The Sugar Association, the U.S. trade group that represents the sugar industry, has tapped agriculture industry specialists Olsson, Frank, Weeda, Terman & Matz for lobbying support on Capitol Hill.
OFWT&M has been hired to “provide monitoring, consulting, and advocacy services regarding legislation relating to the areas of food labeling and nutrition,” according to lobbying registration documents filed in December.
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The sugar group was ensnared in controversy this year when the New England Journal of Medicine published a bombshell article detailing how the association in the 1960s — then known as the Sugar Research Foundation — had allegedly paid Harvard scientists to pen research that downplayed the link between sugar consumption and coronary heart disease, and instead shifted the dietary blame for CHD to fat.
The New York Times reported that one of the scientists allegedly paid by the association was nutritionist David Mark Hegsted, who later went on to serve as administrator of human nutrition at the United States Department of Agriculture.
In response to the New England Journal of Medicine report, the Sugar Association said in a statement that the industry “should have exercised greater transparency in all of its research activities,” and that the research was conducted at a time when scientific journals didn’t require today’s disclosure rules regarding research funding sources.
The group went on to state that it is “not only unfortunate but a disservice that industry-funded research is branded as tainted,” and what often remains missing from the dialogue is the notion "that industry-funded research has been informative in addressing key issues.” The association concluded that it “questions the continued attempts to reframe historical occurrences to conveniently align with the currently trending anti-sugar narrative” and maintains the position that “the last several decades of research have concluded that sugar does not have a unique role in heart disease.”
OFWT&M’s founding principal Phil Olsson was a former deputy assistant of agriculture at the USDA , where he was responsible for marketing and consumer services.
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