The Reluctant Activist: An Interview with Robert Pezzolesi from Center for Alcohol Policy Solutions in Syracuse

Posted on by Corporations and Health Watch

What moves people to become activists concerned about business practices and health? How can ordinary citizens move from outrage to action? To answer these questions and to learn more about current efforts to change alcohol industry marketing practices, Corporations and Health Watch interviewed Robert Pezzolesi, the Founder and President of the Center for Alcohol Policy Solutions in Syracuse, New York. The interview was conducted by Marissa Anto, a CHW staff person on December 17, 2009.

CHW: You have sometimes described yourself as a “reluctant activist.” What do you mean by that?

RP: I patterned the phrase after the novel and film “The Accidental Tourist.” In November 2001, my ex-wife pointed out to me a billboard for Captain Morgan rum that was across the street from an inner city high school in a multi-ethnic, multi-racial neighborhood in Syracuse. The high school has a low graduation rate – about 36% – and is located in one of the most impoverished neighborhoods in America (http://www.unitedway-cny.org/results/initfund/index.html). The Captain Morgan ad had a scantily-clad woman and the message and iconography of the ad was “Drink this and you’ll get her.” It just shouldn’t have been so close to a high school, it was directly across from the school, maybe 100 feet away.

I hadn’t been directly involved in fighting against something like that, but I believed somebody had to do something. I sent an e-mail to the Director of Public Affairs for the mayor at the time and I got a pleasant reply but there was no committment to do anything about it. At the time I was a temp worker for a New York State agency and my supervisor was a member of the Syracuse Onondaga Drug & Alcohol Abuse Commission. She suggested I talk to the Commission about it. I did and soon after the company removed the billboard. Apparently the contract was up anyway. But a few months later, that same billboard had beer advertisements on each side.

CHW: So what did you do then?

RP: I investigated and found out that the Outdoor Advertising Association of America, the primary billboard trade group, had a self-regulatory ethical code stating that they would not place billboards advertising products illegal for minors 500 feet from schools or churches. I also found out that the primary local billboard company was routinely violating this rule all around the city. So I documented the problem, going around to measure billboards with a measuring wheel and taking photos. Also, I read up on alcohol marketing practices and current industry marketing strategies, liquor industry attempts at “cultural normalization.” After documenting the problem, I went to a few local organizations to ask them to sign on to a request to have this company abide by this code. A big key for me was contacting people in other cities and getting their input. We called ourselves the Syracuse Partnership for Responsible Outdoor Advertising, based on a similar group in San Diego. They were very helpful. About a year later the Syracuse billboard company agreed to abide by the code and, with a couple of exceptions, it has abided by it ever since. By the way, it was exactly 7 years ago today that the company agreed to abide by this standard. It was personally rewarding to see that I could make a difference.

CHW: But you didn’t stop then, did you? What made you stick with this activism?

RP: Through research I had learned about the staggering impact that alcohol abuse and dependence has on our society – the impact on public health both mortality and morbidity and public safety. My experience with alcohol marketing showed me that the alcohol industry was a big contributor to those problems. And I also learned, with regard to alcohol, research shows that downstream, individual-level prevention is not that effective in the long-term. What does seem to work are broader environmental measures such as restrictions on pricing, availability and marketing. I decided to get involved more seriously so I founded a 501(c) (3) called the Alcohol Advertising Reform Initiative (AARI) that looked at environmental prevention of alcohol across the board. By the way, we’ve since changed the name to the Center for Alcohol Policy Solutions.

In addition, I was encouraged by contact I had had with national organizations working on the issue: the Center for Science in Public Interest, the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth, and the Marin Institute. I wouldn’t have continued to work on those issues without their help.

CHW: Can you talk a bit more about what that organization does?

RP: When AARI began, we focused primarily on alcohol advertising and marketing. For example, in the fall of 2003 we filed a formal complaint against a campaign for Goldschläger liquor, a so-called “shooter” liquor. Syracuse seems to be a big target for campaigns of this nature because of Syracuse University and some other colleges. The campaign was actually brought to my attention by friends of mine who are social drinkers and not at all involved in public health advocacy. They asked “Have you seen those Goldschläger billboards around town? Those models look awfully young.” I get a lot of my best information from those friends. So we sent a formal complaint to DISCUS, the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, which is the industry council representing “producers and markets of America’s favorite brands of distilled spirits.”

CHW: So what happened?

