Fallon Currie Consulting

This article is part of the Lobbying Portal, a sunlight project from Spinwatch.

Fallon Currie Consulting is a PR/lobbying firm. It has set up websites, presented as information services for the public, which give positive messages about the controversial food additives aspartame and MSG (see below).

Reassuring the public about the safety of aspartame

In 2000 Fallon Currie set up a website, Aspartame Information (http://www.aspartame-info.com), to give information to the public about the controversial artificial sweetener aspartame.

In 2009 Ailbhe Fallon, managing director of Fallon-Currie, who described herself as a spokesperson for Aspartame Information, told FoodNavigator.com that a reassurance about the safety of aspartame from the EFSA "came as no surprise". EFSA's assurance came in response to a study by the Cesare Maltoni Cancer Research Center of the European Ramazzini Foundation (ERF) published in June 2007 by Soffritti et al. The study's authors concluded that their results confirmed and reinforced their first experimental demonstration of aspartame’s multipotential carcinogenicity at a dose level close to the human ADI (acceptable daily intake). They also suggested that carcinogenic effects are increased when lifespan exposure to aspartame begins during foetal life.

The EFSA concluded that the findings did not provide sufficient evidence to call into question their classification of aspartame as safe for human consumption. In a statement defending aspartame to Foodnavigator.com, an EFSA spokesman said:

Most of the lymphomas and leukaemias reported in the study appear to have developed in rats showing signs of chronic respiratory disease rather than being caused by their treatment with aspartame.

The increased incidence of mammary tumours is not considered indicative of a carcinogenic potential since the incidence of mammary tumours in female rats is rather high and varies considerably between carcinogenicity studies.

Moreover the increased incidence of mammary tumours in female rats reported in the study was not found in the previous ERF study, in which much higher doses of aspartame were tested.

Reassuring the public about the safety of MSG

In 2000 Fallon Currie set up a website, the International Glutamate Information Service(http://www.glutamate.org/) to provide the public with information on the controversial food flavouring ingredient, monosodium glutamate (MSG).

The website states:

Our goal is to provide you with accurate and up-to-date information about glutamate (MSG). There is information about the discovery and taste of glutamate, the role it plays in our food and our bodies and its nutritional benefits.

The message is positive and reassuring about the safety of MSG, with featured articles (as of 23 March 2010) such as "Scientific review shows no link between MSG and development of allergic reactions or asthma" and "Savoury taste can help lower blood pressure".

The scientific review claiming to show no link between MSG and allergic reactions or asthma contradicts a 1995 report from the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), an independent body of scientists, which found that people with severe, poorly controlled asthma may suffer temporary worsening of asthmatic symptoms after consuming MSG.

And the positive study mentioned by the International Glutamate Information Service as giving rise to the headline about blood pressure is on glutamic acid, a naturally occurring ingredient in vegetables as well as MSG, rather than on MSG itself.

People

• Ailbhe Fallon, managing director

Contact

Address: Fallon Currie Consulting, 29 Bressenden Place, London SW1E 5DD

Phone: + 44 20 7630 6070

Email:

Website: Unusually, the firm's website is password protected and not open to the general public. http://www.fallon-currie.com/