Aspartame and the Ramazzini Institute

In May 2006, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) unequivocally rejected claims by Morando Soffritti of the Ramazzini Institute alleging that aspartame was unsafe. On that occasion, EFSA stated that "no further studies on aspartame are needed, as it is safe for use." On 13 April 2007, Dr Soffritti made further allegations and claimed to have conducted a second rat study on aspartame. A paper was published online by Environmental Health Perspectives on 13 June 2007.

The following points need to be taken into account when evaluating claims about aspartame safety by the Ramazzini Institute:

• The Ramazzini Institute has not submitted its findings to independent review by other scientists before making its allegations public.
• The laboratory at which the Ramazzini work is conducted does not follow internationally recognised Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) procedures. The rat colony is inbred and is not germ-free.
• The Ramazzini Institute does not reveal who requested the studies, nor the source of its funding.
• The Ramazzini Institute refuses to provide government regulators with full access to its results. For example, only 70 pathology slides were provided to EFSA following the first Ramazzini rat study on aspartame in 2005. This compares with approximately 39,000 slides from carcinogenicity studies on aspartame that were independently reviewed before aspartame was first approved.
• The quality of work at the Ramazzini Institute has been criticised by the United Kingdom Department of Health Committee on Carcinogenicity, by the French food safety agency (L'Agence Francaise de Sécurité Sanitaire des Aliments), by the European Food Safety Authority, and by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
• There is an extensive body of data from human studies that supports the safety of aspartame. For example, in 2006 the United States National Cancer Institute published the results of a five year study of over 500,000 people which concluded that there was no link between aspartame and leukemias, lymphomas or brain tumours.
• Aspartame is made from two amino acids, the building blocks of protein that are found in many everyday foods such as meat, fish, cheese, eggs and milk. Aspartame is digested by the body to very small amounts of common dietary components. Aspartame cannot, therefore cause adverse effects.

19 June 2007

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