11 December 2003

Mr Greg Roche

General Manager

Food Safety, Legal and Evaluation

Food Standards Australia New Zealand

PO Box 7186

CANBERRA ACT 2610

Dear Mr Roche

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST - ADDITIVES

We refer to your response of 27 November 2003, in which you refuse our request for the approval statement and scientific evidence upon which approval was based for propionates (280-283) and ribonucleotides (627, 631, 635) on the grounds that such documents do not exist.

Do you not find it extraordinary that FSANZ, which is created by the Food Standards Australia New Zealand Act 1991, has reviewed these additives and extended their use without any available evidence, scientific or otherwise?

Your Act says, inter alia, that FSANZ in "developing or reviewing food regulatory measures and variations of food regulatory measures"…must have regard to…"the need for standards to be based on risk analysis using the best available scientific evidence" yet FSANZ can provide no such evidence after a major years-long review.
Proposal P150 (March 1997) (pages1,8), and your various Ministers at various times, have promised that "At full assessment, ANZFA will review the existing toxicological evaluations of the additives in the draft proposed standard …to ensure that the public safety has been maintained." yet you have not done this and can provide no evidence upon which approvals were made.

You then proceed, in the absence of any documents, to offer gratis:

"currently available toxicological data supports the safe use of propionic acid and its salts as food additives and the safe use of ribonucleotides as flavour enhancers for the vast majority of the population"

What we have been asking for some years, and in this very FOI request, is to see the "currently available toxicological data" which you claim to have used in arriving at the final approvals. This is the very evidence that you have just informed us does not exist! Kafka come home.

"FSANZ is not aware that any scientifically credible data that supports a link between exposure to these food additives and behavioural effects in children."

In making our FOI request, we have not sought to make the link that you ascribe to us: all that we have sought is the evidence that you used in deciding to extend the use of these additives. However, we attach the only public scientific paper concerning propionates that does make that link. For ribonucleotides, the effects are primarily itchy skin rashes, not behaviour, as may be seen in detail on our website.

"FSANZ is also not aware that the safety of propionic acid or ribonucleotides has been raised as an issue in any other country."

How could FSANZ or any other food regulatory agency be aware of effects from these food additives if there is no system in place to record such occurrences? For instance, over more than five years we have provided FSANZ and its predecessor with hundreds of case studies of the effects of these additives, yet we are certain that you would report in international circles that these additives are not an issue. Further, Australia has the highest and widest levels of use of propionates, so any effects might be expected to first become evident here, yet FSANZ has no system to record such effects.

The conclusions we must draw from this FOI request are that

FSANZ has reviewed the Food Standards Code for propionates and ribonucleotides without considering any scientific evidence, in breach of the FSANZ Act, and
FSANZ continue to believe that the absence of evidence is evidence of absence of effects from these additives, in the face of numerous consumer reports of such effects.

We shall now make a formal FOI request to NHMRC for the evidence provided for 280-283 propionates at JECFA Meeting 17 in 1973, and for 635 ribonucleotides at JECFA 18 in 1974 and for 627 and 631 at JECFA 41 in 1993 and seek subsequent scientific evidence from them.

Yours truly

Mrs Sue Dengate Dr Howard Dengate

cc Mr Graham Peachey, CEO FSANZ.