Working For Jobs

by Michele Simon.

Cross-posted from Food Safety News.

Last week, as health advocates around the nation raced against a
deadline to submit comments to the federal government on food marketing
to children, the food industry was busy doing what it does best: launching a massive PR campaign to undermine anything the feds might
dare do to protect children from corporate predatory marketing.

What
exactly got the likes of PepsiCo, Kraft Foods, and McDonald’s in such a
tizzy? You would think, by the tone and fervor of their reaction, that
the government was imposing a complete ban on food marketing to
children.

Hardly.

Instead,
at the request of Congress, four government agencies—Federal Trade
Commission (FTC), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), U.S. Department
of Agriculture, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—collectively known
as the Interagency Working Group proposed voluntary “principles” for
food companies to follow in hopes of curbing ads aimed at kids for fast
food, sugary cereals, soda, candy, and a host of other
nutrient-deficient food products.

Indeed, the FTC, in a twisted attempt to allay industry fears
that the agency might even be thinking of regulating them, explained:

This
is a report to Congress, not a rulemaking proceeding, so there’s no
proposed government regulation. In fact, the FTC Act explicitly forbids the Commission from issuing a rule restricting food advertising to
children. So the FTC couldn’t issue a rule on this subject if it wanted
to, which it doesn’t.

Got that, Big Food? FTC not only can’t regulate you, it doesn’t even want to. What a great message to send to an industry that targets kids as young as 2, and exploits vulnerable children with websites like Ronald.com and Trixworld.com.

Voluntary self-regulation incompatible with profits

For
years, the same food companies that claim to be so responsible and to care
about the welfare of children have shown themselves to be completely
untrustworthy. In late 2005, given alarming data on childhood obesity
and the connection to child-targeted junk food ads, the Institute of
Medicine recommended that Congress act within two years if industry showed no signs of progress through voluntary measures. 

In response, fast food and junk food peddlers banded together in 2006 to create the impressive-sounding Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI).
(An “initiative” is industry’s favorite way to substitute for actual
law.) The CFBAI consisted of a series of individual company “pledges”
(really) on food marketing to children. 

Only one problem: By all accounts, it’s been a dismal failure. At least three organizations, the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, Children Now, and the Center for Science in the Public Interest [PDF] have each conducted reviews of industry voluntary self-regulation on
food marketing to children and found the system to be lacking, to say
the least.

Enter the Interagency Working Group (IWG): Coordinated by the FTC, the effort to rein in the food industry’s most
harmful marketing was doomed from the start. In late 2009, the IWG
released its first proposal, which Marion Nestle politely called “weak.” But even this step proved too much for industry. Then we waited for the next round. And waited.
(During this time, I attended meetings with FTC’s Mary Engle, who took
pains to explain that politics was holding things up. Really?)

Then finally in April, the proposed rule emerged,
along with the comment period. (I am not even sure what to call the
process, as it’s not rulemaking, but rather “proposed nutrition
principles,” and no regulations will result, just a report to Congress.)

Industry takes hypocrisy to new heights

Despite the fact that
whatever emerges from the IWG process will be completely voluntary (as in
no consequences if industry ignores the whole thing), over the last few
weeks, food and media corporations have launched an all-out assault.

According to The Washington Post,
the “Sensible Food Policy Coalition,” consisting of the likes of
PepsiCo, Kellogg, Viacom, Time Warner, and even the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce, is “trying to derail” the federal proposal. They have already
spent a cool $6.6 million on lobbying in the first quarter. “Overall,
records show, the coalition’s main members have spent nearly $60 million
on lobbying since the start of the Obama administration,” according to
the Post.

Also, to take full advantage of the opportunity to tie the issue to the slumping economy, industry pointed to an odd two-page “report” predicting the loss of over 74,000 jobs if the proposal was implemented. (Did I mention that implementation is voluntary?)

But
that’s not all. Last Thursday (the day comments were due to the FTC—Big
Food has impeccable timing), industry also released a set of brand new
voluntary standards. Because who needs scientists at the FDA and CDC when
you can have the marketing guys at Burger King and Coca-Cola calling the
shots instead? 

But as The New York Times reported,
“the new guidelines are modest and would not require food makers to
change much—two-thirds of the products the companies now advertise
already meet them.” Moreover, 10 grams of sugar per serving, a huge amount for a child, would still
be perfectly acceptable.

With industry pulling out all the stops, even going so far as to lobby Congress to require a “cost benefit analysis” of the proposed voluntary principles (how to
measure cost/benefit if compliance is not required is a mystery), what
are the odds the final report will ever see the light of day? But more
important, when will the federal government stop expecting industry to
just voluntarily change its marketing practices, when obviously so much
money is at stake?

My colleagues at the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood concluded their comments [PDF] to the FTC by insisting on a new approach:

Given
this inevitable and intractable recalcitrance, we urge the FTC, after
implementing these principles, to spend its time and resources
developing a system—including asking Congress for additional
authority—that would truly protect children from the excesses of the
food and marketing industries, rather than wooing industries that
continue to show blatant disregard for the well-being of children.

Amen.

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