Day 039 - 20 Oct 94 - Page 64
1 Q. It is not the servant of any particular government or any
2 particular national interest?
3 A. I think it is -- the impression I have in my contacts
4 with the secretariat of JECFA is that JECFA is, in effect,
5 the servants of the governments that are providing the
6 funding to support the scientific secretariat of JECFA.
7 But I would say in respect of JECFA again the situation is
8 more closely aligned to that in the UK than in the US, and
9 the scientific secretariat of JECFA do not themselves
10 always conduct independent searches of evidence. They rely
11 on industry to provide them with the evidence. Therefore,
12 from time to time, I believe, evidence fails to be put
13 before JECFA because it has not been sent to the Scientific
14 Civil Service by the relevant industrial groups.
15
16 Q. No, I am afraid, Dr. Millstone, it goes a very great deal
17 further than that. You will not accept, as I have
18 understood the thrust of your evidence, that the acceptable
19 daily intakes recommended from time to time by JECFA (and
20 they are only recommendations) are properly based in
21 scientific knowledge, will you?
22 A. It is correct that I contend (and have contended
23 consistently for some years) that the scientific evidence
24 which is available is not by itself sufficient to sustain
25 many (but not all) of the ADIs which JECFA have set.
26
27 Q. Your approach to this problem is in direct conflict with
28 that of JECFA ---
29 A. Yes.
30
31 Q. -- with that of the European body of the Scientific
32 Committee for Food; with that of the Committee on
33 Toxicology in this country; am I right?
34 A. In respect of some but not all compounds, yes. I have
35 indicated ----
36
37 Q. No, please, Dr. Millstone, we are discussing eight specific
38 compounds.
39 A. In respect of these, yes.
40
41 Q. In respect of those, yes?
42 A. Yes.
43
44 Q. My question is this: Why do you suppose that it is, if you
45 are the leading independent expert on food additives safety
46 policy in this country at the present day and, presumably,
47 for some number of years past, they do not pay attention
48 to, absorb and conform with what you say?
49 A. It is very difficult to know because they operate in a
50 relatively opaque manner. The members of the Joint Expert
51 Committee on Food Additives are formally nominated by, on
52 the one hand, the World Health Organisation, on the other
53 hand, the Food & Agriculture Organisation. But, as far as
54 I understand these matters, those two organisations, the
55 UN, FAO and the WHO, derive their nominations from
56 nominations that come forward from independent individual
57 governments who are themselves members of the overarching
58 body called Codex Alimentarius Commission, plus the
59 European Commission. If you want to know why, for example,
60 the British government or the European Commission has not
