‘We Are Under Attack From Fundamentalists’: Wine World Pushes Back Against WHO’s Claim That No Amount of Alcohol Is Safe

The Wine Industry is pushing back against a study done by the WHO claiming no amount of alcohol consumption is safe for your health. (Photo: Maximilian Schönherr/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images)

On Saturday, Wine Business reported that multiple speakers at a Lifestyle, Diet, Wine & Health conference held in Toledo, Spain, pushed back against claims from the World Health Organization that there was no safe level of alcohol fit for consumption.

“We are under attack from fundamentalists — people with ideology,” ViniPortugal President Frederico Falcão said, according to Wine Business. “We need these kinds of events to know the facts and use these facts to defend ourselves from the people that attack us without any scientific knowledge.”

In February, Dr. Carina Ferreira-Borges, the regional advisor for Alcohol and Illicit Drugs in the WHO’s Regional Office for Europe, made a statement that rocked the alcohol industry, with the following words that have posed an existential threat to the booze business ever since:

“We cannot talk about a so-called safe level of alcohol use. It doesn’t matter how much you drink — the risk to the drinker’s health starts from the first drop of any alcoholic beverage,” Ferreira-Borges said. “The only thing that we can say for sure is that the more you drink, the more harmful it is — or, in other words, the less you drink, the safer it is.”

Many countries base their alcohol legislation on the WHO’s views, and Ferreira-Borges’ statement has led to stricter legislation.

Professor Nicolai Worm, the chair of the Wine Information Council and organizer of the conference, expressed his concerns about the political pressures pushing zero alcohol consumption. Worm cited that the WHO was basing its opinions on a 2018 study done by the Global Burden of Disease, which cited zero alcohol consumption as the healthiest way to go. He criticized the GBD as a source and claimed they operated on “assumptions.”

“Interestingly, two years later, they used the same data to come to a different conclusion,” Worm said.

Worm cited that the GBD’s subsequent study recognized the impact of the J-curve on alcohol consumption. The J-curve showed that people with light to moderate levels of alcohol consumption are at a lower risk of cardiovascular diseases. The WHO maintained its stance on the previous study, however, and chose not to consider this data according to Wine Business.

“We call this the de-normalization project,” Ana Isabel Alves, the executive director of the Portuguese Association for Wine and Spirits, said in September. “The new narrative is about making alcoholic beverages less socially acceptable, like with tobacco.”

Yet, many professionals in the wine industry claim these latest verdicts are unfair and that wine and alcohol consumption in moderation do have some health benefits. These benefits have been cited by scientists like Dr. Creina Stockley, the co-director of the International Scientific Forum on Alcohol Research. Stockley claimed that some benefits include a reduced risk of diabetes, and criticized the study the WHO was using to make its claims supporting sobriety as the healthiest option citing it was based on theoretical statistical models.

Additionally, South African oncologist doctor Justus Apffelstaedt cited that moderate alcohol consumption could potentially have an “inverse relationship for kidney, thyroid cancers and lymphomas,” per Wine Business.

The conference additionally touted the alleged health benefits of moderate wine consumption in conjunction with the Mediterranean diet. Yet, many wine professionals remained wary about the future of the wine industry from both an economic and cultural standpoint.

“We have a culture based on food and the Mediterranean diet and we want to express that, and we want to express our culture, our way of being and our way of understanding life,” said D. Fernando Miranda, Spain’s general secretary of agriculture and food. “We need to explain what lies behind our wine culture. We have a life of high well-being.”

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