Day 038 - 19 Oct 94 - Page 19
1 Q. Right. In your view are you saying we would ban
2 everything?
3 A. Oh, no, most certainly not. I think it is possible to
4 have a reasonable presumption of safety for quite a few of
5 the compounds. If I may just look at my notes here because
6 I have some numbers?
7
8 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What is that? Is that some notes or the
9 statement?
10 A. No, it is some notes -- it is not the statement --
11 these are notes which I prepared for myself in advance of
12 coming here today.
13
14 Q. What are you looking at now? What are you going to tell us
15 about now?
16 A. OK. The question is, do I think all food additives
17 should be banned? Is it possible to make a judgment of
18 safety? What I was seeking to do next was go back to two
19 sets of estimates I have prepared, one in 1988 and one in
20 1992, of the additives that were then permitted to identify
21 which portion of them I thought were probably safe and
22 which portion were hazardous. Those are numbers which
23 I had not previously incorporated to any statement.
24
25 Q. Tell us about that then.
26 A. In 1988 I published a book with Penguin -----
27
28 Q. Just give us the figures first.
29 A. OK. Of the 299 compounds which I dealt with in that
30 book, I estimated that in 186 cases there was a reasonable
31 presumption of safety; and they are compounds like
32 phosphates, which are typically normal constituents of
33 human cells, and vitamin C; compounds like that, which
34 I think there are perfectly satisfactory grounds for
35 thinking they are safe.
36
37 However, in 85 cases I thought there were grounds for
38 specific doubts about the safety of those compounds. In 25
39 cases altogether I thought there was evidence that the
40 additive could pose a significant toxic hazard to the
41 entire population.
42
43 Q. Just pause a moment. Yes, you got up to 296 I think?
44 A. Yes. Forgive me, these subgroups of compounds do not
45 necessarily sum up to 299, because there is some multiple
46 counting because some compounds fall into two or more
47 categories that I am using.
48
49 Q. Continue with your figures.
50 A. Had I got to 25?
51
52 Q. Yes.
53 A. OK. In 60 of the 299 there was evidence that they
54 could pose a problem of allergy or acute intolerance to a
55 minority of consumers, and in 23 cases the secrecy covering
56 the data was so exceptional that it was not possible to
57 make any independent valuation.
58
59 I attempted to make a similar count in 1992 because there
60 was a major change with the implementation of the single
