Questions over milk research funds

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Large sums of research money from the country's biggest company may be compromising the independence of food and nutrition researchers, milk-safety campaigners believe.

Members of the A2 milk lobby have calculated that dairy giant Fonterra is pumping at least $5 million a year in funding into food research by University of Otago researchers and others connected with national centres and projects, includingthe Riddet Centre and LactoPharma.

Otago researchers have consistently played down the risks of A1 milk, New Zealand's dominant milk type produced by Fonterra, both before and after Lincoln University academic Professor Keith Woodford made claims about health problems.

The alternative milk, A2, is promoted and licensed by the A2 Corporation. It is in short supply in the South Island.

A2 campaigners fear the corporate funding of research, which is legitimate and common practice, may be affecting the ability of researchers to speak independently on milk safety.

They want Fonterra, the university and its research partners to disclose publicly their funding connections.

Otago, which received $67m in external research funding last year, says the $5m-plus figure is well off the mark and that scientists' integrity protects them from being compromised.

Fonterra is refusing to disclose its research funding.

Biochemist and risk-and-policy analyst Ron Law has been documenting the links between Fonterra and the university, using annual reports and material released under the Official Information Act.

Independent scientists had an ethical, if not legal, obligations to disclose potential conflicts of interest, he said.

"Otago University needs to disclose all the individual monies it has received from Fonterra and precisely where that money has gone."

Woodford said there was nothing wrong with scientists having industry links. "But scientists have a responsibility to volunteer all such relationships without being asked. And scientists who present as independent must indeed be independent."

Dunedin lawyer Jim Guthrie, A2 Corporation's chairman from 2000 to 2004 and still a shareholder, believes Otago University researchers, including Professor Jim Mann, took up a position early over A1 and A2 milk.

Mann, of the university's human nutrition department, director of the Edgar National Centre for Diabetes and a Riddet Centre adviser, said it was "mischievous" of people to suggest Fonterra was spending millions of dollars a year on Otago University.

"I have provided the (Riddet) centre with advice and did have an association with their CoRE (Centre of Research Excellence) bid," he said.

"I've never considered myself in any conflict whatsoever. I've advised all sorts of companies - Sanitarium, Kelloggs, the meat industry, the sugar industry. Any money that I get I give to charity.

"I'm the most experienced person with a nutrition background in New Zealand and I see it as my role to offer advice. If they offer money I don't turn it down but I don't take it myself.

"Fonterra is a slight exception, because some of the money comes to the university. But certainly we have not received amounts that would anything like cover a full research project."

Mann was unsure how much money he had given to charity.

Fonterra's general manager of research, Dr Jeremy Hill, refused to provide "any direct comment" on questions from The Press about research funding. Instead he reiterated a statement Fonterra made earlier this year that the New Zealand Food Safety Authority was the body charged with ensuring food was safe.

Otago deputy vice-chancellor (research) Professor Geoff White said scientists had a strong sense of responsibility and integrity, and worked in an international context in which findings were peer reviewed.

"It would be very difficult for the university to make policies to prevent our reseachers from being funded by companies promoting one or another kind of product," he said.

"University scientists have very strong ethical values that are maintained by contact with the international scientific community.

"We need to increase industry funding, so these are issues we may need to be concerned about in future.

"Fonterra (funding) isn't huge at the moment."

A2 Corporation chief executive Anthony Lawler said he took it "at face value" that Otago University had procedures in place to ensure funding did not influence academic independence.