WPHNA World Public Health Nutrition Association

Letters: May editorial

Marketing food products to children:

Are the UN agencies helpless?

Access the pdf of the May editorial here
Access the pdf of all the responses in this June issue of WN here

Editor’s note. The World Nutrition editorial with this title was discussed by senior WHO and other UN executives, and by members of WHO member state delegations, in the context of the marketing of food and drink products being on the agenda of the WHO World Health Assembly held in Geneva between 17-22 May. For a summary of the results of the WHA discussions, please go to 'WHO cares about marketing of food products to children'?, which begins on the June home page of the Association website, published together with WN.

The May editorial asked if the UN system has the capacity effectively to resist entanglements with those sections of the food, drink and related industries whose profits depend on unhealthy products, notably transnationals that spend vast sums of money promoting branded energy-dense ultra-processed products to children. Responses from the Chair of the UN Standing Committee on Nutrition, and from Brazil specifically concerning the Pan American Health Organization’s ‘Partners Forum’, are below. We are planning more coverage of the relationships between the United Nations and conflicted industry, and are also expecting more responses.

Reform of UN Standing Committee on Nutrition

Sir: As Chair of the United Nations System Standing Committee on Nutrition (UNSCN), I would like to draw your attention to a wrong statement concerning the UNSCN in your May editorial. (Anon. ‘Marketing food products to children: Are the UN agencies helpless? [Editorial] Website of the World Public Health Nutrition Association. Obtainable at www.wphna.org). In the section ‘has the UN system lost the plot?’, you mention that ‘The UN Standing Committee on Nutrition, set up to strengthen and harmonise joint UN policies and programmes, is currently out of funds, and its governing body proposes to admit industry – which in practice means transnational food and drink processors – as full partners’.

Currently, the UNSCN is being reformed, and in this regard we are indeed reflecting internally (and soon also externally) on a potential role (if at all) for the private sector. The UNSCN is not, as your statement is suggesting, allowing the private industry to buy in because there is a shortage of funds. Our UNSCN monthly e-letter of April 2010 in its editorial mentioned: ‘Within the SCN, what should be the role of the private sector, if at all? The SCN has developed an interim private sector engagement policy in 2006 (1). Clearly, with the current SCN reform ongoing, this issue needs to be further reflected upon…’

The UN acknowledges the business community as a partner in reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In that regard I refer to the UN Secretary-General's recent report to the General Assembly (‘Keeping the promise: a forward-looking review to promote and agreed action agenda to achieve the MDGs by 2015’). (2). I also want to refer to the General Assembly resolution 64/223 of 25 March 2010 ‘Towards global partnerships’, where in point 7 the General Assembly ‘Recognizes the role that public-private partnerships can play in efforts to eradicate poverty and hunger, and in improving health…’(3).

The UNSCN is not ignoring what is going on around us. Also in light of the ‘One UN’ concept, the UNSCN should help in ensuring that dialogue and/or collaboration with the industry (more specifically related to food and nutrition) is harmonised among our member agencies and organizations. That's why we consider it is timely to reflect on this matter.

Alexander Müller
Chair, UN System Standing Committee on Nutrition
c/o World Health Organization
20, Avenue Appia, CH-1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland
Email: scn@who.int

References

UN Standing Committee on Nutrition. Interim Private Sector Engagement
Policy. Agreed at the 33rd session of the SCN, Geneva, 2006. Obtainable at: http://www.unscn.org/en/mandate/private_sector/
UN Secretary-General. Keeping the promise: a forward-looking review to promote and agreed action agenda to achieve the MDGs by 2015 (p 31, items 112-114). Obtainable at: http://un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/64/665)
UN General Assembly. Resolution 64/223. Towards global partnerships. Obtainable
at: http://un.org/ga/64/resolutions/shtml

Editor’s note. This is helpful and salutary. Dr Müller added that he welcomes continuous assessment by the Association and its members of the work of the UNSCN, and he invited advance consultation with its secretariat, to avoid error. We carry an editorial, 'The UN SCN. Is it necessary to re-invent it'? on the UNSCN this month. The May editorial did not intend to suggest that if admitted in any capacity, any sector whose interests are in conflict with those of public health would help to fund the UNSCN, but we see that such a meaning could be read into it. Apologies, and we assume that any future arrangements will not involve material support from conflicted industry, other than to pay their way.

Please cite as: Muller A. Reform of UN Standing Committee on Nutrition. [Letter] World Nutrition, June 2010, 1, 2: 114-116. Obtainable at www.wphna.org

UN agencies are sleeping with the enemy

Sir: Your May editorial summarises the process conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO) in preparation for last month’s WHO World Health Assembly, regarding the marketing by transnational industries of their branded food and drink products to children, including young children, which was an item on their agenda (1). The editorial also refers to associations between UN agencies and industries whose interests conflict with those of public health and the public good. You are owed thanks from the public health nutrition community for bringing this process more fully to light. But your editorial overlooks some points about the UN ‘dating’ of transnational processed food, drink and associated industries.

I refer to the industries whose products, consumed in typical quantity, are causing obesity and damaging public health. The great economist Adam Smith had something to say about this. He wrote: ‘People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, except the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public’. So far this statement is well-known. He then goes on to say: ‘But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trades from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies, much less to render them necessary’ (2).

