§ 39. Mr. ShersbyTo ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement regarding his Department's support for research into the prevalence of food intolerance.
§ Mr. Donald ThompsonIf I consider "food" to include "food additives" then between 1984 and 1987 my Department funded a multicentre study of food additive intolerance at three major clinical centres. The principal project assessed the prevalence of food additive intolerance in a large population by rigorous (double-blind) challenge.
The prevalence estimated from the clinical data, using two methods of calculation, was 0.01 to 0.23 per cent. suggesting that the problem of food additive intolerance in the large population group studied was small.
Other complementary work my Department funded during this same period has indicated that food additive 728W intolerance in many children is mainly a transient phenomenon, and it has thrown some light on the mechanisms of intolerance reactions in the human body.
My Department is continuing to fund further research in this area and during 1987–90 a project designed to examine the prevalence of food intolerance per se for comparison purposes and to extend our knowledge of the mechanisms by which intolerance is mediated, has been commissioned at the same clinical centres.