Philip Bowring: The World Health Organization walks into a food fight
 
Philip Bowring IHT
Wednesday, April 23, 2003
Diet and disease
 
HONG KONG While the World Health Organization plays a front-line role in the war on severe acute respiratory syndrome, it is coming under sustained attack in Washington from American industry, a sign that the UN health agency may end up fighting vested interests throughout the developed world long after SARS has become a minor scourge.
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If American processed-food industries get their way, U.S. funding for WHO and another UN agency, the Food and Agriculture Organization, or FAO, will be cut by Congress on account of a blunt draft report by a joint panel of experts that blames excessive intake of fats, salt and added sugar for a worldwide epidemic of chronic diseases.
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A complaint by the Sugar Association to Health Secretary Tommy Thompson received written backing from an organization representing other sugar-using food industries and from two senators, Larry Craig, Republican of Idaho, and John Breaux, Democrat of Louisiana. A letter to the WHO director-general, Gro Harlem Brundtland, threatened pressure to end U.S. funding for WHO and FAO if the draft report were not withdrawn.
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"We will exercise every avenue available to expose the dubious nature of the 'Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases' report," the Sugar Association letter to Brundtland read, "including asking congressional appropriators to challenge future funding of the U.S.'s $406 million contributions (including both regular and voluntary funding) to the WHO. Taxpayers' dollars should not be used to support misguided, non-science-based reports which do not add to the health and well-being of Americans … These same funding considerations will also be directed at FAO."
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Brundtland resisted and the report is expected to be officially unveiled Wednesday.
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The Sugar Association has accused the report, which recommends that not more than 10 percent of a diet should come from added sugars, of being "dubious" and not subject to rigorous scientific review. In fact this level of added sugars is already recommended by authorities in several countries, including Britain and the Netherlands.
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This may seem a small matter. But it looks like an early skirmish in a long war between those concerned with global public health and a wide range of processed food industries. Intervention by the United States and other governments largely stymied a 1990 effort to rein in sugar consumption.
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Given what has happened to tobacco, the food industry now looks to face tougher opposition. But many of its members seem as much in denial of the truth about causes of chronic disease as China's former health minister, fired on Sunday after WHO's criticism of Beijing's commitment to dealing with SARS.

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