RP: Diageo, the company that makes Goldschläger, is the world’s largest liquor company. DISCUS and Diageo seemed to formulate a very careful PR response, whereby the company was able to withdraw the campaign, kind of like a sports coach resigning before being fired. Their statement was along the lines of “Our Goldschläger ad doesn’t really violate anything but we’re going to take it down because we’re so intensely socially responsible.” However, after the campaign was supposed to have been terminated, I contacted people in other states and these ads still weren’t down, leading me to believe that part of the strategy for these companies is to placate local activists while continuing to run the campaign elsewhere, counting on a lack of communication. The crux of the matter is that there are no sanctions for violations, so the worst they’ll have to do is take the billboard down. Here’s a comparison: Let’s say I cheat on my taxes, I have to pay a penalty to the IRS. If the worst thing that could happen would be that someone would just have to pay what they owe anyway, then there would be a lot more tax cheats. That’s the fundamental flaw with the “self-regulatory” process.

CHW: What else did your group do?

RP: Thanks to Brad Finn of the Prevention Network in Syracuse, our nonprofit group got a small grant to get a laptop and buy some advertising data. Otherwise, I did everything as a volunteer. I did a lot of PowerPoint presentations and I would go wherever people would hear me. It was a personal passion for me, and so few people were really dealing with alcohol advertising in our area at the time. As a public health issue, alcohol often gets overlooked.

We also worked locally around awareness about alcohol advertising and violence against women. We modified a campaign from California called Dangerous Promises that the Berkley Media Studies Group worked on. [See Woodruff, K. Alcohol advertising and violence against women: A media advocacy case study. Health Education Quarterly, 1996 23(3):330-345, for more information]. I designed a presentation based on theirs and we looked at a Molson Canadian marketing campaign called the “Making Friends” campaign where they promote the beer as a facilitator of sexual activity. I connected with our local domestic violence shelter and rape crisis center, and their Executive Directors and I collaborated on a letter to the editor and tried to raise awareness. Promoting alcohol that way is extremely irresponsible considering that alcohol is the a date rape drug and it’s connected to so many health problems related to sexuality and sexually transmitted infections.

CHW: What do you think has been your biggest success since you started this advocacy work?

RP: That’s not an easy question, because most of the time prevention work has what Bernard Turnock has called an “invisible constituency.” To paraphrase him, there haven’t been a lot of state capitols who have seen candlelight demonstrations by people who have not been a victim of alcohol-related violence. But I’d say the forced withdrawal of the Goldschläger campaign was certainly our effort that got the most public attention. I’ve also been encouraged about some of the work we’re doing around GIS – Geographic Information Systems – in communities. My desire to push further in this work, from an avocation to a vocation, led me to pursue a Masters in Public Health (MPH) degree, which I just finished this past March. My MPH practicum project was looking at alcohol outlet density in the city of Syracuse using GIS. I did it to show the problems of alcohol density here and to suggest policy changes that would be beneficial to the community.

CHW: What did you find in that research?

RP: I found that some residential neighborhoods in Syracuse had unexpectedly high densities of alcohol outlets. The project was not designed to prove causation through sophisticated statistical analysis, but it did suggest that there was a relationship between the density of alcohol outlets and assault and DWI arrests. In some ways, that seems like a no-brainer.

CHW: Well a lot of the research that we do just shows common sense problems but you need it to push forward advocacy efforts, right?

RP: Exactly. The alcohol industry and their allies try very hard to frame those problems in a way that advances their economic interests. They try to cast doubt on even the most basic research. It’s similar to what the tobacco industry did with lung cancer, just trying to create enough of a doubt to freeze advocacy efforts and stop policy change.

Our GIS project has led to working with communities who are interested in using GIS as a tool to reduce alcohol problems. There are advocates in several counties in New York State who are at some stage of a GIS project—including Madison, Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oneida, Cortland, and Franklin, among others.

CHW: Along those lines, how do you think researchers can contribute to more effective oversight of the alcohol industry?

RP: There’s a delicate balance there. A recent article by James Marks in Preventing Chronic Disease discusses the creative tension between advocacy and research. Researchers are careful to remain objective, while advocates sometimes don’t want to wait for the fifth confirming study, they want to forge ahead and improve health policy. Obviously, there are ethical standards for academic research. No matter how strong the results are, academic integrity requires careful wording and explicit acknowledgement of a study’s limitations. According to Thomas McGarity and Wendy Wagner, some researchers even avoid policy-relevant science because they dislike controversy and conflict. At the same time, Marks quotes Bill Foege as saying that public health is inherently activist. That connection between research and activism has to be reaffirmed.

