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MP calls for ban on 'unsafe' sweetener
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| http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,,1667734,00.html
Felicity Lawrence, consumer affairs correspondent
Thursday December 15, 2005
The Guardian
A member of the parliamentary select committee on food and the environment
yesterday called for emergency action to ban the artificial sweetener aspartame,
used in 6,000 food, drink and medicinal products.
The Liberal Democrat MP Roger Williams said in an adjournment debate in the
Commons that there was "compelling and reliable evidence for this carcinogenic
substance to be banned from the UK food and drinks market altogether". In
licensing aspartame for use, regulators around the world had failed in their
main task of protecting the public, he told MPs.
Mr Williams highlighted new concerns about the additive's safety, raised by a
recent Italian study that linked it to cancer in rats. He said the history of
aspartame's licensing put "regulators and politicians to shame", with the likes
of Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary and former head of Searle, the
company that discovered the sweetener, "calling in his markers" to get it
approved.
Responding for the government, the public health minister, Caroline Flint, said
a thorough independent review of safety data had been conducted as recently as
2001 and the Food Standards Agency advice remained the same: aspartame is safe
for use in food. She said the government took food safety very seriously.
The European Food Safety Authority would be reviewing the Italian study as soon
as it had full data on it, but an initial review by the UK's expert committee on
toxicity had not been convinced by its authors' interpretation of their data. "I
am advised that aspartame does not cause cancer," she said, adding that
artificial sweeteners also help to control obesity.
Aspartame is now consumed on average every day by one in 15 people worldwide,
most of whom are children, according to the MP. It is used to sweeten no fewer
than 6,000 products, from crisps, confectionery, chewing gums, diet and sports
drinks to vitamin pills and medicines, including those for children. Yet the
science that supported its approval was "biased, inconclusive and incompetent".
Mr Williams said he was using the immunity he was afforded under parliamentary
privilege to initiate a debate about aspartame's safety which had been largely
repressed since the early 1980s, with the help of the sweetener industry's
lawyers.
Independent research published last month by the European Ramazzini Foundation
showed moderate regular consumption of aspartame led to a repeated incidence of
malignant tumours in rats and "should have set alarm bells ringing in health
departments around the world", he said. "The World Health Organisation
recognises such findings in rats as being highly predictive of a carcinogenic
risk for humans. The contrast between the quality of the science in the
Ramazzini study and the industry studies could not be more clear and more
damaging to the industry."
Mr Williams, the MP for Brecon and Radnorshire and a Cambridge science graduate,
said he had been looking into the safety of aspartame for more than a year. At
first he had been unconvinced by the "internet conspiracy theories" but he said
what he had found had "truly horrified" him.
Sound science and proper regulatory and political independence had been notable
by their absence from the approval of aspartame, he said. In addition to Mr
Rumsfeld being instrumental in securing aspartame's approval, with the support
of the then newly elected president Ronald Reagan, there had been numerous
examples of decision makers who were worried about aspartame's safety being
discredited or being removed from their positions. Industry sympathisers had
been appointed to replace them and were in turn recompensed with lucrative jobs
working for the sweetener industry.
The European Food Safety Authority said last night that it planned to review the
safety of aspartame as "a matter of high priority" in the light of the Ramazzini
Foundation study. The foundation's director, Dr Morando Soffritti, said he
expected to send the authority a 1,000-page dossier by the end of the month.
The industry's Aspartame Information Service said Mr Williams' material brought
no new information to the public. "The minister's response was accurate and on
point," a statement said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,,1667734,00.html
Can you imagine that? Those "internet conspiracy theories" have been proven
right.
Hey, Rense.com has loads of stuff on Aspartame and Donald Rumsfield but then it
is just those "internet conspiracy theories" n'est ce pas?
Alan
"Can't you see we're still here,
Can't you see we're still here,
Singing loud; Singing clear,
We shall not go under,
We're still here."
