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.

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