U.S. FOOD SUPPLY SAFETY THREATENED TODAY WITH FDA APPROVAL OF CONTROVERSIAL NEW ARTIFICIAL SWEETENER 13,000 TIMES SWEETER THAN SUGAR

DALLAS, July 5, 2002 - (Aspartame Consumer Safety Network) - In response to FDA and Monsanto's announcement today that approval has been granted for use of the new sweetener, Neotame as a food additive in baked goods, aqueous solution and as a table top sweetener Aspartame Consumer Safety Network, issues the following statement: Seventy eight percent of all FDA complaints pertain to aspartame adverse reactions. ACSN has thousands of serious reactions in their files. These reports include: grand mal seizures, brain tumors, blindness and other health-related problems including deaths. Monsanto's Nick Rosa stated in 1998, that Neotame is "based on the aspartame formula." Since we believe this to be true, Dallas-based Aspartame Consumer Safety Network vigorously opposes today's approval and urges consumers to avoid the new fake sugar if they want to remain healthy.

Neotame is aspartame plus 3-di-methyl-butyl, which can be found on the EPA's list of most hazardous chemicals. The aspartame formula is comprised of Phenylalanine, which caused seizures in lab animals and Aspartic Acid, which caused "holes in the brains" of lab animals - bonded by Methyl Alcohol, or Methanol which is capable of causing blindness, liver damage and death.

Methanol, or wood alcohol in aspartame breaks down further in heat and in the body, into Formaldehyde (embalming fluid), Formic Acid (venom in ant stings) and the most deadly of all - Diketopiperazine (DKP), a brain tumor agent.ACSN's files contain in excess of 10,000 responses from the public, including thousands of serious adverse reactions to Monsanto's aspartame.

As a founder of the world's burgeoning anti-aspartame movement, Stoddard was the first non-M.D.engaged to lecture at a major medical school on the topic of Aspartame (Jan. 1997).ACSN founder, Stoddard recently concluded a multi-city lecture tour and finds interest in this topic to be extremely high - here and all over the world.

Recently, a story appeared in London's Sunday Mirror, featuring an adverse reaction of a child whose parents are members of A.C.S.N. (Aspartame Consumer Safety Network). Aspartame has been identified and denounced as a major risk factor by consumers in over a dozen countries.

According to FDA Toxicologists who gave testimony with Stoddard in 1987 at a Senate Hearing on the subject - the tests to get aspartame approved were falsified. Deaths of lab animals were covered up and went unreported. Many criminal acts were committed and the perpetrators went unpunished. Based on over a decade of epidemiological research and work with

consumers and health care professionals, Stoddard urgently implored the FDA to unequivocally deny any form of approval of Neotame. ACSN's warnings fell on deaf ears when Stoddard and co-founder, James Turner, Esquire met with top FDA officials in Washington in 1998 to plead their case. Today, four years later, FDA approval was announced in the national media.

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Mary Nash Stoddard, Author, "Deadly Deception Story of Aspartame"
[Odenwald Press 1998]
Founder, Aspartame Consumer Safety Network and
Worldwide Pilots Hotline (Division of ACSN) [1987]
P.O. Box 780634 -
Dallas TX 75378-0634
214-352-4268-                                                                                                     

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Note: The European Union is currently re-assessing the approval of Aspartame for use as a sweetener, and is looking into approving the "new version", called Neotame, of which Mary Nash Stoddard writes in her release. Contact the EU's Health and Consumer directorate to protest what appears to be a unconditional surrender of our health to the economic interests of such companies as Monsanto, the producer of Aspartame. Start at the following web page:

http://europa.eu.int/citizens/index_en.html