UK: Report Threatens Ad Ban

A report commissioned by the British government is understood to have concluded that the Minister for Public Health should ban food advertising aimed at children. Although it gives no specific timetable it suggests that the ban should be implemented in the lifetime of the current administration (by May 2002 at the latest). Professor Philip James and Karen McColl, of the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen, were given a brief to investigate the health of British schoolchildren. Their report, written in less than four months and quietly presented to the Minister in October, is entitled “Healthy English Schoolchildren: A New Approach To Physical Activity And Food”. It also contains sweeping recommendations on other aspects of school food policy, and was discussed at a meeting of those people and organisations involved in the setting-up of the Food Standards Agency (FSA) at the Department of Health in London on 14 November. It is expected that this discussion will form the basis for much of what the government will include in its proposals on food safety and the FSA, which it plans to publish shortly.