Nemesis Peace Centre
http://www.veloceraptor.free-online.../protector.html
Abuse of Women and Children
http://theoriginalfirebird.blogspot.com/
Nemesis News
http://lordcerneabbas.blogspot.com/
Absolute Anarchy
http://lordcerneabbastoo.blogspot.com/
http://www.john-lennon.com/
| |
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| In article <memo.20051215111539.1044V@veloceraptor.free-online.co.uk>,
alan@veloceraptor.free-online.co.uk (Alan) wrote:
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,,1667734,00.html
> Felicity Lawrence, consumer affairs correspondent
> Thursday December 15, 2005
> The Guardian
>
> A member of the parliamentary select committee on food and the environment
> yesterday called for emergency action to ban the artificial sweetener
> aspartame, used in 6,000 food, drink and medicinal products.
>
> The Liberal Democrat MP Roger Williams said in an adjournment debate in the
> Commons that there was "compelling and reliable evidence for this
> carcinogenic substance to be banned from the UK food and drinks market
> altogether". In licensing aspartame for use, regulators around the world had
> failed in their main task of protecting the public, he told MPs.
>
> Mr Williams highlighted new concerns about the additive's safety, raised by
> a recent Italian study that linked it to cancer in rats. He said the history
> of aspartame's licensing put "regulators and politicians to shame", with the
> likes of Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary and former head of Searle,
> the company that discovered the sweetener, "calling in his markers" to get it
> approved.
>
> Responding for the government, the public health minister, Caroline Flint,
> said a thorough independent review of safety data had been conducted as
> recently as 2001 and the Food Standards Agency advice remained the same:
> aspartame is safe for use in food. She said the government took food safety
> very seriously.
>
> The European Food Safety Authority would be reviewing the Italian study as
> soon as it had full data on it, but an initial review by the UK's expert
> committee on toxicity had not been convinced by its authors' interpretation
> of their data. "I am advised that aspartame does not cause cancer," she said,
> adding that artificial sweeteners also help to control obesity.
>
> Aspartame is now consumed on average every day by one in 15 people worldwide,
> most of whom are children, according to the MP. It is used to sweeten no
> fewer than 6,000 products, from crisps, confectionery, chewing gums, diet and
> sports drinks to vitamin pills and medicines, including those for children.
> Yet the science that supported its approval was "biased, inconclusive and
> incompetent".
>
> Mr Williams said he was using the immunity he was afforded under
> parliamentary privilege to initiate a debate about aspartame's safety which
> had been largely repressed since the early 1980s, with the help of the
> sweetener industry's lawyers.
>
> Independent research published last month by the European Ramazzini
> Foundation showed moderate regular consumption of aspartame led to a repeated
> incidence of malignant tumours in rats and "should have set alarm bells
> ringing in health departments around the world", he said. "The World Health
> Organisation recognises such findings in rats as being highly predictive of a
> carcinogenic risk for humans. The contrast between the quality of the science
> in the Ramazzini study and the industry studies could not be more clear and
> more damaging to the industry."
>
> Mr Williams, the MP for Brecon and Radnorshire and a Cambridge science
> graduate, said he had been looking into the safety of aspartame for more than
> a year. At first he had been unconvinced by the "internet conspiracy
> theories" but he said what he had found had "truly horrified" him.
>
> Sound science and proper regulatory and political independence had been
> notable by their absence from the approval of aspartame, he said. In addition
> to Mr Rumsfeld being instrumental in securing aspartame's approval, with the
> support of the then newly elected president Ronald Reagan, there had been
> numerous examples of decision makers who were worried about aspartame's
> safety being discredited or being removed from their positions. Industry
> sympathisers had been appointed to replace them and were in turn recompensed
> with lucrative jobs working for the sweetener industry.
>
> The European Food Safety Authority said last night that it planned to review
> the safety of aspartame as "a matter of high priority" in the light of the
> Ramazzini Foundation study. The foundation's director, Dr Morando Soffritti,
> said he expected to send the authority a 1,000-page dossier by the end of the
> month.
