What is ILSI?
ILSI is a global, nonprofit scientific organization where scientists from industry, academia, and government collaborate to generate scientific information and encourage scientific dialogue.
What is ILSI’s mission?
ILSI’s mission is to provide science that improves public health and well-being and safeguards the environment.
How does ILSI achieve its mission?
ILSI achieves its mission by fostering collaboration among experts from academia, government, and industry on conducting, gathering, summarizing, and disseminating science. Its activities focus primarily on nutrition and health promotion; food safety; risk assessment; and the environment.
Why was ILSI formed?
ILSI was originally formed in 1978 to study safety concerns related to caffeine as a food additive. Since then, ILSI has expanded beyond examining single food ingredients to cover a much broader range of topics.
How does ILSI’s science benefit people?
ILSI believes better decisions affecting public and environmental health and safety are made when they are based on good science. ILSI believes its science – as part of the larger body of scientific information – helps industries make safe, healthy products and helps governments provide effective and practical guidance to ensure health and safety.
ILSI publishes the results of all its studies regardless of outcome. This contributes to the global store of health-related knowledge in the public domain.
Who are ILSI’s members?
ILSI members are companies from the food, agricultural, chemical, pharmaceutical, and biotechnology and supporting industries.
Why do companies join ILSI?
Companies join ILSI to collaborate with leading scientists from industry, academia, and government to identify and resolve scientific issues of common concern.
Who controls ILSI?
ILSI is governed by its Board of Trustees. ILSI’s Bylaws require the number of trustees from academia or other public institution to be equal to or greater than the number of trustees from member companies. The Board of Trustees is responsible for setting and enforcing organizational policies; setting scientific direction; and ensuring scientific integrity and financial transparency.
If ILSI’s members are companies, doesn’t that make it a lobby organization?
Because ILSI receives a majority of its operating and research funding from the private sector, it is often assumed to be a lobbying organization.
This is not true.
ILSI does not lobby. ILSI’s
Code of Ethics and Organizational Standards of Conduct expressly forbids any lobby activities.
ILSI advocates the use of science in making decisions that affect human and environmental health, but it does not make policy recommendations or seek to influence legislative outcomes toward a particular decision.
Is industry-funded science reliable?
ILSI believes good science can be funded by a wide variety of organizations, in both the public and private sectors. ILSI maintains all science should be judged on the merits of study design, methodology, and validity of the conclusions regardless of funding source.