Enclosed is a press release for an article about stevia. The authors
of the article asked that I distribute it to a few appropriate groups
on the Internet. The articles contains updated information about
stevia’s status as well as an excellent list of resources.
Since most of the readers here use stevia 
, I felt that it would be
appropriate to pass along this information.
Best Wishes,
- Mark
mg…@tiac.net
http://www.tiac.net/users/mgold/health.html
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BEGIN ENCLOSURE
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New Age Journal
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Linda Bonvie
Bill Bonvie
Phone: 609-660-2079
Magazine Questions FDA Campaign to Keep
Naturally Sweet, Noncaloric Herb Out of Public’s Reach
BOSTON — A Food and Drug Administration campaign to keep a South
American herb that’s much sweeter than sugar, yet contains no
calories, from catching on in the U.S. may be intended to benefit the
artificial-sweetener industry, according to revelations made in a
national magazine this month.
An article in the January/February issue of "New Age Journal" by
investigative journalists Linda and Bill Bonvie questions the
rationale for the FDA’s aggressive, decade-long efforts to prevent
both consumers and companies that market teas and natural products
from using the herb stevia, a plant native to Paraguay and Brazil.
The agency’s actions have included an "import alert," searches and
seizures, and directives intended to keep a number of firms,
including the Thomas J. Lipton Company and Celestial Seasonings, from
adding stevia to their teas as a flavoring agent. As its
justification, the FDA calls stevia an "unsafe food additive," even
though the herb and its extracts have been used by millions of people
around the world without ill effects and have been found to be
perfectly safe by the Japanese after extensive testing, the authors
point out.
The article "Sinfully Sweet?" includes allegations from industry
sources that the anti-stevia campaign was the result of a trade
complaint from The NutraSweet Company, whose artificial sweetener
aspartame has itself been the subject of much controversy, both
before and after winning FDA approval.
Both NutraSweet and the FDA deny such charges. The authors,
however, offer a number of indications that stevia has been singled
out by the FDA for ‘special treatment’ — including the regulators’
persistent refusals to file two GRAS (generally recognized as safe)
petitions for stevia submitted by Lipton and the American Herbal
Products Association, both containing substantial evidence of
long-time, widespread, safe use. Filing such petitions is something
routinely done to place them on public view, and does not constitute
approval.
Even the recent passage of the Dietary Supplement Health and
Education Act of 1994 has not caused the FDA to back off. Although
stevia is now being legally sold in this country as a dietary
supplement under the act, any labeling or intended use as either a
sweetener or a tea will continue to make stevia subject to FDA
confiscation, they point out.
The article also examines two studies conducted in South America
that the FDA officials cite in declaring stevia unsafe — both
related to its alleged effects on rodent fertility — and quotes the
author of one as saying it should not be used as a basis for keeping
stevia off the market. Another study to which the agency refers,
supposedly from an obscure South American journal, is one that it
acknowledges never even having seen.
The Bonvies, a New Jersey-based brother and sister writing team,
have had articles published on a variety of environmental and
health-related issues, including a 1993 expose on the spraying of
passengers on international flights with toxic pesticides that led to
actions by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the
Department of Transportation, causing many countries to eventually
drop the requirement.
