PHM-Exch> Corporate Involvement in International Nutrition and Alcohol Laws Help or hindrance?

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: Patti Rundall <prundall at me.com>
Date: Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 12:36 PM
Subject: Fwd: COI Coalition: News release: Corporate Involvement in
International Nutrition and Alcohol Laws Help or hindrance?
To:


There were a few typos and inconsistences in the COI Coalition Statement  so
do make sure you have the latest version.
http://info.babymilkaction.org/news/policyblog/COIstatement

*
Here is a link to our letter in today's Lancet  (16.9.11):

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(11)61463-3/fulltext

There are also articles in the BMJ.

A piece in The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/sep/16/un-summit-spread-lifestyle-diseases

Bloomberg Business Week:
Nestle, Glaxo Lobby UN Over Biggest ‘Epidemic’ Battle Since AIDS

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-09-16/nestle-glaxo-lobby-un-over-biggest-epidemic-battle-since-aids.html

*
*News Release*

**

*Corporate Involvement in International Nutrition and Alcohol Laws*

*Help or hindrance for protecting health, government budgets, and worker
productivity? *

**

**A consortium of non-profit public health advocacy groups,  will press
world leaders and other representatives of the 193 member states to call for
strong public policy measures to curb nutrition and alcohol-related diseases
and safeguards against conflicts of interest in the policy-making process
when they meet in New York City at the United Nations General Assembly next
week.**  (1)**

The U.N. “High Level Meeting on the Prevention and Control of
Noncommunicable Diseases” will adopt a strategy at the  General Assembly on
Monday and Tuesday, September 19-20, 2011, following difficult negotiations
on a “Political Declaration” that began in June.
** **
Last year, the U.N. pledged to create a strategy to limit cancer,
cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and chronic respiratory diseases caused by
poor nutrition, excess consumption of alcoholic beverages, tobacco, and
physical inactivity.  Negotiations during the summer revealed competing
views about the effectiveness of voluntary food industry efforts, adequacy
of existing international law, and the role of for-profit companies and
public-interest groups in the policy-making process. The public-interest
groups stress that governments now have an unprecedented full and
sophisticated grasp of gigantic health and economic burden NCDs, but have
been decidedly naive about conflicts of interest in policy-making.  (See the
near-final “Political Declaration” at
http://www.who.int/nmh/events/un_ncd_summit2011/political_declaration.pdf ,
program agenda at
http://cspinet.org/canada/pdf/summit-information-note-9-sept-2011.pdf , and
the statement of the Conflict of Interest Coalition at
http://cspinet.org/canada/pdf/conflict-of-interest.pdf )

****

“Leaders simply must get fundamental disease rate-reduction targets locked
in—starting with 25% by 2025—and really embrace effective regulations on
population-level salt reduction and trans fat elimination, nutrition
standards for school meals, food tax reform, controls on the marketing of
high fat, salt and sugar foods and alcohol to children and young people, and
front of pack labelling in order to safeguard the health and economic
development, nationally and internationally,” said Paul Lincoln of the
UK-based National Heart Forum.** **
“World leaders need to demonstrate their dedication to public health
nutrition as they have already begun to do for tobacco control.  Leaders
fall short when they white-wash ineffective food industry promises, and duck
specifics on regulatory reform while backward-looking World Trade
Organization rules (and Codex Alimentarius Commission nutrition standards)
tie the hands of national governments,” said Bill Jeffery of the Centre for
Science in the Public Interest-Canada and the International Association of
Consumer Food Organizations.
** **
“The United Nations needs a sensible, evidence-based and experience-informed
code of conduct to ensure that commercial operations in food, alcohol, drug
and other industries do not impair progress or the effectiveness of NCD
prevention policies,” said Dr. Kate Allen of the World Cancer Research Fund
International.
** **
“Manufacturers and distributors of alcohol beverages are bound to continue
to promote their vested interests by supporting  ineffective ‘educational’
programs and obstructing the implementation of effective legislative
measures such as tax increases and advertising restrictions,” said Derek
Rutherford, Chair of Global Alcohol Policy Alliance.
** **
”The multitude of 140, and counting, public interest groups calling for
safeguards against conflicts of interest cannot be ignored, and citizens in
any country don’t have to be experts in good governance to know that the fox
belongs outside the hen house,” said Patti Rundall of the International Baby
Food Action Network.  “Having industry at the table can be ruinous for
consensus on public health priority-setting, and virtually guarantees the
lowest and most useless common denominator,” she added.
** **
“At this summit we have the ridiculous state of affairs whereby
representatives of the pharmaceutical industry and the food and drink
industry will be speaking as civil society. The WHO needs to clearly
recognise the differences between industry lobbyists and pubic interest NGOs
and develop meaningful rules to manage the potential conflicts of interest
that arise when engaging with the private sector,” said Indrani
Thuraisingham, Consumers International.  ****
* *
“Sky-high rates of obesity and overweight among children and adults in
developed countries are spreading to many emerging economies with
calorie-dense, nutrient-poor salty, sugary, fatty foods.  Meek requests for
further voluntary forbearance by the food, drink, and advertising industries
are no substitute for regulatory limits on advertising to children,” said
Professor Shiriki Kumanyika.****


(1) *The Conflict of Interest Coalition Statement of
concern<http://info.babymilkaction.org/news/policyblog/COIstatement>
has
bee endorsed by 143 national, regional and global networks and organisations
working in public health, including medicine, nutrition, cancer, diabetes,
heart disease, lung disease, mental health, infant feeding,   food safety
and development - including ** four Royal Colleges  of Paediatrics and Child
Health, Physicians, Midwives and General Practitioners.*
*The statement **can be found here:
http://info.babymilkaction.org/news/policyblog/COIstatement*
*
*
* *
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