Recent Reports Regarding Mercury and High Fructose Corn Syrup Flawed and ...( SAN FRANCISCO Jan. 30 /- ChemRisk...)

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 30 /PRNewswire/ -- ChemRisk, a leading scientific consulting firm, was asked by the Corn Refiners Association (CRA) to examine the recent publication by Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), "Not So Sweet: Missing Mercury and High Fructose Corn Syrup," and the Environmental Health journal publication "Mercury from chlor-alkali plants: measured concentrations in food product sugar," by Dufault et al, 2009, and to offer our comments and analysis.

    In summary we found:
    -- The IATP report and Environmental Health article it references fall
       well below standards for proper scientific research and published
       literature.
    -- The authors of both publications provide incomplete data and misleading
       conclusions.
    -- Methods described by the authors deviate from standard procedure in
       testing for mercury.
    -- The authors ignore important distinctions between organic and other
       forms of mercury and their implications for assessing human health
       risk.
    -- Even if it were assumed that the mercury content found in the extremely
       limited sampling of foods and beverages was representative, the amounts
       are far lower than levels of concern set by government agencies.
    -- The authors assume that the total mercury they detected in a
       questionably small sampling of consumer foods is primarily the result
       of high fructose corn syrup; an assumption that has not been properly
       tested or validated.  The recipes for the items studied may have had
       multiple sources of potential contamination

To imply that there is a safety concern to consumers based on the findings presented is both incorrect and irresponsible.

By combining the results of a four-year-old sampling analysis of high fructose corn syrup with a more recent testing of branded foods and beverages for total mercury, the IATP
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