>
> The industry's Aspartame Information Service said Mr Williams' material
> brought no new information to the public. "The minister's response was
> accurate and on point," a statement said.
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,,1667734,00.html
>
> Can you imagine that? Those "internet conspiracy theories" have been proven
> right.
>
> Hey, Rense.com has loads of stuff on Aspartame and Donald Rumsfield but then
> it is just those "internet conspiracy theories" n'est ce pas?
http://www.rense.com/general69/newm.htm
New Mexico Aspartame
Battle Depends On
Attorney General's Opinion
From Dr. Betty Martini, D.Hum.
Bettym19@mindspring.com
12-15-5
Release date: 2005-12-14
(Newswire Today) _ Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2005-12-14 - Aspartame Battle in NM
shifts from Boards to Attorney General's Opinion on how an FDA approved product
and neurotoxic food and medicine additive can be challenged despite industry
claims of federal preemption.
Both the New Mexico Board of Pharmacy and the Environmental Improvement Board
have petitions before them to amend the Administrative Code with a new chapter
which bans neurotoxic additives, to medications and to foods.
There are over 6000 food products with aspartame and over 500 medications,
primarily children's meds and vitamins, which contain aspartame, even though
everyone knows that it turns to Formaldehyde (among other toxic metabolites).
The world's largest Aspartame manufacturer, Ajinomoto (also the world's largest
MSG manufacturer) has hired the Rodey Firm and a Washington D.C. law firm FDA
specialist to hammer these two boards into silence and to force them to abandon
any future hearings on aspartame, primarily riding on the absurd legal logic
that because aspartame was approved by the FDA, any state level challenge would
therefore be preempted by the Federal approval.
The Ajinomoto/Rodey lawyer in so many words told the Pharmacy Board on November
14 that they didn't have the expertise nor the manpower to read, let alone to
comprehend the FDA's one to ten million pages proving that aspartame was safe,
even though 6 out of 9 of them are pharmacists, and that the reason the
petitioners, myself and Santa Fe Pediatrician Ken Stoller, came to them instead
of the FDA with this petition, is that we thought they "must be easier to push
around."
In fact, the FDA has ignored all of the petitions to ban aspartame, and a
meaningful preemption for aspartame is impossible, given the political channels
used to get its approval in 1981, and for soft drinks, over the objections of
the National Soft Drink Association, in 1983. I believe that the FDA's approval
processes for food additives are so corrupt and manipulated by corporate
mendacity and phony research, that the states' regulatory processes are the only
possible salvation for health in America.
Under pressure from Ajinomoto/Rodey and a bit less pressure from the Montgomery
and Andrews firm, retained by industry front group, the Calorie Control Council,
both boards have asked Attorney General Patricia Madrid for a formal Attorney
General's Opinion as to whether this Federal-preemption-due-to-FDA-approval
crumbling mythologies will prevent any action by the two boards.
The co-petitioners and other consumer advocates who recognize the importance of
this Attorney General's Opinion are hopeful that with her generally strong
stands for New Mexico states' rights over the past 7 years, as well as the clear
authority for these boards explicitly delineated in several NM statutes to
examine such questions, that her Opinion will be a landmark one for consumer
protection efforts in every state.
Rather than wait till such opinion is delivered, however, I encourage the reader
to write to the Honorable Patricia Madrid, and to her Deputy, the Honorable
Stuart Bluestone, the Bataan Building, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501, and make your
views known. You can contact them directly at (505) 827-6000 and (505) 827-6004,
and you can email them as well. You can also discuss this urgent medical need
with your legislators and encourage them to support the creation of a powerful
new New Mexico Nutrition Council, described in Senator Altamirano's Senate Bill
525 from 2005, which you can read on the NM Legislature website. Altamirano is
the President Pro Tempore of the New Mexico Senate.
