Welcome to the September 2007 edition of the EPHA Newsletter.
This month we have read about a conflict of interest from a scientist at the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) who was supposed to give advice on the effect of certain food additives on children, at the same time that she was being paid to research for two companies that may use those additives in their products.
The EFSA Board reacted to the news by announcing the ongoing revision of their transparency policy and the creation of a new panel to deal with the issue of food additives.
In 2004, a similar situation occurred when Friends of the Earth issued a report that mentioned conflicts of interests of EFSA experts on Genetically Modified Organism. EFSA also responded to the allegations with a statement.
European citizens and consumers are concerned about the independence of its scientists. Particularly with emerging food safety issues, such as foods with nanoparticles, a technology used in most of the functional food in the market today but that only now is receiving attention from the regulatory bodies.
In 2006, a coalition of health and environment organisations issued a statement where they highlighted the need to establish a solid culture of independence and neutrality in EFSA.
They looked at the transparency of the recruitment procedure of experts, and often found that the database of experts was not being updated with new names. They also noted that confidentiality conditions prevented uncovering conflicts of interests.
Civil society organisations have called for a public on-line searchable database of the declarations of financial interests of the experts as well as details of how EFSA handles the different conflicts of interests of its scientists.
Through EPHA’s work with other Commission Agencies, such as the EMEA, it has proven useful to revise the forms used to declare interests and to offer practical support to the Agency’s scientists on how to fill them in.
EFSA currently has a Stakeholder Consultative Platform where these issues can be discussed. The next meeting will take place on 18-19 October in Brussels. Any relevant stakeholder can request to attend as an observer.
Read all the online articles of our newsletter for September 2007.
EPHA members can find the following new information in the Members Only section:
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