Center for Science in the Public Interest
Abbreviation	CSPI
Formation	1971
Type	Non-profit
Purpose/focus	Consumer advocacy
Headquarters	Washington, D.C.
Region served	United States
Website	cspinet.org

Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit watchdog and consumer advocacy group focusing on nutritional education and awareness.

History and funding [edit]

CSPI headquarters in Washington, D.C.

CSPI is a consumer advocacy organization. Its focus is nutrition and health, food safety, and alcohol policy. CSPI is headed by Michael F. Jacobson, who founded the group in 1971 along with James Sullivan and Albert Fritsch, two fellow scientists from Ralph Nader's Center for the Study of Responsive Law. In the early days, CSPI focused on various aspects such as nutrition, environmental issues, and nuclear energy. However, after the 1977 departure of Fritsch and Sullivan, CSPI began to focus exclusively on nutrition and food safety.^[1]

CSPI has 501(c)(3) status. Its chief source of income is its Nutrition Action Health Letter, which has about 900,000 subscribers and does not accept corporate advertising.^[2][3] The organization receives about 5 to 10 percent of its $17 million annual budget from grants by private foundations.

Programs and campaigns [edit]

Nutrition and food labeling [edit]

CSPI has advocated more accurately defined nutrition and food labeling.^[4] For example, labeling of "low-fat" or "heart healthy" foods in restaurants must now meet specific requirements established by the Food and Drug Administration as of May 2, 1997.^[5] In 1994, the group first brought the issue of high saturated fat in movie popcorn to the public attention. In 2003, it worked with lawyer John F. Banzhaf III to pressure ice cream retailers to display nutritional information about their products. Most recently, CSPI has focused on nutrition labeling at chain restaurants and has helped introduce menu labeling legislation in several U.S. cities and states. Its guidelines include detailed nutrition labeling, a prohibition on trans fats additives, and reducing the amount of sodium in processed foods.

In 1989, CSPI was instrumental in convincing fast-food restaurants to stop using animal fat for frying, promoting the use of trans fats instead. They would later reverse their position on the use of trans fats.^[6]

In 1998, the Center published a report entitled Liquid Candy: How Soft Drinks are Harming Americans' Health. It examined statistics relating to the soaring consumption of soft drinks, particularly by children, and the consequent health ramifications including tooth decay, nutritional depletion, obesity, type-2 (formerly known as "adult-onset") diabetes, and heart disease. It also reviewed soft drink marketing and made various recommendations aimed at reducing soft drink consumption, in schools and elsewhere. A second, updated edition of the report was published in 2005.^[7] Among the actions they advocate taxing soft drinks.^[8]

Food Safety Initiative [edit]

One of CSPI's largest projects is its Food Safety Initiative, directed to reduce food contamination and foodborne illness. In addition to publishing Outbreak Alert!, a compilation of food-borne illnesses and outbreaks, the project supports the establishment of a new Food Safety Administration that would combine the food safety functions of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Department of Agriculture (USDA) into a single agency.

Alcohol Policies Project [edit]

The group's "Alcohol Policies Project" advocates against what it considers adverse societal influences of alcohol, such as marketing campaigns that target young drinkers,^[9] and promotes turning self-imposed advertising bans by alcohol industry groups into law.^[10] The project is run by long-time director George Hacker, a lawyer who also co-directs the Coalition for the Prevention of Alcohol Problems.

One of the main activities of the project is the "Campaign for Alcohol-Free Sports TV". Launched in 2003 with support of at least 80 other local and national groups, the campaign asked schools to pledge to prohibit alcohol advertising on local sports programming and to work toward eliminating alcohol advertising from televised college sports programs.^[11] It also sought Congressional support for such a prohibition.^[12]

In addition, CSPI has pressured alcoholic beverage companies with lawsuits. In one such lawsuit, filed in September 2008, the Center "sue[d] MillerCoors Brewing Company over its malt beverage Sparks, arguing that the caffeine and guarana in the drink are additives that have not been approved by the FDA," and that the combination of those ingredients with alcohol resulted in "more drunk driving, more injuries, and more sexual assaults."^[13]

Criticisms [edit]

CSPI's public policy recommendations, and sometimes the organization's motivation for making them, have been challenged by various parties, particularly those within the food industry that have been the most directly affected.

