Back to listing

Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 18:39:02 +0100
Reply-To: PSA Forum
Sender: PSA Forum
From: AGUILAR Fernando
Subject: Aguilar replies to Dr Groth comments on paper 2.b
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Although forming part of a stakeholder group with strong opinions (Consumers union) I welcome Dr Groth rather balanced comments to this forum. Concerning its comments on paper 2.b -Ensuring transparency, particularly point (3) Disclosure of interests, although I completely agree with the points he had raised up, I am afraid that disclosing information on an individual member's potential interests in the way his is suggesting could have unwelcome consequences. I will not go into details but I remember one JECFA evaluation that was put into question on the argument that the presence during the meeting of a consultant having consultancy ties with industry could have influenced the conclusions of the Committee. Thus, issuing something like "Four of the panel members have consulted within the past five years for companies that sell food additives, while two members have consulted for consumer organizations that advocate food safety", in my opinion, could be very badly appreciated. I could rather suggest that, in the same way that we deal with those issues at our agency, a member specialist on a particular domain having a potential conflict of interests (and this could also included members having declared interests in regulatory or other risk management interests) could still participate to the preparatory risk assessment work and preliminary discussions but will be excluded from the final stages of the evaluation.

In that case, published information could then be aggregated, e.g. "Four of the panel members have consulted within the past five years for companies that sell food additives, while two members have consulted for consumer organizations that advocate food safety but none of them participated in the final stages of the evaluation". This would in my opinion, ensure even further that the panel as a whole is objective and unbiased and its evaluations would not hold up to criticism.

I emphasize again that my participation to this forum is strictly on personal bases.

Cordialement,
Fernando AGUILAR, PhD.
Responsable du secrétariat scientifique du Comité d'experts spécialisé "Additifs, Arômes et Auxiliaires technologiques" Unité d'Evaluation des Risques Physico-chimiques Direction de l'Evaluation des Risques Nutritionnels et Sanitaires Agence Française de Sécurité Sanitaire des Aliments (http://www.afssa.fr) 27-31, Avenue du Général Leclerc BP 19, 94701 Maisons-Alfort France Tél.: (+33) 1 49 77 38 94 FAX: (+33) 1 49 77 13 52 E-mail: f.aguilar@afssa.fr