All major beverage-alcohol industry trade groups have united in opposition of a draft study about alcohol consumption’s effect on health, which was released Tuesday.
The Alcohol Intake and Health Study was spearheaded by the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking (ICCPUD) as part of the process by which the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) evaluates alcohol’s place in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA). An updated DGA is published every five years, and the process is overseen by the U.S. departments of Agriculture (USDA) and Health and Human Services (HHS).
For this five-year cycle, the DGAC commissioned two studies of the consumption of alcohol and its relation to overall health. The first report was published last month by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) and found that moderate drinkers had a 16% lower risk of all-cause mortality (dying from any cause) than non-drinkers, though it called out a connection between alcohol consumption and female breast cancer.
However, the ICCPUD report found that “the risk of dying from alcohol use begins at low levels of average use,” and that “higher levels of alcohol consumption are linked with progressively higher mortality risk.”
Bev-alc industry members have spoken out against ICCPUD’s involvement in the DGA review, which spilled over to consumer-facing media outlets last summer. ICCPUD opponents claimed the process was opaque and that several involved scientists were biased against alcohol. Those complaints were echoed in a press release the Science Over Bias coalition issued yesterday.
“Today’s report is the product of a flawed, opaque and unprecedented process, rife with bias and conflicts of interest,” the group wrote. “Several members of the six-member ICCPUD panel have affiliations with international anti-alcohol advocacy groups, and the panel has worked closely with others connected with these advocates.”
Science Over Bias includes more than 85 trade organizations, including the American Cider Association (ACA), the American Craft Spirits Association (ACSA), the Beer Institute (BI), the Brewers Association (BA), the Distilled Spirits Council of the U.S. (DISCUS), the National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA), Wine America and the Wine Institute. Trade groups representing packaging manufacturers, ingredients suppliers, retailers and bartenders have also signed on.
The trade associations are asking the USDA and HHS secretaries “to uphold the integrity of the DGAs to promote informed and responsible decision-making around alcohol,” as well as “disregard the ICCPUD report in their final assessments.”
In early 2023, the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction recommended that our neighbors to the north limit themselves to two drinks per week regardless of gender. Around the same time, the World Health Organization announced “no level of alcohol consumption is safe” for health. These twin developments marked a departure on the general thinking about alcohol consumption in the U.S., and have raised the stakes on the current DGA process.
The DGA will serve as the federal government’s official word on alcohol consumption, which could potentially lead to a shift in thinking around tax and marketing policy for the industry in the future.
ICCPUD’s report comes less than two weeks after U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued an advisory calling for the addition of warning labels of the risk of cancer to be added to alcoholic beverages.
In its report, ICCPUD examined the relationship risk (RR) between various levels of alcohol consumption and several diseases: cancers (oral and pharyngeal, laryngeal, esophageal, colorectal, liver and female breast cancer), heart diseases (ischemic heart disease, ischemic stroke, intracerebral and subarachnoid hemorrhage, hypertensive heart disease and atrial fibrillation and flutter), digestive diseases (diabetes, pancreatitis, cirrhosis and other chronic liver diseases) and epilepsy, as well as unintentional injuries and road injuries.
At the consumption levels recommended in the DGA for 2020-2025 (two drinks daily for men, one for women), the ICCPUD found several increases in health risks.
For men who consumed two drinks daily, the risk of cirrhosis (+53%) and esophageal cancer (+51%) increased compared to the risk observed among those who had one drink per day. The risk of unintentional injuries and road injuries “escalated” between one and two daily drinks. The risk of ischemic stroke increased at two drinks, but “no difference in risks” in ischemic heart disease and hemorrhagic stroke was observed.
Among women who had one drink per day (compared to none), the “highest increase in RRs” was between cirrhosis, esophageal cancer and liver cancer, according to the ICCPUD study. The risk of unintentional injuries, road injuries and oral cancer was “elevated.” There was no observed difference in risk for ischemic heart disease and hemorrhagic stroke. Risk of diabetes and ischemic stroke decreased among women who had one daily drink, compared to those who had none.
Two studies the ICCPUD panel reviewed found that “consuming more drinks during a single occasion was associated with a higher risk of female breast cancer.”
“However, there is a lack of evidence that other cancer outcomes are impacted by levels of drinking,” the report said.
USDA and HHS have requested a second round of public comment on ICCPUD’s report, which is being collected via the Federal Register. In the first round of comments, ICCPUD requested comments be sent directly to it, which several bev-alc trade groups opposed.
The agencies are asking the following questions be considered during this round of comments:
- “Are the topic areas defined in the Draft Report on Alcohol Intake and Health sufficient for understanding the relationship between alcohol and health?
- Are the results and public health outcomes presented clear, understandable, and transparent?
- Are the risks and benefits identified understandable?
- Are strategies to minimize bias clearly described?
- Are there additional data sources or scientific information that should be considered to estimate the risk of alcohol consumption on specific health outcomes or to provide a comprehensive understanding of the burden of alcohol-related diseases?”
Comments are being accepted until February 14, 30 days after the release of the study.