response was to contact the
    20        scientific sector.
    21
    22   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Can you refer me to where that is in your
    23        statement?  I have your point about ---
    24        A.  Final paragraph.
    25
    26   Q.   -- what JECFA said and your comment on that.  Where are you
    27        now?
    28        A.  The final paragraph on page 32 starting:  "In work
    29        recently mentioned".  Right?  I contacted the Scientific
    30        Secretariat and asked for all the references that the SCF
    31        were reviewing.  But, so far I have only been told of two
    32        and that is the work by Ekstrom and Ekstrom and his
    33        colleague, both cited there at footnotes 110 and 111.
    34
    35        What these gentlemen have done was to attempt to model as
    36        accurately as they could the conditions within the human
    37        stomach, acknowledging the variations that there are within
    38        different people in terms of the degree of acidity and
    39        other relevant parameters.
    40
    41        They have found, as I say in my statement, that under their
    42        simulated conditions of the human stomach, Carrageenans did
    43        degrade in ways which resulted in the formation of
    44        potentially hazardous materials.  They point out in their
    45        paper, particularly the 1983 paper, published
    46        in Carbohydrate Research on page 94, that you can start
    47        from well-defined materials of high molecular weight of
    48        undegraded Carrageenan uncontaminated with degraded
    49        material.  These may be broken down in the digestive tract
    50        to form undesirable fragments of low molecular weight of 
    51        the kind that produce ulceration in the digestive tract of 
    52        some laboratory animals. 
    53
    54   MR. MORRIS:  Do you want to refer us to document 110?
    55        A.  I would like to but it is not here.  This is blank
    56        here.
    57
    58   MR. RAMPTON:  I have not got 110.
    59
    60   MS. STEEL:  I think that they are in under 111 and 112 actually

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