Paris

INSERM, France's main biomedical research agency, has been asked to investigate allegations that one of its laboratories came under police surveillance because of its work on the role of dietary salt in heart disease.

The allegations, which have been emphatically denied by the French authorities, appeared in the 11 January edition of Le Point, one of France's leading weekly news magazines.

The magazine says that in May 2000, the police received an order from an unknown source to tap the telephone of Pierre Meneton, a researcher at INSERM's laboratory of physiology and experimental vascular pathology in Paris. That was shortly after Meneton handed a report to the French food-safety agency, AFSSA, in which he accused the food industry of “poisoning” consumers because of excess salt in its products.

Meneton was surprised by the allegations in Le Point. “I will be asking for a full investigation and if there is any truth in the matter I will be lodging an official complaint,” he says.

The relationship between salt intake and high blood pressure has long been the subject of fierce scientific argument. Publication of the allegations coincided with an international conference in Paris on salt and health, organized by the AFSSA in response to Meneton's report. An advisory panel set up by the agency told the meeting that the salt content in processed food should be cut by 20% over five years.

Le Point claimed that a member of the panel, Joël Ménard, a former chief health officer in the French government, has also been under police surveillance. But Ménard is sceptical. “I can't believe it's true,” he says. “If there is any truth in it, then French democracy is dead.”