How the food industry fought back over salt regulation (The Times)
By David Rowan
Voluntary targets for reducing the salt content of foods, published this week by the Food Standards Agency, were less than some health campaigners had been led to expect. Although the FSA had previously declared a wish to cut the overall daily salt intake from 10g to 6g per person within four years, campaign groups argued that the revised targets would effectively raise recommended salt consumption to 8g a day. This was further evidence, they said, that once again a government agency had been nobbled by powerful food interests.
The FSA’s new targets, affecting 85 food products from ketchup to biscuits, were quickly welcomed by the Food and Drink Federation, an industry lobby, as “more realistic” than the tougher restrictions initially proposed by the FSA last year. But health campaigners smelt a rat. One group, Consensus Action on Salt and Health, accused the agency of bowing to the industry’s “purely commercial interests” after an intense lobbying campaign. Another body, the National Heart Forum, demanded that food companies should be “named and shamed” for putting their profits before the nation’s health.
As most of the FSA’s consultations with its “stakeholders” are conducted in private, it is impossible to know what pressure, if any, was brought to bear to dilute the initial targets. But based on the food industry’s previous attempts to promote its interests in the face of regulatory challenges, consumer groups say they would not be surprised if public policy had once again been swayed by a co-ordinated and vociferous campaign.
“It’s no surprise that industry organisations are lobbying for proposals such as these to be weakened,” says Sue Dibb, of the National Consumer Council. “We’re dealing here with self-regulation rather than the power of law, so the FSA has no real sticks. It’s not able to demand that companies meet its salt targets, or support nutrient profiling, or remove vending machines from schools.”
Should they wish, Dibb says, food manufacturers and retailers can easily undermine the FSA’s healthier-eating initiatives, as happened earlier this month over “traffic light” labelling. The agency announced a new industry-wide labelling scheme that uses red, orange and green symbols on packs to designate foods that are considered high, medium or low in salt, fat or sugar. Yet some of the largest food companies and supermarkets, including Tesco, said that they would use their own labelling schemes instead.
“We think it is really unhelpful that while Sainsbury’s, Asda and Waitrose are saying ‘yes’ to traffic lights, Tesco decides to take its own approach,” Dibb says.
Tensions within the industry over food labelling became public last week when J Sainsbury suspended its membership of the British Retail Consortium over the trade body’s support for Tesco’s go-it-alone approach.
Food companies are also using other well-practised strategies to stave off regulation, according to Kath Dalmeny, a research officer at the Food Commission. “There’s a great deal of lobbying going on at the European level,” she says.
There is intense lobbying at West- minster, too. Although this takes place mostly behind closed doors, Freedom of Information requests in 2004 disclosed that the Food and Drink Federation had more than 2,000 contacts the previous year, with ministers, MPs, lords, MEPs, MSPs and special advisers, at a time of intense concern about proposals to restrict “junk food” advertising. In January 2004, according to a memo released under the Freedom of Information Act, the federation ’s director general met Melanie Johnson, then Public Health Minister, to stress the industry’s opposition to any plans to cut fat and sugar in foods.
Then there are the “spin” campaigns which some claim to make it appear to consumers and regulators that the industry is taking health more seriously than is, in fact, the case. “Some manufacturers have been keen to put out corporate social responsibility statements saying that they are restricting certain food additives without mentioning other unhealthy ingredients,” Dalmeny says. “Or they will state that they are removing advertisements from the sides of vending machines, so that it looks as if the entire vending-machine problem has been solved.”
The fightback over school vending machines is illuminating. Last autumn, Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, told the Labour Party conference that “from next September no schools will be able to have vending machines selling crisps, chocolate and sugary fizzy drinks”. In November, it later emerged, Coca-Cola wrote privately to Kelly arguing that many soft drinks provided “significant nutritional and functional benefits” to children, and threatened to pull all of its machines out of schools, including those selling healthier products, thus depriving them of “significant revenue gain”.
Pepsi, meanwhile, recently hired the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton to associate “health messages” with its drinks, highlighting, for instance, the sugar-free varieties. A company spokesman was quoted in PR Week as saying: “We plan to demonstrate through H&K that we all have a role to play in debates on issues such as obesity.” McDonald’s, too, is reportedly planning a new campaign to stress its “healthy credentials”.
Other strategies to influence public debate include a willingness to fund academic studies that point to the supposed health benefits of foods. Masterfoods, which owns Mars, has funded a number of studies which have claimed that eating chocolate can be “good for you”. (The company has used the PR firm Weber Shandwick to promote its new CocoaVia brand, which has been placed in supermarket health-food aisles, using the slogan: “Be Good to Your Heart Everyday.”) An unrelated study last autumn, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, suggested that any cut in consumers’ fish consumption would have implications for public health. At the time, neither the authors nor the journal declared that the main source of research funding was the US Tuna Foundation, representing tuna processors concerned about rising public fears over mercury levels in fish.
The consumers to whom nutritional health messages are directed are rarely aware of the behind-the-scenes initiatives by vested interests to shape that advice. Recommendations about salt intake may be this week’s controversy, but similar battles are also constantly being fought to dilute any public policies that may regulate the fat and sugar in our food, waged using everything from PR campaigns to direct ministerial approaches.
Next Tuesday, Ofcom is due to announce its plans for limiting television advertising to children of foods high in fat, sugar and salt. Whether or not the industry can head off an outright ban, you can assume that its lobbyists will have used everything from research studies to arm-twisting in trying.
