Center for Science in the Public Interest

Mission

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is an American not-for-profit corporation that focuses on issues relating to foods and the food services industry. It was founded in 1971 as a consumer advocacy organization. CSPI's mission statement states whose twin missions are to "conduct innovative research and advocacy programs in health and nutrition, and to provide consumers with current, useful information about their health and well-being" and that the CSPI's three main goals are:

To provide useful, objective information to the public and policymakers and to conduct research on food, alcohol, health, the environment, and other issues related to science and technology;
To represent the citizen's interests before regulatory, judicial and legislative bodies on food, alcohol, health, the environment, and other issues; and
To ensure that science and technology are used for the public good and to encourage scientists to engage in public-interest activities.

The CSPI also runs an Integrity in Science project. Its mission includes "investigate and publicize conflicts of interest and other potentially destructive influences of industry-sponsored science".

Funding

CSPI is a nonprofit institution exempt from federal income tax under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. All contributions are tax deductible as provided by law. The CSPI's Our Funding page states that its chief source of income Nutrition Action Healthletter, which has 900,000 paid subscribers. "Private foundation grants make up approximately 5% to 10% of CSPI's annual revenue of $15 million. Nutrition Action Healthletter accepts no advertising, and CSPI accepts no corporate or government grants."

Opponent organisations

CSPI has attracted the attention of groups opposed to junk science or to further regulation and legislation in the realm of food. One such is the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF), which receives funds from "restaurants, food companies and more than 1,000 concerned individuals".

The CCF maintains a number of sites, which are a frequently used source of anti-CSPI material: Center for Consumer Freedom, ActivistCash.com, AnimalScam.com, CSPIscam.com, and Fishscam.com.

The Capital Research Center says it is "analyzing organizations that promote the growth of government and in identifying viable private alternatives to government regulatory and entitlement programs". CRC maintains a CSPI page.

The Heartland Institute's "mission is to discover and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. Such solutions include … choice and personal responsibility in health care". In an article, "Food and Drink Police: Center for Science in the Public Interest wants government to control our eating habits", economics Professors James Bennett and Thomas DiLorenzo say, "What makes officious nannies like CSPI so maddening is that they cloak their apparent goal of prohibition in the language of health advocacy. Some of the advice in the group's Nutrition Action Healthletter is perfectly sensible, but the remainder can be highly controversial."

Undue Influence is a site "tracking the environmental movement's money, power, and harm using capitalist investments to destroy capitalist society". The CSPI is one organization it tracks on its Center for Science in the Public Interest: a Ralph Nader spinoff page.

Criticism

The CSPI's campaigns against unhealthy foods have drawn the ire of many social commentators who feel that CSPI's campaigns take away simple pleasures that people have enjoyed for generations, dubbing CSPI the "food police" and "food Nazis" (Williams). The CSPI has been particularly criticized for leading movie theaters to stop using coconut oil to make popcorn, a change that many say has detracted from the flavor of movie theater popcorn, which few people eat often.

The CSPI campaigned against fast foods using saturated fats starting in 1984. When fast food companies replaced the saturated fat with trans fat, CSPI's campaign ended. CSPI defended trans fats in its 1987 Nutrition Action Healthletter. By 1992, CSPI began to speak against trans fats and is currently strongly against their use. "The Tragic Legacy of Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI)" by nutrition expert Dr. Mary G. Enig outlines the controversial reversal.

An article on the Organic Consumers Association website, "Pseudo-Public Interest Group, CSPI, Now Supports Agbiotech", criticizes CPSI for supporting biotechnology and food irradiation.

Fox News commentator Steven Milloy asks in an article "Quorn & CSPI: The Other Fake Meat" "why is CSPI trying so carnivorously to destroy (meat substitute) Quorm? CSPI appears to have an unsavory relationship with Quorm competitor, Gardenburger....CSPI regularly promotes Gardenburger products on its Web site and publications" (Milloy). Gardenburger issued a rebuttal of this criticism.

