Day 252 - 20 May 96 - Page 20
1 will set up what they call an expert panel, and that is
2 composed of people who have expertise in that particular
3 area. Now, in the case of novel foods and food processing
4 I was again there as a nutritionist. Most of the other
5 members of the panel were food scientists, or you might
6 even, in this particular case, we had a geneticist--
7
8 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Will you keep your voice up, and
9 particularly try and speak out into the court when Miss
10 Steel is asking you questions? It is obviously only civil
11 to speak back to her but some times I have difficulty
12 hearing. I would like to know what novel foods are? I do
13 not know at the moment. I think that is partly what Miss
14 Steel was asking you?
15 A. Novel foods are new foods that might come to this
16 country. For example, twenty years ago Kiwi fruit was a
17 novel food, it was not commonly found, and any new food
18 that comes into the country, or any new food processing
19 procedure like extruding food protects, squirting them
20 through nozzles so they expand when they come out, when new
21 processes are being used they have to be investigated by a
22 scientific committee to ensure, first of all, that they are
23 safe. Secondly, that there is no serious damage done to
24 nutrients. Novel foods that are coming in now are things
25 like genetically engineered foods which have properties
26 that people seem to think are desirable, like tomatoes
27 remaining firm in the refrigerator for 6 months, or
28 something like that. Now, these have to be looked at very
29 carefully by expert committees and the Department of
30 Health's committee, which was one of the subcommittees of
31 the COMA committee, I was actually chairman of that one.
32
33 Q. Would that include something about -- I saw something
34 recently about some fat free--
35 A. This was a food called Olestra.
36
37 Q. Yes?
38 A. It would certainly include that, and we discussed that
39 at great length and produced a report on it.
40
41 Q. You said that at present you were a member of the
42 scientific advisory committee of the British Nutrition
43 Foundation, and that would be nutrition work at the Food
44 and Drink Federation of the Scientific and Technical
45 Committee. Are they both industry organisations, food
46 industry, organisations?
47 A. No, the British Nutritional Foundation protests very
48 vigorously against the notion that it is an organisation
49 that is a spokesman for the food industry. The British
50 Nutrition Foundations funding is entirely from the food
51 industry, but the scientific committee, which is drawn from
52 academia mostly, are scientists who put together to reports
53 and reports on, for example, the relationship between salt
54 and hypotension. Now, that was a very contentious report
55 and it looked at scientific evidence, rather as COMA does,
56 to produce a report. It made many members of the food
57 industry very unhappy but, nevertheless, it was not
58 modified in any way to meet the needs of the food
59 industry. It is an independent scientific body that
60 produces their briefing papers and reports.
