Big sugar processors began an advertising campaign based on “junk science” to undermine gains made in the sweetener market by corn refiners including Archer Daniels Midland Co. and Cargill, an attorney told a Los Angeles jury today in what could be a billion-dollar lawsuit over nutritional claims about high fructose corn syrup.
But an attorney for sugar manufacturers countered that corn refiners were actually the ones trying to dupe consumers into thinking there is no difference between high fructose corn syrup and sugar.
The litigation began with a lawsuit filed in 2011 by sugar refiners including Domino Sugar-owner ASR Group, alleging that the corn trade group’s ad campaign describing high fructose corn syrup — HFCS — as “corn sugar” and “nutritionally the same as sugar” was false. The corn refiners countersued, saying the Sugar Association falsely claimed in its newsletter that corn syrup causes obesity and cancer.
In opening statements in downtown Los Angeles, attorney Mark Lanier, representing sugar processors, gave the eight-member federal court jury a short rundown of the 2,000-year history of sugar, suggesting that all was well in the business until HFCS was “invented in a Japanese laboratory in 1955” and made commercially available in the 1970s.
“It’s cheap, it’s made from corn,” Lanier said, adding that it was linked to Cheez-Whiz and other popular processed foods.
However, in the early 2000s, Lanier alleged, “the tide really started to change” for HFCS, when articles began appearing suggesting that corn syrup “may play a role in the obesity epidemic.”
Allegations in the media about HFCS’ so-called hazards “started to have an effect on the market,” the attorney said, and refiners began a “sugar is sugar” campaign to convince consumers that “your body can’t tell the difference.”
Lanier said that, in fact, “your body can tell the difference and the corn refiners knew it.”
But attorney Dan Webb, representing Cargill and other corn refiners, told the jury that each of Lanier’s allegations was “false,” and branded the sugar industry’s lawsuit as “phony.”
The Sugar Association’s contention that HFCS plays a part in diabetes, stroke and other ailments is based on “junk science,” he told jurors.
The sugar trade group’s real gripe against HFCS is that the corn refiners “took a large market share from the sugar companies,” up to 50 percent of the market by 2003, Webb said.
A “decade of attacks” by the sugar companies and their trade group followed, the attorney said, including such anti-corn syrup zingers as calling HFCS “the crack cocaine of all sweeteners” and alleging that the stuff “can make you fat and stupid.”
In fact, Webb told the jury, HFCS is “nutritionally equivalent to sugar” and is simply a “form of sugar made from corn.”
Both are “metabolized by your body in the same way,” he said.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2012 ruled that corn syrup, used to sweeten foods including soda, could not be called sugar.
The sugar growers are seeking $1.1 billion in compensatory damages over the advertising campaign, plus punitive damages and fees, Lanier said.
The corn refiners are seeking about $530 million in their countersuit.
The litigation was filed in federal court in Los Angeles because Sugar Association members are located within the jurisdiction of the Central District of California.