Dr. David J. Hanson in his article The Center for Science in the Public Interest: Not Scientific and Not in the Public Interest criticizes CSPI for distributing its reports without peer review. Hanson criticizes the Alcohol Policies Project which is funded partly by the anti-substance abuse Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. According to Hanson, the National Journal noted that CSPI leader Michael Jacobson "would love to see a downturn in alcohol consumption, perhaps by as much as 75 percent.'That would be an astonishing public health victory,' he said." According to Hanson, CSPI's Nutrition Action Healthletter has also said, "the last thing the world needs is more drinkers, even moderate ones." However, some findings suggest moderate alcohol consumption is correlated with better health and greater longevity than is abstention, although the reasons underlying this correlation are not settled. (See Effects of alcohol on the body for more.)

In addition, Hanson suggests that four grants CSPI received from the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation prior to 1980 influenced CSPI not to campaign on tobacco and disease, a suggestion refuted by Jacobson. On the CPSI's Winston's No Bull Advertising Campaign page, the American Cancer Society, the American Lung Association and the American Heart Association "thank the Center for Science in the Public Interest for being our ally over the years. We'd especially like to thank them today for recognizing the outrageousness of this advertising campaign by R.J. Reynolds." In February 2003, CSPI was co-signatory of a letter that, inter alia, urged McDonald’s to ban smoking in all its restaurants worldwide.

An American Council on Science and Health press release "Deceptive Practices Undermine Credibility of Consumer Group" says, "CSPI is knowingly engaging in deceptive practices as they attempt to persuade the public and the media that their food safety scares are legitimate" and "If CSPI's efforts were an elementary school science project, young Dr. Jacobson would have received an 'F' and would have found himself in the principal's office for cheating." Similarly, in its Response to CSPI Restaurant Meals Survey, the American Dietetic Association has criticized CSPI for "masquerading a public relations stunt as science"

Writing in the Cato Institute's newsletter Briefly Noted, Dr. Henry I. Miller (of the Hoover Institution and the Competitive Enterprise Institute and former official for the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration) writes, "For more than a decade, CSPI has forsworn both common sense and overwhelming scientific evidence in attacking Olestra". He futher writes, "Why is CSPI doing this? Maybe to boost the organization’s humming little business."

The now defunct Tufts University Nutrition Navigator produced a rating guide to nutrition websites. As can be seen from an an archived copy of its Center for Science in the Public Interest Review page, it gave the CSPI site a rating of 20 out of 25 (Better than Most) and an Accuracy of Information rating of 8 out of 10. Tufts comments, "CSPI provides a valuable public service in its examination of important issues, but its coverage of some topics, such as food additives, tends to be one-sided. Consumers will have to look elsewhere for a balanced discussion of nutrition 'hot topics' such as sugar and hyperactivity in children and the safety of artificial sweeteners." In reply, CSPI issued a press release Tufts 'Navigator' Web Site: Misleading Advice and also questioned Tufts corporate funding on the Tufts University page. Nonetheless, Tufts' Nutrition Academic Award Program Recommended Nutrition Links page lists the CSPI as a recommended link in the Consumer Information category.

The UK’s Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC) writes, "Scare mongering is the hallmark of the large majority of CSPI’s reports and so-called 'information booklets'".

In an article "Nibbles: 3-alarm chili contest at Rock Bottom tonight", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette food writer Nancy Anderson says of CSPI's Nutrition Action Healthletter, "In true CSPI fashion, the newsletter makes sweeping damnations of brand-name foods that are full of fat or sugar or both." She further says of the Healthletter, "It's opinionated, readable and not to be taken too seriously".

In an article in the Capital Research Center publication Organization Trends entitled "Center for Science in the Public Interest: Profiting from Peddling Junk Science", John K. Carlisle writes, "On balance, the organization has done far more harm than good. It has not achieved its mission to better inform the public about the link between good health and nutrition. It has needlessly frightened the public with scientifically-baseless food scares. It has hindered efforts to improve food safety and nutrition. No matter what it calls itself, CSPI does not do science and it certainly isn't in the public's interest"

Sources

Jacobson, Michael "Tobacco Money" Doesn't Influence CSPI. Detroit News, January 27, 2000, p. A08. Letter to editor.
Williams, Walter. Is This the America We Want? The Jewish World Review, June 11, 2003.

External links

CSPI official website
Safe Food International (CSPI campaign)