Scientists bow to call for more transparency

Date: 16/03/2000

By Renée Cordes

THE European Commission has agreed to publish the annual declarations of interests made by members of the EU's scientific food committee for the first time, bowing to pressure for greater transparency.

All 19 scientists on the influential expert panel which advises the EU executive on consumer health and food safety issues have agreed to make their declarations public following complaints from interest groups that their failure to do so was undermining their credibility.

The scientists also agreed to "immediately and explicitly" inform the committee if any issues come up before the group which raise specific potential conflicts of interest.

Enterprise Commissioner Erkki Liikanen agreed to the move in response to strong pressure from more than 50 interest groups and MEPs, who called for a crackdown on committee members who did not disclose work for firms which would be directly affected by the panel's decisions.

Concern over the issue was fuelled by claims that "commercial interests" may have influenced the decision to adopt the 1999 directive on dietary foods intended for medical purposes, which covers breast-milk substitutes for babies with health problems.

The decision to publish committee members' declarations has been welcomed by British Labour MEP Glenys Kinnock, who wrote to the Commission earlier this year asking what it planned to do to make the panel's work more transparent.

"I think we can now feel a lot more confident that people are getting independent advice," she said this week, although she added that the committee should ideally also be required to publish minutes of its meetings. "It should be a natural progression towards more openness," she insisted.

Only four of the current committee members said they had interests to declare in relation to the directive on dietary foods. Patti Rundall of Baby Milk Action, which wrote to the Commission on behalf of the 50 interests groups, said these four should not be singled out for criticism but rather applauded for coming forward.

She also stressed that these interests did not necessarily mean the members' impartiality had been jeopardised.

In his response to the clamour for action, Liikanen pointed out that existing EU rules require scientific committee members to inform the Commission each year of all the interests which "could be considered prejudicial to their independence".

He said that although the Commission had now decided to publish the declarations of current members of the food committee, former panel members were under "no particular obligations". The interest groups had demanded that ex-advisors' declarations be released as well.

Commission officials say they plan to publish the declarations of members of all the EU's other scientific committees on the Internet, but have yet to decide what information to release and in what format.

The European Commission has agreed to publish the annual declarations of interests made by members of the EU's scientific food committee for the first time, bowing to pressure for greater transparency.