Day 038 - 19 Oct 94 - Page 37


     
     1
     2        My understanding is that prior to that time, members of
     3        those committees were expected to declare their interests
     4        to the civil servants of the Department of Health and,
     5        perhaps, the chair of the Committee but it was not -- the
     6        information was then not necessarily shared with the other
     7        members of the committees and there was no public
     8        register.
     9
    10        Since 1991 there has been a public register and members of
    11        the Committee on Toxicity, but it is unfortunately quite an
    12        incomplete register, so that for some members they just say
    13        they have been consultants to many chemicals companies
    14        without listing those companies by name.
    15
    16        The position at the SCF and JECFA is that there is no
    17        requirement and no obligation and no expectation for the
    18        members of those committees to declare any relevant
    19        commercial interest which they may have.
    20
    21   Q.   I want to put it to you:  Are the decisions that are being
    22        made that are relevant to additives being used in this
    23        country considered, can be seen to be, biased in one
    24        direction or another; if so, can you just summarise?
    25        A.  OK.  I am not -- I do not make judgments about any of
    26        the particular individuals which those committees are
    27        comprised, but I do believe that there is very substantial
    28        evidence that there is institutional bias within those
    29        organisations as a whole.  That is to say, time and time
    30        again I find evidence that compounds might be hazardous
    31        treated far more sceptically than evidence that the
    32        compounds might be safe, and when the benefit of the doubt
    33        has to be ascribed, time and again it seems to me the
    34        evidence is quite clear that the Committee on Toxicity, the
    35        Scientific Committee for Food and the Joint Expert
    36        Committee on Food Additives give the benefit of the doubt
    37        to industry and to the compound and not to the consumers.
    38        If you wish to characterise that as a systematic bias,
    39        I would not contest that.
    40
    41   Q.   Are the interests of industry and consumers at different
    42        poles, in conflict with each other?
    43        A.  They are not always in conflict, but there are
    44        circumstances under which conflicts can arise.  It clearly
    45        is not in industry's interests for their products
    46        conspicuously to cause harm to the people who buy their
    47        products.  The interests of consumers goes rather further.
    48        They are interested not merely in not being rapidly and
    49        conspicuously ill by the food they consume, but not being
    50        made ill by the food they consume at all over their entire 
    51        lifetime. 
    52 
    53        It seems to me quite clear that in many cases if one is
    54        favouring the interests of consumers one would make
    55        different judgments and develop different interpretations
    56        of the evidence than if one were favouring industry.  So,
    57        I believe that there are clear cases where the interests do
    58        not coincide, though there may be some limited
    59        circumstances in which they do coincide.
    60

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