Governor Bill Richardson's views on this are clear: he supports the EIB's
decision to move forward with aspartame hearings, because "the Federal
government has not done enough to warn people about the dangers of aspartame,"
he stated on October 5 to the Albuquerque Journal. Richardson can be reached at
505 827-3000; Press Sec. is Billy Sparks.
For more information, please go to the website for the World Natural Health
Organization, wnho.net, and for the Aspartame Toxicity Information Center, in
Concord, New Hampshire. Please closely examine the articles by H.J.Roberts,
M.D., author of Aspartame Disease: an Ignored Epidemic, and by Neurosurgeon
Russell Blaylock, M.D., author of Exicitoxins: the Taste that Kills.
The Aspartame/formaldehyde and the Thimerosal/mercury in vaccines are tied to
together in these considerations before the two New Mexico Boards, because they
are both proven neurotoxins with deadly neurodegenerative effects, and this is
the subject of the additional chapter for the Administrative Code. Such
additions are the concerns of the Boards and Commissions. The statutes
delineating the entire authority to implement these permanent bans are cited in
detail at www.wnho.net, click on aspartame.
It is very clear that a great deal depends on the Attorney General's Opinion as
a formal legal document, because if states are powerless to question any FDA
approved product, then the corporate plutocracy/kleptocracy and "toxic
idiocracy" which has dumped all of these neurotoxic additives and carcinogens
into the American diet and American pharmacology win the right to keep doing so,
to the extreme detriment of the health of every American.
The international implications are clear also, since these same corporations
like Ajinomoto and many American companies use their products FDA approval to
push approval through in hundreds of other nations in the world, by saying: "The
FDA has the most stringent approval processes in the world."
Clearly, this is an absurd and flawed bit of logic, and once it is dispensed
with and these crumbling mythologies are discarded forever, everyone's health
can improve, particularly that of the children in New Mexico, in the United
States, and all over the world.
The aspartame corporate dominoes are beginning to fall, starting in New Mexico,
through the relevant regulatory bodies of the state, and this consumer
protection effort could take place in every state in the United States,
depending on the statutes of each state, and the energy advocates are willing to
devote to this vital and long overdue effort.
Stephen Fox
New Millennium Fine Art
stephen[...]santafefineart.com
505 983-2002
Agency/Source: New Mexico Nutrition Council
Related Link: http://wnho.net
Note from Dr. Betty Martini, Founder, Mission Possible Intl, 9270 River Club
Parkway, Duluth, Georgia 30097:, 770 242-2599 : For those who want to help
please write the Attorney General today at the address above. Remember if we can
get aspartame out of New Mexico we can get it off the planet. Help set a
precedent for the world to follow. This is very very important. If you're a
victim explain what it has done to your life. Give the Attorney General
encouragement. If you want to keep up with stay what is going on you can
subscribe to the Aspartame Information List on www.wnho.net You can also get
information on aspartame from http://www.dorway.com and the Aspartame Toxicity
Center, http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame
The Aspartame documentary is Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World, www.docworkers.com
Show it everywhere. You can get 24 page booklets on asparstame for distribution
called the Artificially Sweetened Times from the Idaho Observer,
www.idaho-observer.com The new ones have information on New Mexico.
© PRZOOM.com - NewswireToday.com - Press Release
& Newswire Distribution Network.
Hey suck it down all you *feral* *cave* *dwellers*
And do keep on laughing as I talk to myself, but at least Rumsfield isn't
running the U.K.
Alan
"Can't you see we're still here,
Can't you see we're still here,
Singing loud; Singing clear,
We shall not go under,
We're still here."
Nemesis Peace Centre
http://www.veloceraptor.free-online.../protector.html
Abuse of Women and Children
http://theoriginalfirebird.blogspot.com/
Nemesis News
http://lordcerneabbas.blogspot.com/
Absolute Anarchy
http://lordcerneabbastoo.blogspot.com/
http://www.john-lennon.com/
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