PHM-Exch> PHM urges WHO to make stronger links between Nutrition and Trade

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: John Mahama <jmahama at gmail.com>


PHM has called on WHO to make stronger links between Nutrition and Trade in
its draft comprehensive implementation plan on maternal, infant and young
child nutrition that is presented before the 65 World Health Assembly.

WHA Item 13.03: Maternal, infant and young child nutrition
The issues before the Assembly

Document A65/11 puts before the Assembly a draft implementation plan on
maternal, infant and young child nutrition for adoption.

The covering note also reports on progress made by countries in the
implementation of the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk
Substitutes.
 PHM Comment

There is a lot which is good in the draft comprehensive implementation plan
(CIP) and we welcome many of the components of the plan at the country
level. The evidence based approach adopted in the draft is appreciated.

However, the plan is deficient in two main respects: first, it fails to
deal with the intersection of trade relations and nutrition; and second, it
steers clear of the challenges to be faced in building a regulatory
framework to regulate transnational agribusiness and food corporations at
global and country level.

In contrast to the failure to confront the regulatory challenge, new
provisions regarding investor state dispute settlement now being inserted
into preferential trade agreements provide transnational corporations with
powerful new defenses against regulation at both the national and
international levels. This has been clearly demonstrated in the attack by
Big Tobacco on the plain packaging policies of Uruguay and Australia.
Resolution WHA59.26<http://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA59-REC1/e/Resolutions-en.pdf>(p37)
mandates the WHO to work with MS to achieve coherence across trade
and health policies. This must be maintained.

The commercial interests of transnational agribusiness, food corporations
and retailers play a powerful role in shaping nutrition and malnutrition
through marketing and through price relativities. The challenge of
regulation must be faced. Diets of the poor everywhere are deteriorating,
particularly in middle income countries with significant urban populations.

Trade and commercial factors contribute powerfully to obesity in children
and its relation to NCDs. Nutrition cannot be addressed in isolation from
NCDs. We urge MS to take advantage of the momentum created by the UN High
Level Meeting on NCDs.

Nutrition needs to be understood in the context of food security (and
insecurity). Speculation in food commodities due to deregulation of
commodities derivative markets in 2000 was the main factor in a 50% rise in
food prices in 2008.

More than 200 million hectares of land have been sold, mainly to
transnational companies, and mainly in Africa, over the past decade. The
employment generated seems to be greatly outweighed by displacement of
small producers.

Meanwhile the diversion of land and grain from food to biofuels is
contributing to rising food prices and jeopardising food security and
nutrition.

The stalemate in the so-called Doha Development Round in the WTO leaves in
place agricultural subsidy and protection policies which have been highly
detrimental to small producers.

There has been a somewhat uncritical acceptance of ready-to-use therapeutic
foods (RUTF) in settings which go beyond the treatment of severe acute
malnutrition. Its widespread and unregulated use poses a threat to replace
breast feeding and medicalise the prevention and management of
undernutrition.

WHO cannot address the issues of trade and the regulation of transnational
industry alone but it can take a pro-active stance in working with other
competent intergovernmental bodies.
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