Indeed. UN agencies that convene meetings with representatives from conflicted industry are entering minefields blindfold. What is actually going on, at least in the Americas, is more troublesome than your editorial suggests. I refer specifically to the Pan American Health Organization. The ‘dating’ by PAHO (a WHO agency) of the transnational food, drink, chemical and drug manufacturing and associated industries, went public during a day-long session of the Latin American regional meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) held on in the Sheraton Hotel in Rio de Janeiro on 14 April 2009, on ‘Impacting health through multi-stakeholder action’. The session was held in collaboration with PAHO. Two senior executives, from PAHO and its associated Pan American Health and Education Foundation, introduced the session, made its welcome remarks and concluding presentation, and announced the PAHO ‘Partners Forum’ whose stated purpose is to control and prevent obesity and diet-related chronic diseases.

So who was at the ball? A count of the 49 people invited showed 3 from the WEF, 4 from PAHO, 3 from the Brazilian Ministry of Health, 14 other ‘stakeholders’, and 25 from industry and public relations companies. Judging from the list of participants, at most a handful of people from non-government public health organisations or civil society organisations had been invited. The industry people did not represent industry as a whole. Furthermore, few of the people from industry present had any direct responsibility for the actual products. They were mostly corporate affairs executives, from for example Kraft, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Cargill, Pfizer, Monsanto, GlaxoSmithKline, Dow Chemical, the Brazilian corn products and sugar industries, and from public relations companies that specialise in promoting Big Food and Big Drink. Three of the four ‘group work’ discussions, which turned out to be designed to valorise agenda already previously set by transnational food and drink companies, were chaired by executives from Kraft, Pfizer, and the PR firm Ketchum.

As billed, the first objective of the session was ‘to obtain advice and input on the concept of a regional Partners Forum for Chronic Disease Prevention and Control in the Americas’. What we got during the first opening presentation, by a senior ‘public affairs and communications’ executive of Coca-Cola, was a defence of his company – before anybody had said anything to the contrary – ‘We’re not the cause of the obesity epidemic’. We also heard from other industry and PR people that the job of industry is make their products as profitable as they can and to sell as much as they can, and that excessive consumption is not their problem, but a public health problem that should be solved by the public sector. Indeed so. Their business is business. It is the job of the public sector to work in the public interest.

During the meeting, our host from PAHO said to the Coca-Cola executive (I quote from my notes): ‘We would like you to help us to get fruits and vegetables to every single village in the world that gets Coca-Cola from you’. I felt so ashamed of the UN institution that should protect the public health interests in my continent. This was the most inappropriate request for the most inappropriate partner. Coca-Cola sells Coca-Cola. That’s their business. Why would they take fruits and vegetables to every village in the planet, except as a further way to penetrate their brands, including to mothers and children, and to boost and justify their sales?

During the meeting somebody from a PR company said – as if for the first time! – that we should quit using the terms ‘good food’ and ‘bad food’, because every food can be consumed within a balanced diet and that there is no problem with drinking a soda or eating a hamburger once a month. In response I said (I paraphrase): ‘I agree with the last thing you said. Now let’s listen to the soda and burger representatives here. Will they now say in their advertisements “Drink this only once a month”, or “Eat this only once a month”?’ There was no response.

Why is PAHO heavily petting that very sector of industry whose products, eaten in typical amounts, are harmful to health? I can think of a number of reasons for this, but I cannot think of any good reason. As a Latin American public health professional, I feel ashamed and also outraged. My feelings are widely shared.

The Partners Forum was formally launched at PAHO headquarters in Washington DC last December. Now, more than a year after the Rio meeting, it has come up with a ‘Commitment to Action’ (3). This is addressed to all ‘stakeholders’. Within the relatively short list of ‘civil society’ organisations listed as ‘expressing interest’ are some names not usually identified as from civil society – the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers, the International Business Leaders Forum, and the World Economic Forum. The Commitment is to:

Raising the profile of chronic disease issues on the public policy agenda and awareness of the potential for win-win, multisectoral partnerships to effect change.
Catalyzing new multisectoral partnerships that drive direct social, environmental, and policy action to promote healthy lifestyles and prevent chronic diseases.
Increasing the impact of existing chronic health initiatives through coordination, collaboration, and the adoption of multisectoral approaches.
Building capacity for multisectoral partnering through training and the exchange of ideas, experiences, and lessons across sectors and regions.
Developing and promoting efficient and effective solutions to the biggest health challenge facing the Americas today.

Which means... What? How? When? There is no way of knowing. Those of us who hear and read about ‘win-win situations’ (another favourite is ‘low-hanging fruit’) all know how such statements are confected. This reads like a document carefully crafted to please everybody and to give out a warm glow, while evading anything concrete – in effect to say: ‘We are working hard to make sure that nothing happens’.

The people of the Americas deserve better from the United Nations agency set up to protect their interests and the public good.

I am an assistant editor of World Nutrition. This letter is written in a personal capacity.

Fabio Gomes
fabiodasilvagomes@gmail.com

References

Anon. Marketing food products to children. Are the UN agencies helpless? [Editorial]. World Public Health Nutrition Association website, May 2010. Obtainable at: www.wphna.org.
Smith A. An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Book IV, Chapter VIII, Paragraph 27. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. First published 1776.
Partners Forum for Action on Chronic Disease. Obtainable at: http://new.paho.org/hq/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2067&Itemid=1826

Editor’s note. See the news item starting on the home page of the Association’s website: Anon. 'WHO cares about marketing of food products to children'? World Public Health Nutrition Association website, June 2010. Obtainable at www.wphna.org.

Please cite as: Gomes F. UN agencies are sleeping with the enemy. [Letter] World Nutrition, June 2010, 1, 2: 116-119. Obtainable at www.wphna.org