(The Times, March 25 2006)
Voluntary targets for reducing the salt content of foods, published this week by the Food Standards Agency, were less than some health campaigners had been led to expect. Although the FSA had previously declared a wish to cut the overall daily salt intake from 10g to 6g per person within four years, campaign groups argued that the revised targets would effectively raise recommended salt consumption to 8g a day. This was further evidence, they said, that once again a government agency had been nobbled by powerful food interests.
The FSA’s new targets, affecting 85 food products from ketchup to biscuits, were quickly welcomed by the Food and Drink Federation, an industry lobby, as “more realistic” than the tougher restrictions initially proposed by the FSA last year. But health campaigners smelt a rat. One group, Consensus Action on Salt and Health, accused the agency of bowing to the industry’s “purely commercial interests” after an intense lobbying campaign. Another body, the National Heart Forum, demanded that food companies should be “named and shamed” for putting their profits before the nation’s health.
As most of the FSA’s consultations with its “stakeholders” are conducted in private, it is impossible to know what pressure, if any, was brought to bear to dilute the initial targets. But based on the food industry’s previous attempts to promote its interests in the face of regulatory challenges, consumer groups say they would not be surprised if public policy had once again been swayed by a co-ordinated and vociferous campaign.
“It’s no surprise that industry organisations are lobbying for proposals such as these to be weakened,” says Sue Dibb, of the National Consumer Council. “We’re dealing here with self-regulation rather than the power of law, so the FSA has no real sticks. It’s not able to demand that companies meet its salt targets, or support nutrient profiling, or remove vending machines from schools.”
Should they wish, Dibb says, food manufacturers and retailers can easily undermine the FSA’s healthier-eating initiatives, as happened earlier this month over “traffic light” labelling. The agency announced a new industry-wide labelling scheme that uses red, orange and green symbols on packs to designate foods that are considered high, medium or low in salt, fat or sugar. Yet some of the largest food companies and supermarkets, including Tesco, said that they would use their own labelling schemes instead.
“We think it is really unhelpful that while Sainsbury’s, Asda and Waitrose are saying ‘yes’ to traffic lights, Tesco decides to take its own approach,” Dibb says.
Tensions within the industry over food labelling became public last week when J Sainsbury suspended its membership of the British Retail Consortium over the trade body’s support for Tesco’s go-it-alone approach.
Food companies are also using other well-practised strategies to stave off regulation, according to Kath Dalmeny, a research officer at the Food Commission. “There’s a great deal of lobbying going on at the European level,” she says.
There is intense lobbying at West- minster, too. Although this takes place mostly behind closed doors, Freedom of Information requests in 2004 disclosed that the Food and Drink Federation had more than 2,000 contacts the previous year, with ministers, MPs, lords, MEPs, MSPs and special advisers, at a time of intense concern about proposals to restrict “junk food” advertising. In January 2004, according to a memo released under the Freedom of Information Act, the federation ’s director general met Melanie Johnson, then Public Health Minister, to stress the industry’s opposition to any plans to cut fat and sugar in foods.
Then there are the “spin” campaigns which some claim to make it appear to consumers and regulators that the industry is taking health more seriously than is, in fact, the case. “Some manufacturers have been keen to put out corporate social responsibility statements saying that they are restricting certain food additives without mentioning other unhealthy ingredients,” Dalmeny says. “Or they will state that they are removing advertisements from the sides of vending machines, so that it looks as if the entire vending-machine problem has been solved.”
The fightback over school vending machines is illuminating. Last autumn, Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, told the Labour Party conference that “from next September no schools will be able to have vending machines selling crisps, chocolate and sugary fizzy drinks”. In November, it later emerged, Coca-Cola wrote privately to Kelly arguing that many soft drinks provided “significant nutritional and functional benefits” to children, and threatened to pull all of its machines out of schools, including those selling healthier products, thus depriving them of “significant revenue gain”.
Pepsi, meanwhile, recently hired the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton to associate “health messages” with its drinks, highlighting, for instance, the sugar-free varieties. A company spokesman was quoted in PR Week as saying: “We plan to demonstrate through H&K that we all have a role to play in debates on issues such as obesity.” McDonald’s, too, is reportedly planning a new campaign to stress its “healthy credentials”.
Other strategies to influence public debate include a willingness to fund academic studies that point to the supposed health benefits of foods. Masterfoods, which owns Mars, has funded a number of studies which have claimed that eating chocolate can be “good for you”. (The company has used the PR firm Weber Shandwick to promote its new CocoaVia brand, which has been placed in supermarket health-food aisles, using the slogan: “Be Good to Your Heart Everyday.”) An unrelated study last autumn, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, suggested that any cut in consumers’ fish consumption would have implications for public health. At the time, neither the authors nor the journal declared that the main source of research funding was the US Tuna Foundation, representing tuna processors concerned about rising public fears over mercury levels in fish.
The consumers to whom nutritional health messages are directed are rarely aware of the behind-the-scenes initiatives by vested interests to shape that advice. Recommendations about salt intake may be this week’s controversy, but similar battles are also constantly being fought to dilute any public policies that may regulate the fat and sugar in our food, waged using everything from PR campaigns to direct ministerial approaches.
Next Tuesday, Ofcom is due to announce its plans for limiting television advertising to children of foods high in fat, sugar and salt. Whether or not the industry can head off an outright ban, you can assume that its lobbyists will have used everything from research studies to arm-twisting in trying.
(The Times, March 25 2006)
posted by David Rowan at Saturday, March 25, 2006
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