Tag: IGTC

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Something to think about: The IGTC

History tells us that in 1969, the International Glutamate Technical Committee (IGTC) was founded as an association of companies engaged in the manufacture, sale and commercial use of glutamates. It sponsored, gathered, and disseminated research on the use and safety of monosodium glutamate; designed and implemented research protocols and provided financial assistance to researchers; promoted acceptance of monosodium glutamate as a food ingredient and represented members’ collective interests. Those collective interests were to sell monosodium glutamate.  It would appear that the IGTC was the brainchild of Ajinomoto Co., a leading manufacturer of monosodium glutamate. Or possibly Andrew Ebert, long time chairman of the IGTC, thought up the whole thing.  Ebert had been with Minnesota Mining and Minerals when they were producing MSG.

It was reported in 1994 that the IGTC was an association composed of physicians and/or scientists either employed by producers or users of glutamic acid and its salts, or doing research on it in university laboratories. Its annual budget was $250,000. Membership was $2,000/year, with Ajinomoto making up any shortfall between member-provided funds and that quarter-million.

In 1977, the IGTC spun off The Glutamate Association, with both organizations having close ties to the Robert H. Kellen Company of Atlanta, Ga. and Washington, DC.  Kellen is a trade organization and association management firm that specializes in the food, pharmaceutical, and healthcare industries. In 1992, Andrew (Andy) Ebert, Ph.D., chairman of the IGTC, was also senior vice president of The Kellen Company.

Once established, the IGTC assembled a cadre of scientists and others who conducted research for them and/or spoke publicly about the safety of monosodium glutamate. In the 1970s and 1980s, research sponsors were acknowledged.

The names of researchers Altman, Anantharaman, Auer, Bunyan, Ebert, Fernstrom, Filer, Garattini, Geha, Germano, Giacometti, Goldschmiedt, Heywood, Iwata, Kelly, Kenney, Kerr, Matsuzawa, Morselli, Newman, Owen, Patterson, Pulce, Reynolds, Saxon, Schiffman, Simon, Stegink, Stevenson, Takasaki, Tarasoff, Williams, Woessner, and Yang were notable, although there were others. In the late 1990s the names Torii, Shi, Jinap and Hajeb were added to the roster.

Steve Taylor deserves special mention. Although a prominent representative of the glutamate industry, he’s not included with the others because his ties to the IGTC have not openly been acknowledged. Although Taylor has repeatedly spoken out about the safety of MSG, only once to our knowledge has he acknowledged his ties to the IGTC.

When he introduces himself, he typically refers to his University of Nebraska affiliation, but not to the fact that he’s an agent of the IGTC.

Until he was mentioned to the FDA as having been responsible for supplying placebos containing excitotoxic aspartic acid (in aspartame) to the researchers conducting glutamate-safety double-blind studies for him, Ebert had been key to the research operations of the IGTC. This professionally respected pharmacologist and toxicologist had been with the IGTC from the beginning, recruiting researchers to carry out the research designed for them. In each case, that research has enabled Ebert’s people to proclaim (without justification) that a new study has demonstrated that monosodium glutamate is a harmless food additive.

Ebert was the face of the IGTC, and his influence can still be felt at every level. He’s served on the FDA Food Advisory Committee; the Grocery Manufacturers of America (Technical Committee on Food Protection, the Codex Subcommittee on Food Additives and the GRAS-FASEB Monograph Committee); the National Food Processors Association; the Institute of Food Technology (Technology Toxicology and Safety Evaluation Division, and Scientific Lecturer); the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences Assembly of Life Sciences (Food and Nutrition Board: the Committee on Food Protection, and the GRAS List Survey); the AMA (Industry Liaison Panel); the FAO/WHO Codex Alimentarius Food Standards Program as an industry observer; and the International Food Additives Council as executive director.

As a food industry pharmacologist and toxicologist, Ebert has provided scientific and technical expertise for programs of many associations managed by The Kellen Company.

It looks like since he was exposed for supplying excitotoxin-containing placebos to his researchers, Ebert no longer sits as chairman of the IGTC. 

In 2009, his name appeared as being on the IGTC Executive Committee. His move from the glutamate industry limelight coincided with the posting of information on the Truth in Labeling Campaign website about his role in designing the IGTC’s “scientific” studies and supplying aspartame-laced placebos (placebos that cause reactions similar, if not identical, to those caused by MSG) to his researchers. Toward the end of the 1990s, we began to see the names of Takeshi Kimura and Yoshi-hisa Sugita, Ph.D., associated with the IGTC. Both Kimura and Sugita came from Ajinomoto. 

