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WHO recommendations on food marketing communications
Date: 01/12/2009
Full WHO Recommendations available to download below...
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The World Health Organisation posted yesterday its recommendations for food marketing communications for member states (attached). These recommendations follow the mandate of the World Health Assembly in resolution WHA60.23 "...to promote responsible marketing including the development of a set of recommendations on the marketing of foods and non-alcoholic beverages to children, in order to reduce the impact of foods high in saturated fats, trans-fatty acids, free sugars, or salt, in dialogue with all relevant stakeholders, including private-sector parties, while ensuring avoidance of potential conflict of interest".
The recommendations are annexed to a secretariat report to be presented to the Executive Board in January 2010. The Executive Board is requested to "note" the report. It does not seem that the content of the recommendations will be up for discussion. The report will then be passed to the World Health Assembly in 2010 for final adoption. It remains to be seen if there remains a procedural means by which the recommendations can be influenced.
The recommendations encourage member states to adopt policy measures which limit the advertising of high fat, salt and sugar foods to children but offer a menu of policy options by which this policy objective might be achieved.
Some key points:
The recommendations recognise that "policies currently in place in Member States vary in their objectives and content, approach, monitoring and evaluation practices, and the ways in which stakeholders are involved. Approaches range from statutory prohibitions on television advertising for children of predefined foods to voluntary codes by certain sections of the food and advertising industry [...] Statutory regulation is one approach through which implementation and compliance are a legal requirement. Another approach is industry-led self-regulation, which covers whole industry sectors, for example the advertising sector, and can be independent of government regulation."
"Independently of any other measures taken for implementation of a national policy, private sector stakeholders should be encouraged to follow marketing practices that are consistent with the policy aim and objective set out in these recommendations and to practise them globally in order to ensure equal consideration to children everywhere and avoid undermining efforts to restrict marketing in countries that receive food marketing from beyond their borders."
Policy interventions need to address both exposure and power, that is to say the quantitative impact and the marketing techniques used. The recommendations suggest that a "comprehensive approach" to restricting all marketing to children of foods with a high content of saturated fats, trans-fatty acids, free sugars, or salt, would fully eliminate the exposure, and thereby also the power, of that marketing. Alternatively, they suggest that Member States can start by either addressing exposure or power independently or dealing with aspects of both simultaneously in a "stepwise approach" but infer that a comprehensive approach is likely to have the greatest impact.
Member states are clearly encouraged to set definitions for the age group for whom restrictions should apply and the communication channels, settings and marketing techniques to be covered, what constitutes marketing to children according to factors such as product, timing, viewing audience, placement and content of the marketing message, as well as what foods are to be covered by marketing restrictions. The recommendations do not suggest an age for a child in this context.
Marketing of foods and non-alcoholic beverages to children in schools and pre-school establishments is highlighted as a concern. Schools are identified as venues which should be "free from all forms of marketing of foods high in saturated fats, trans-fatty acids, free sugars, or salt."
Governments should be the key stakeholders in the development of policy and provide leadership, through a multi-stakeholder platform, for implementation, monitoring and evaluation. In setting the national policy framework, governments may choose to allocate defined roles to other stakeholders, while protecting the public interest and avoiding conflict of interest.
For policy monitoring, the recommendations suggest comparing the advertisements in a 24hr time period which are "directed to children" both in terms of number of ads (in order to evaluate "exposure") and use of marketing techniques (in order to evaluate changes in "power"). Importantly, they go on to suggest using indicators to evaluate the impact of the policy intervention. One key indicator which is proposed is to measure a decrease in sales or market share for foods high in saturated fats, trans-fatty acids, free sugars, or salt; and measure the changes in children's consumption patterns in response to the policy.
WFA members can benefit from a full analysis at the next Responsible Advertising and Children Programme meeting on Wednesday 2 December. For more information please contact Will Gilroy: [email protected]
Documents:
WHO_Recommendation.pdf
