January 19, 2023
Contact: Press@nutritioncoalition.us

The Nutrition Coalition Calls on USDA-HHS to Disclose Conflicts of Interest for Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee

Washington, D.C. - The Nutrition Coalition is calling on the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services (USDA-HHS) to disclose potential conflicts of interest (COI) among the newly announced Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC).

The DGAC was announced on January 19th, yet USDA-HHS continues to reject a 2017 recommendation, by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), to “disclose how provisional nominees' biases and conflicts of interest are identified and managed” by “creating and publicly posting a policy and form to explicitly disclose financial and nonfinancial biases and conflicts.” This broad recommendation for provisional nominees must also apply to appointees.

Disclosure of such potential conflicts is today common practice for guidelines. The Institute of Medicine issued a standard in 2011 that “no more than a minority” of an expert group developing clinical practice guidelines should be allowed to have a conflict of interest. This expectation should apply to any expert advisory group, yet conflicts can only be objectively verified if they are publicly disclosed.

“[T]he DGAC appointment process remains wholly opaque, without disclosure of the potential nominees nor any explanation as to why or how certain nominees are selected while others rejected,” observed an 2022 article published in a NASEM journal. The authors included three former DGAC members.

A study published in a journal of Cambridge University found that conflicts of interest on the last Dietary Guideline Advisory Committee were pervasive:

  • 95% of committee members had at least one conflict with the food or pharmaceutical industries.

  • One advisor alone, Sharon Donovan, had 152 ties.

  • More than 50% of committee members had 30 or more conflicts.

  • The most frequent and durable corporate connections were with Kellogg, Abbott, Kraft, Mead Johnson, General Mills, and Dannon.

“The dietary guidelines are the gold-standard for nutrition advice, and the millions of Americans whose health relies upon that advice deserve transparency,” said John Bates, Executive Director of The Nutrition Coalition.

The Nutrition Coalition is calling on USDA-HHS to comply with the recommendation by NASEM to disclose all COI among guideline committee members.