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In April 2015, the quack web site Natural News rebeat the drum of a several-year-old contoversy by publishing a misleading article (which was republished by a number of other equally disreputable web sites) holding that major food companies such as Pepsico sell products manufactured using the tissue of aborted human babies: Other similar articles purport to offer a List Of Companies Using Fetal Cells From Aborted Babies To Flavour Products. In order to debunk such claims, we need first provide a couple of definitions: A controversy over Senomyx originated with the pro-life organization Children of God for Life back in March 2011, which maintained that Senomyx used HEK 293 in its flavor ingredient development efforts (citing a 2002 paper by company researchers published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences as evidence). That organization called for a boycott of major food companies (including Nestle, Campbell's Soup, Kraft Foods, and PepsiCo) that had partnered with Senomyx: It's important to note here that — whatever one might think of fetal stem cell research in general, and regardless of whether or not Senomyx uses HEK 293-derived cells in its development efforts — neither Pepsi nor any other U.S. food company is manufacturing or selling any consumable products that are actually made using the cell tissue of unborn babies that were murdered through abortion. What we're talking about here is a cell line derived from a single (healthy, aborted) fetus over forty years ago: claiming that current food products employing flavorings derived from research based on the HEK 293 cell line are actually made using the cell tissue of unborn babies is like saying that possessing a digitized image of a photocopy of a picture of a Beethoven manuscript is the same as owning a document in Beethoven's own handwriting — the original is not present in substance, only in a multi-generational, representational form. CBS News noted such in a mid-2011 report on the Senomyx controversy (which for some reason primarily focused on PepsiCo): Science and medicine writer Matthew Herper offered a similar explanation in Forbes: Senomyx themselves were circumspect about publicly addressing the issue of their whether they actually used the HEK 293 cell line in their research, although reporters investigating the subject noted references to HEK 293 in the company's patents. For example, Laine Doss wrote in the Miami New Times that: And Melanie Warner wrote for CBS News that: In 2010 Senomyx entered into a four-year collaborative agreement to develop sweet enhancers and natural high-potency sweeteners for PepsiCo beverages, but it's unclear whether PepsiCo has ever marketed any food products that include additives (of any kind) developed by Senomyx. It wasn't until March 2014 that Senomyx announced the first fruits of their partnership with PepsiCo, a sweetness-enhancing flavor modifier known as Sweetmyx, but we've seen no subsequent announcement that PepsiCo has begun using Sweetmyx, and that additive appears to be a purely synthetic one: Pepsi's official response to the Senomyx issue was to point inquirers to their Responsible Research Statement, which stated that PepsiCo's research processes and those of our partners are confidential for competitive reasons. However, PepsiCo does not conduct or fund research that utilizes any human tissue or cell lines derived from human embryos. We contacted the Media Relations department at PepsiCo and posed some specific questions to them about their relationship with Senomyx but received only non-specific answers in response: Senomyx did not respond to our request for additional information.
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