website: www.fedupwithfoodadditives.info

1 August 2003 

Mr Graham Peachey

CEO FSANZ

PO Box 7186

CANBERRA ACT 2610 

Dear Mr Peachey

This letter is further to our letter to you of 15 April 2003, to which we have not had the courtesy of acknowledgement to date.

Several times over the past five years we have requested to know the scientific basis upon which approval has been given for particular food additives and we have urged Ministers to seek this information from FSANZ as well. However there has never been any response to us other than a bland reassurance that there has been a sound and scientific assessment. This is at odds with processes for agricultural and veterinary chemicals, where each approval is publicly documented in considerable detail.

For propionic acid and its salts (280-283), for instance, all we can find is a World Health Organisation report which tested the additives internally on cats, dogs, rats, rabbits and one man, and concluded they were safe at all levels. There were no tests on children or for behavioural and learning toxicity. For 282 in particular, the only public scientific evidence with children is of harm.

With flavour enhancer ribonucleotides (627, 631, 635) we can find no public scientific evidence of a safety assessment, while we receive continuing reports of serious public harm, detailed on www.fedupwithfoodadditives.info and provided to you several times without effect.

 Therefore we are now making formal application under the Commonwealth Freedom of Information Act 1982 for the FSANZ approval statement and information upon which the approval was based for the propionates (280-283) and ribonucleotides (627, 631, 635).

We also seek remission of the FOI application fee on the basis of public interest, since we represent a large non-funded group working entirely in the public interest.

Yours truly

 Mrs Sue Dengate Dr Howard Dengate