UK MPs lash out over obesity
Additives change kids’ behaviour – researchers
Mixed verdict in GM canola suit
Bad week for Big Tobacco

Bad week for Big Tobacco

It’s been a bad week for Big Tobacco. Firstly, a US federal judge ruled that the US government can pursue the tobacco industry for $280 billion in profits, opening the way for a civil racketeering suit. Then comes news that British researchers have uncovered deliberate efforts by British American Tobacco to hide documents that a court ordered it to make public.

The Washington Post reports that Judge Gladys Kessler told cigarette makers they will be liable for the $280 billion if the government proves its case that they knowingly lied for decades about the dangers of smoking and the addictive qualities of nicotine. US law allows the government to claim all profits earned from fraud.

Today’s The Lancet carries several articles that claim to show that BAT deliberately withheld or obstructed research into an archive of some eight million documents produced in anti-tobacco litigation over several decades. However, a group of researchers from the London School of Health and Tropical Medicine has managed to scan each document and plans to make it available on the Internet as the Guildford Archiving Project.

The researchers said a legal settlement in Minnesota, US stipulated that for 10 years the public should have access to documents produced during litigation against the tobacco industry, via the creation of two depositories. The largest is in Minnesota, where an independent paralegal firm ensures public access. The second is in Guildford, UK but managed by BAT itself. "From the outset, the efforts of researchers to investigate the contents of the estimated eight million pages of documents housed there have been severely hampered," the researchers said.

An article by researchers at the Mayo Clinic published in The Lancet reveals practices by BAT that are "tantamount to concealing what is supposed to be public information". Their analysis of newly-produced documents from ongoing litigation describes, for example:

In addition, they claim visitors to the Guildford Depository have to contend with "almost fortress-like conditions", including:

The researchers also claim that the depository now appears to contain some 181 fewer files (over 36,000 pages at BAT’s estimate) than it did in January 2000, and the inability of the consortium to access documents unilaterally classified as ‘privileged’ by BAT and thus withheld from public scrutiny.

Spokesmen for BAT said the depositary was set up to serve enquiries from lawyers rather than the public, and that besides, if the researchers could scan all those documents, access couldn’t have been that difficult.

Regarding the US Department of Justice case, BAT said "We have always been and remain confident of a favourable outcome, once the trial commences in September 2004. We can't put a figure on how much we have spent on legal fees for this case.  Legal fees are one of the expenses incurred running a tobacco company."
As to its financial exposure to the case, BAT said "The claim is for joint and several liability so BAT's exposure is $289 billion, as is every other company involved in the action."

GM

Mixed verdict in GM canola suit

Canada’s Supreme Court has reaffirmed Monsanto’s rights to the intellectual property it develops in the form of Roundup Ready canola seed, but left unclear Monsanto’s responsibility for controlling its spread "in the wild".

The decision left both sides out of pocket, but Percy Schmeiser, the 74-year old Saskatoon farmer that Monsanto sued, does not have to pay Monsanto its $15/acre licence fee, even though the court found he had planted 1,000 acres to RR canola. However, he had to give back all RR seed he had.

Research

Additives change kids’ behaviour – researchers

Food and drink that contain artificial colourants and preservatives make children hyperactive, say researchers at the University of Southampton.

In a double-blind, placebo-controlled experiment, 277 three-year-olds from the Isle of Wight were found to become disruptive and inattentive after consuming food and drink containing artificial food colourings and a benzoate preservative, based on parents’ reports. However, these symptoms were not reproduced under clinical conditions.

The UK’s Food Standards Agency, which funded the initial study, has awarded the research team a further £750,000 to investigate these anomalies in the Food and Behaviour in Children" (FABIC) study. The new study will also explore children's biological reactions to food additives and how these might influence behaviour.

Obesity

UK MPs lash out over obesity

The British parliamentary select committee on health this week blamed everyone who has anything to do with food, especially the government, for the country’s "obesity epidemic".

Perhaps most surprising is that the criticism has come decades after technology has transformed the process of getting food from farm to fork, and economic growth has made more foods more affordable.

There is little doubt that persistent government policies have distorted the food market. In most Western countries, farmers are among the most privileged citizens, often subsidised to grow things no-one wants or which could be supplied cheaper from elsewhere.

The call for food self-sufficiency never held true, even during World War Two. But governments have, or the farm lobby has persuaded them, to hold on to this fiction. The need to sell the surplus has lowered food prices but raised taxes. To overcome shortages led to global distribution systems. Giving people more choices led to global brand management, and to product development to satisfy manufactured demand for novel tastes.

Unquestionably much of this has been for the good. Better nutrition and better medical care means we mostly live longer. Fewer people starve to death, more babies survive because they and their mothers eat better and drink cleaner water. The World Health Organisation reports that sometime in the late 1990s, for the first time, the world produced more food energy than it consumed. It wasn’t evenly divided, but it nailed the Malthusian proposition that population growth meant the world would run out of food.

There is every reason to believe that the world will continue to produce more calories than we consume. At a global level, there is no food shortage to worry about. But now the politicians would have us worry about the surplus.