[Focus] Brussels confirms 'hands off' approach to food industry
ANDREW RETTMAN
09.06.2006 @ 17:30 CET
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission does not see formal policy-making as the answer to Europe's obesity epidemic, despite scientists' claims that industry is betraying voluntary promises by a hard sell on bad food.
"If the EU started making policy on families and obesity it would be considered even more suspicious than policy on companies and obesity," commission health and consumer protection director Robert Madelin said on Thursday (8 June) at a Brussels debate on obesity.
Some 300,000 more European children are becoming obese and 1.2 million overweight every year (Photo: European Community, 2005)
The debate comes after recent commission estimates indicating that obesity costs the EU 59 billion annually in health care with 300,000 more European children becoming obese and 1.2 million overweight every year.
"We would not like to be responsible for a European diet," he added, advocating Brussels' 2005 voluntary "platform for action on diet" project as the most "practical" way of getting the EU, food makers and member states to pool work.
"It is a mistake to think that if you get a sentence about obesity in the next council conclusions, we will suddenly have a coordinated policy," he added.
Mr Madelin's remarks follow the commission's support for a watered-down EU bill on food labelling in May and its 2005 decision to not regulate food advertising for children, allowing firms such as Pepsico and Cadbury Schweppes to make up their own code for under-12s.
Money talks
But for every 100 spent by majors on marketing "less healthy" food just 2 is spent on advertising fruit and vegetables, while Pepsico and Coca-Cola's combined marketing budget is bigger than the whole annual budget of the World Health Organisation (WHO), the UK's City University revealed in April.
The WHO gets about 350 million a year, while Pepsico and Coca-Cola posted combined turnover of 44 billion and profits of 9.3 billion in 2005.
The commission's strategy has been warmly received by the European food lobby, the CIAA, with CIAA head Jean Martin saying on Thursday "I hear about 'meal solutions' as if eating was a problem you need to find a solution for... we need [food], so why not enjoy it?"
The suave Frenchman praised Europe's "rich gastronomic heritage" and explained that the food sector has cleaned up its act on marketing in schools with all the top firms taking healthy food seriously as a new "business opportunity."
"I can't think of any company that isn't giving this top priority, [involving] all the board members," he stated, placing a stress on nutrition teaching in schools through the EU's voluntary platform. "We're going to fix it [obesity]. Not today. Not tomorrow. But gradually."
The City University study showed that of the top 25 global food producers and retailers, just six have a board member responsible for health and just five promised to take action on fat and sugar content in 2005 annual reports.
Self-regulation began in the US in 1974 but "hasn't stopped their epidemic" one of the study's authors, British nutritionist Geof Rayner, told Mr Madelin and Martin, adding that the EU's 43 billion a year farm subsidy helps create bad, cheap food made sexy by advertising magic.
The unreality of modern food
"We shouldn't be seeking profitability for a company by selling more food cheaply" or "using cheap fats to manipulate taste" he argued. "Food looks processed. We are losing the culture of what food is and moving into a hyper-reality of exoticised food linked to footballers."
Mr Rayner suggested setting-up a Europe-wide monitoring agency to keep tabs on corporate promises, with the EU and member state governments framing a comprehensive policy on nutrition benchmarks and physical activity to help destroy the "obesogenic environment" of the early 21st century.
"The environment we live in produces the people we are - do we change the people or the environment? We have to do both," he urged. "We require a total societal change...the European Commission is part of that, member state governments are part of that."