Government Fails To Curb Junk Food Advertising to Kids
The Children’s Food Bill campaign has published a major new report detailing the repeated failure of voluntary controls to curb junk food advertising to children. coinciding with the Department of Health’s “Food and Drink Advertising Promotion Forum”, meeting for the first time this morning.
The report, Children’s Food Bill – Why we need a new law, not more voluntary approaches, demonstrates the ineffectiveness of voluntary approaches used to control, amongst other things, tobacco advertising and alcohol promotion, showing that voluntary codes of practice inevitably fail.
It also claims that voluntary codes are weak, unenforceable, lack independence and are used by industry to avoid effective regulation.
The Government has established the Food and Drink Advertising and Promotion Forum to “encourage new measures to strengthen existing voluntary codes in non-broadcast areas.”
However, according to sceptics, because the Government Forum includes the British Retail Consortium, the Food and Drink Federation and other industry bodies, it is thought to be highly unlikely to propose an end to ‘junk’ food marketing to children.
Commenting on the issue, Charlie Powell, co-ordinator for the Children’s Food Bill campaign at Sustain, the alliance for better food and farming, said: “It beggars belief that the Government is relying on a group with strong industry interests to develop meaningful proposals to restrict junk food promotions to children.”
Powell continued: “Many of the industry bodies represented to not even publicly accept that there are unhealthy foods, let alone that they are part of the problem. Statutory controls are needed to protect children because each year of delay may result in another 220,000 children in England becoming overweight or obese.”
The report for the Children’s Food Bill was part published by the National Federation of Women’s Institutes (NFWI). Barbara Gill chairman of the National Federation of Women’s Institutes said: “The NFW1 has been actively campaigning on the issue of children’s diets for the past two years and is a strong supporter of the Children’s Food Bill.”
She added: “Out members are very concerned about the way unhealthy foods are promoted to children. The industry has had many years to prove that self-regulation works, but it has failed to act responsibility. This report shows voluntary codes are not working and we are calling on the Government to introduce robust legislation to protect the current and future health of our children.”
The Children’s Food Bill was re-introduced to Parliament last month afternoon by Mary Creagh MP, reigniting the debate over food advertising to children (seeFood Fight Continues Over Children’s Advertising).
The debate surrounding food advertising to children is a long-running one. The Food Standards Agency considered the use of cartoon characters in food marketing as part of its white paper on obesity last November, stating that an outright ban would not succeed in reducing child obesity.