Of past advocacy [edit]

One example surrounds the organization's reversal of position on the question of trans fats during the 1980 and 1990s. During the 1980s, CSPI's campaign "Saturated Fat Attack" advocated the replacement of beef tallow, palm oil and coconut oil at fast food restaurants,^[14] while maintaining that trans fats were comparatively benign.^[15] In a 1986 pamphlet entitled "The Fast-Food Guide", it praised chains such as KFC that had converted to partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, which are lower in saturated fat but high in trans fat. As a result of this pressure, many restaurants such as McDonald's made the switch.^[14][16] From the mid-1990s onward, however, CSPI identified trans fats as the greater public health danger.^[17] CSPI executive director Michael Jacobson went on record saying, "Twenty years ago, scientists (including me) thought trans [fat] was innocuous. Since then, we've learned otherwise."^[14]

In response, three trade groups – the National Restaurant Association, the National Association of Margarine Manufacturers and the Institute of Shortening and Edible Oils — "said the evidence [on trans fat] was contradictory and inconclusive, and accused [CSPI] of jumping to a premature conclusion."^[18] Numerous studies and public health agencies have since supported the view that trans fats carry health risks.^[19][20][21] A Wall Street Journal editorial acknowledged the risks, but argued, on the basis of its previous actions, that CSPI itself was to blame for creating the problem.^[22]

Of policies [edit]

Other critics—such as the restaurant, food, and tobacco industry-funded Center for Consumer Freedom—refer to CSPI as "the Food Police,"^[23][24] and suggest its focus on food manufacturers and retailers distracts from "real culprits ... a lack of exercise and people's unwillingness to take personal responsibility for their own diets."^[23] Former U.S. Representative Bob Barr (a libertarian-leaning Republican) accused CSPI of pursuing "a pre-existing political agenda" and pointed to individual responsibility for dietary choices.^[24] Cato Institute (a Washington D.C.-based libertarian think tank) scholar Walter Olson wrote that the group's "longtime shtick is to complain that businesses like McDonald’s, rather than our own choices, are to blame for rising obesity," and called CSPI's suit against McDonald's on behalf of a California mother a "new low in responsible parenting".^[25]

In 2002, food industry lobbyist Rick Berman, who is also the executive director of the Center for Consumer Freedom,^[23] announced a series of print and radio ads designed in part to drive traffic to the CCF website. A San Francisco Chronicle article identified CSPI as "one of two groups singled out [by the CCF] for full-on attack," and said, "What's not mentioned on the [CCF] Web site is that it's one of a cluster of such nonprofits started... by Berman."^[26]

Of science [edit]

Criticism has even come, on occasion, from CSPI alumni. For instance, Doug Gurian-Sherman (former science director for CSPI's biotechnology project, now a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists) responded to a 2005 position paper on the regulation of genetically engineered crops by saying, "CSPI’s assumption that these crops should take less time is inconsistent with its own positions and clearly misunderstands the science involved."^[27]

Notes [edit]

References [edit]

• Center for Science in the Public Interest. Project to Empower Students to Transform the Campus Drinking Culture: Survival Skills for the Successful Advocate. Washington, DC: Center for Science in the Public Interest, n.d.
• Goetz, D. Liquor industry gets stricter on advertising. Louisville Courier-Journal, 10.09.03

External links [edit]

• www.cspinet.org — CSPI home page
• Campaign for Alcohol-Free Sports TV — a project of CSPI
• The Center for Science in the Public Interest's Fourth National Integrity in Science Conference: Rejuvenating Public Sector Science