§ Miss McIntoshTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what evaluation he has made of the Dalton Report. [29363]
§ Ms JowellWe have asked our independent scientific and medical experts on the Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment (COT) to review the toxicity of vitamin B6. As part of this review the COT considered the Dalton and Dalton study. In addition to information supplied by interested parties the Committee also considered over 100 other scientific papers from both national and international journals.
The COT noted some methodological deficiencies in the Dalton and Dalton study, but in the light of other supporting human and animal data, concluded it would be unwise to ignore evidence from this study that daily doses of vitamin B6 of 50mg and above are potentially harmful.
We have every confidence in the rigour with which the COT reviewed the data on vitamin B6 and the robustness of the recommendations it made.