Sugar industry threatens to scupper WHO
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Sarah Boseley, health editor
Monday April 21, 2003
The Guardian

The sugar industry in the US is threatening to bring the World Health
Organisation to its knees by demanding that Congress end its funding
unless the WHO scraps guidelines on healthy eating, due to be
published on Wednesday.

The threat is being described by WHO insiders as tantamount to
blackmail and worse than any pressure exerted by the tobacco lobby.

In a letter to Gro Harlem Brundtland, the WHO's director general, the
Sugar Association says it will "exercise every avenue available to
expose the dubious nature" of the WHO's report on diet and nutrition,
including challenging its $406m (£260m) funding from the US.

The industry is furious at the guidelines, which say that sugar should
account for no more than 10% of a healthy diet. It claims that the
review by international experts which decided on the 10% limit is
scientifically flawed, insisting that other evidence indicates that a
quarter of our food and drink intake can safely consist of sugar.

"Taxpayers' dollars should not be used to support misguided,
non-science-based reports which do not add to the health and
well-being of Americans, much less the rest of the world," says the
letter. "If necessary we will promote and encourage new laws which
require future WHO funding to be provided only if the organisation
accepts that all reports must be supported by the preponderance of
science."

The association, together with six other big food industry groups, has
also written to the US health secretary, Tommy Thompson, asking him to
use his influence to get the WHO report withdrawn. The coalition
includes the US Council for International Business, comprising more
than 300 companies, including Coca-Cola and Pepsico.

The sugar lobby's strong-arm tactics are nothing new, according to
Professor Phillip James, the British chairman of the International
Obesity Taskforce who wrote the WHO's previous report on diet and
nutrition in 1990. The day after his expert committee had decided on a
10% limit, the World Sugar Organisation "went into overdrive", he
said. "Forty ambassadors wrote to the WHO insisting our report should
be removed, on the grounds that it would do irreparable damage to
countries in the developing world."

Prof James was called in by the American embassy in Geneva "to explain
to them why they were suddenly getting an enormous amount of pressure
from the state department to have our report retracted". The sugar
industry, he discovered, had hired one of Washington's top lobbying
companies.

The sugar lobby was unsuccessful that time, but now, he says, "we are
getting a replay, but much more powerfully based, because the food
industry seems to have a much greater influence on the Bush
government".

Since his 1990 report, the International Life Sciences Institute,
founded by Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, General Foods, Kraft and Procter and
Gamble, has also gained accreditation to the WHO and the UN's Food and
Agriculture Organisation.

At one point, says Prof James, "I was asked not to send any more
emails about any of the dietary aspects of health that related to
sugar. I was told that within 24 hours of my sending a note, the food
industry would be telephoning and arranging dinners."

Aubrey Sheiham, professor of dental public health at University
College, London, Medical School, said he also encountered the strength
of the sugar lobby when he was one of the experts involved in putting
together an EC guideline called Eurodiet.

"I wrote the sugar part of that," he said. "When we met in Crete [in
June 2000], the sugar people said if the 10% [limit] was in, the whole
report would be blocked. I remember we went into a huddle with various
people and some of the diplomats, and we were meeting in people's
bedrooms and saying, how can we work around this?"

In the end, he said, they worked out that a recommendation that nobody
should eat sugar more than four times a day was equivalent to a 10%
limit. But he considered the committee had been bullied.

The Sugar Association objects to the new report having been published
in draft on the WHO's website for consultation purposes, without what
it considers "a broad external peer-review process". It wants a full
economic analysis of the impact of the recommendations on all 192
member countries. In the letter to Dr Brundtland, it demands that
Wednesday's joint launch with the Food and Agriculture Organisation be
cancelled.

The report, Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases,
has already been heavily criticised by the soft drinks industry, whose
members sell virtually everywhere in the world, including developing
countries where malnutrition is beginning to coexist with the obesity
common in affluent countries.

The industry does not accept the WHO report's conclusion that
sweetened soft drinks contribute to the obesity pandemic. The
Washington-based National Soft Drink Association said the report's
"recommendation on added sugars is too restrictive". The association
backs a 25% limit.

The WHO strongly rejects the sugar lobby's criticisms. An official
said a team of 30 independent experts had considered the scientific
evidence and its conclusions were in line with the findings of 23
national reports which have, on average, set targets of 10% for added
sugars.

In the letter to Mr Thompson, the sugar lobby relies heavily on a
recent report from the Institute of Medicine for its claim that a 25%
sugar intake is acceptable. But last week, Harvey Fineberg, president
of the institute, wrote to Mr Thompson to warn that the report was
being misinterpreted. He says it does not make a recommendation on
sugar intake.