Jumping ahead to 2022, it looked like the IGTC had moved its offices to Brussels, with Michael Rogers, IGTC chairman, leaving The Glutamate Association and its International Glutamate Information Service (IGIS) to run Ajinomoto’s U.S. operation while the IGTC continues to focus on whatever it will take (no holds barred) to keep MSG profitable. According to the Global Civil Society Database the IGTC’s aims are to “study, assemble and disseminate scientific data and information related to all aspects of the safety, quality and use of glutamate and its salts, particularly monosodium glutamate with a particular emphasis on their use in foods for human beings; promote the uses of glutamates as food ingredients especially on an international level.”  The six organizations that carry out its work are:

EUROPE – PARIS
European Committee for Umami (ECU)

JAPAN – TOKYO
SOUTH KOREA-SEOUL
Amino Acids Seasoning Alliance of Northeast Asia (ASANA)

REPUBLIC OF CHINA – TAIPEI

Taiwan Amino Acid Manufacturers Association ROC (TAAMA)

SOUTH AMERICA – SAO PAULO

Institute for Glutamate Sciences in South America (IGSSA)

SOUTHEAST ASIA – BANGKOK

Regional Committee for Glutamate Sciences (RCGS)

U.S.A. – WASHINGTON, DC

The Glutamate Association United States (TGA)

The IGTC no longer sponsors studies alleging to demonstrate the safety of MSG.  Instead, they sponsor consensus meetings to which they send delegates who discuss the safety of MSG and submit reports of their meetings to any media that will take them.

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If you rig your study carefully, you won’t have to think about lying with statistics

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Studies of the safety of monosodium glutamate have a certain sameness worth considering. To begin with, they are just that: studies of the safety of monosodium glutamate wherein the option of toxicity is really not considered.

The body of evidence that demonstrates that monosodium glutamate causes brain damage and endocrine disorders is dismissed with the statement that studies of animals do not represent the human condition and the FDA doesn’t disagree. Moreover, since one can’t see brain damage with the naked eye, there would be no reason for the man on the street to suspect that the brain damage that he cannot see would be caused by monosodium glutamate. And there are no physicians or alternative medicine practitioners suggesting that diagnosed endocrine disorders might have been caused by monosodium glutamate.

Only remaining for the glutamate industry to overcome are the concerns of consumers who find that ingestion of monosodium glutamate and other glutamate-containing food additives cause adverse reactions such as migraine headache, heart irregularities, and depression, and the growing number of physicians and neuroscientists who, based on clinical practice and/or experience in the laboratory, warn that ingestion of monosodium glutamate places humans at risk. Industry’s vehicle for dealing with this has been the double-blind study, rigged to encourage industry-sponsored researchers to conclude that once again there has been a study done that has failed to find that monosodium glutamate is in any way harmful.

Ajinomoto’s organization: its structure…

In response to the first reports of brain damage and adverse reactions following ingestion of monosodium glutamate, Ajinomoto Co., Inc., possibly the world’s largest producer of free glutamic acid and monosodium glutamate (and producer of many other individual amino acids), established a nonprofit corporation to represent its interests. The International Glutamate Technical Committee (IGTC) was organized in 1969 as an association of member companies engaged in manufacture, sale, and commercial use of glutamates. They sponsor, gather, and disseminate research on the use and safety of monosodium glutamate; design and implement research protocols and provide financial assistance to researchers; promote acceptance of monosodium glutamate as a food ingredient; and represent members’ collective interests. Those collective interests are to sell monosodium glutamate. The IGTC is an association of individuals, companies, and staff, composed of physicians and/or scientists employed by producers or users of glutamic acid and its salts or doing research on it in university laboratories (1).

Ajinomoto’s research strategies…

The premise that monosodium glutamate is safe for human consumption is based on human research essentially underwritten, designed, and implemented by the IGTC. Researchers have:

1) Selected subjects who might not be sensitive to the product;

2) Reduced the likelihood that subjects would react to monosodium glutamate test material;

3) Used toxic or allergenic material in placebos;

4) Used too few subjects, so there would be inadequate statistical power to produce a significant difference between adverse reactions of test subjects and placebo subjects, or to find a significant relationship between the experimental variable and the measured outcome;

5) Applied statistical tests to research designs that do not meet the tests’ underlying assumptions;

6) Focused on non-relevant variables;

7) Ignored relevant data.

Reviewed individually, inappropriate handling of subjects, methodology, and/or statistical analysis in any one study might be attributed to shoddy science or sloppy scholarship. However, there is sameness in these studies which lies in the fact that methodology virtually guarantees that no statistically significant difference between subjects treated with monosodium glutamate and subjects treated another way will be found; and/or no significant relationship will be found between two or more variables being investigated. Researchers, then, can “legitimately” conclude that subjects who were given monosodium glutamate did not have more reactions than subjects given a placebo, or subjects consuming greater quantities of monosodium glutamate did not become taller, shorter, fatter, or thinner, and did not have more adverse reactions or higher blood pressure than others. It is these studies that industry points to when claiming that monosodium glutamate is safe, or when claiming that the safety (never toxicity) of monosodium glutamate is controversial. We submit, however, that since industry bases its claim for the safety of monosodium glutamate on these studies, industry itself has demonstrated that ingestion of monosodium glutamate places consumers at risk. There really is no controversy.

Reference

  1. Samuels A. The toxicity/safety of processed free glutamic acid (MSG): a study in suppression of information. Account Res. 1999;6:259-310.

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