British Page

British-born Stephen Joseph is the founder, President and CEO of BanTransFats.com. The anti-trans fat campaign was launched by BanTransFats.com by the filing of the Oreo lawsuit in the United States in May 2003. There was an enormous amount of national and international publicity about the Oreo lawsuit, including in the British media. Since that time, the anti-trans fat campaign has been hugely effective.

Click here for the BBC story about the Oreo case in May 2003.

Click here for the history of the campaign since May 2003.

In 2003, there was almost no awareness of trans fats in Britain. Stephen Joseph alerted Sean Poulter of the Daily Mail, which ran the first front page story about trans fat in the British media, calling it the "killer fat." Soon, British food companies were announcing that they would remove partially hydrogenated oils from their product.

In April 2003, we asked a Member of Parliament, Graham Brady (C. Altrincham & Sale West) to write to the Secretary of State for Health regarding the British Government's position on trans fats. Click here to read the response that we received in November 2003. We also asked Mr. Brady to table written parliamentary questions to the Secretary of State for Health about trans fats. Click here to read the responses from the Secretary of State. We thank Graham Brady for his responsiveness and help regarding our concerns.

BanTransFats.com created a British page in 2003 to keep British visitors to this website informed as there was no campaign counterpart in Britain. However, in 2004, Oliver Tickell founded the "tfX"campaign against trans fats in Britain. His website, www.tfx.org.uk, is truly excellent and the anti-trans fats activities of Oliver and his colleagues have been sustained and effective. Consequently, there is no need for us to continue to maintain a special page regarding developments in Britain.