Exhibit 553

Letter to HHS urging public disclosure of 2025 DGAC members' financial conflicts of interest

Exhibit 553 · Advocacy letter

Letter to HHS urging public disclosure of 2025 DGAC members' financial conflicts of interest

At present, the public remains in the dark.

Signed by CSPI, Corporate Accountability, Union of Concerned Scientists, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future and others. States the departments did not implement NASEM's provisional-list recommendation in 2020 and that OGE Form 450 is exempt from public disclosure. Cites the Union of Concerned Scientists (1 April 2019) and Corporate Accountability (2020) as the earlier NGO reports on the 2020 committee.

Source: Center for Science in the Public Interest and 12 other organizations
Date: 27 January 2023
Quoted from: p. 3
Grade: Primary record
Document: https://www.cspi.org/sites/default/files/2023-01/COI%20DGAC%20Letter_1.27.23.pdf
Accessed: 2026-11-09
Cited by: Findings citing this exhibit
Note: The letter is the primary record of the request, not of the facts it asserts.

Cited by

Finding AGR-4.8: Primary record For the 2020 committee the USDA ethics official found no entry on any of the 20 members' OGE Form 450 that would prevent appointment. For the same cycle HHS and USDA declined NASEM's recommendations for an external third-party screener (cost and time) and a public list of provisional appointees (privacy). A coalition letter states that OGE Form 450 is exempt from public disclosure.
Finding AGR-4.11: Primary record The 2025 advisory committee disclosed its members' interests collectively, on voluntary ICMJE forms covering the prior 12 months, and stated: "Because its work is collective, the Committee provided its disclosures collectively rather than individually." A letter signed by CSPI and other organizations on 27 January 2023 had asked for individual disclosure.