Right now, in the alcohol field, there’s a good news/bad news situation. On the one hand, there has been a lot of solid, exciting research on alcohol and alcohol policy over the last several years. We have a much better understanding of what really works to reduce alcohol problems. On the other hand, there is a kind of advocacy deficit. There needs to be a lot more advocacy work, more additional energy and encouragement for advocacy, particularly as resources have been diverted from the alcohol field to other areas of public health and human services in recent years—and those resources were meager to begin with.

CHW: Could you talk about some of the strategies that the alcohol industry uses to promote youth drinking?

RP: Contrary to their claims that they have an interest in preventing underage drinking, the prime movers in the alcohol industry want youth consumption to be as high as reasonably possible. Currently, the underage market accounts for between 10 and 20% of consumption. [For more discussion, see The More Things Change: Examining Alcohol Industry Issues Management Strategies.] While alcohol companies claim they do not want those profits, if the industry lost between 10 and 20% of sales, they would be in dire straits. A friend of mine who’s an aerospace engineer pointed out to me that there have been airlines that have gone under because they lost 10% of their fares. So their current business model requires those youth sales. Moreover, they know that they have to cement brand identity fairly young. The prime example of a brand that has been successful at this is Budweiser, they’re very good at putting their logo everywhere. One of the ways they do that is through sport sponsorship and sports signage. Young men, especially, watch a lot of televised sporting events and thus are constantly exposed to those marketing messages. I would challenge anyone to turn on ESPN at any hour of the day—even in the morning—and see if a half-hour passes without seeing an advertisement or logo for a product from Anheuser-Busch InBev or MillerCoors. It’s no wonder that market research organizations and other studies have found disturbing levels of brand awareness for Budweiser, Bud Light, and among teenagers and even elementary school-aged children.

I also believe that their frequent use of animals in their advertisements—cute animals, funny animals—have a particular appeal to young people. The industry and their allies maintain, “Adults like them too.” Well, there are adults who like everything—after all, there are adults that collect Hello Kitty merchandise. The issue is whether or not the advertising has a disproportionate appeal to youth. Kids marketing guru Dan Acuff points out that children have a very special relationship with animals, with animals making up to 90% of the content of the dreams of young children.

If the alcohol industry genuinely worked to de-market to children and youth—keeping ad content limited to adult appeal and reducing media exposure to levels proposed by David Jernigan at CAMY—they could significantly reduce levels of underage drinking, I believe. But the question goes beyond acts of omission to those of commission – whether the marketing to youth been intentional. A lot of evidence seems to point to the fact that it has. For example, the youth appeal of the Captain Morgan brand seems to be too strong to be accidental. And it’s that lifestyle advertising—where you see attractive people having a great time without any hint of negative consequences—that propelled beer to its status and that the distilled spirits sector is working hard to emulate.

CHW: I was riding the subway in New York, and I saw the Remy Martin cognac ads showing all these attractive people connected by chains around their neck and the ad just says “Things are getting interesting” and kids are riding the subways.

RP: That’s a good example. It’s really inappropriate for public transportation systems to have alcohol advertising. The Marin Institute has done a great job of bringing attention to that issue. They had success in removing it from the Bay Area, and there’s been movement on the issue in Boston. Our elected officials in New York need to be made aware of the disconnect between making pronouncements about the evils of underage drinking and then turning around and exposing kids to Corona ads on their way to school. [See an earlier CHW report on a campaign to rid NYC subways of alcohol ads.]

CHW: That leads into my next question, how do you think alcohol advertising encourages irresponsible drinking patterns?

RP: Jean Kilbourne has done excellent analysis of that issue. She suggests that alcohol companies understand the minds of problem drinkers better than many treatment providers. For example, in some beer advertisements, the wife or partner is interested in some type of romantic activity and the man has no interest until she says his favorite brand of beer is available, and then, all of a sudden, he’s interested. These ads feed into an alcoholic mindset that sees the beverage as the be-all and end-all—where the drinker is literally willing to jump off a plane to get the Bud Light. Or sometimes the ads show people drinking in isolation, for stress relief. We have a series of ads for a regional beer called Saranac that show a beautiful bucolic scene on a lake with the text “Unwind.” That sounds perfectly innocent. Except when one considers that if somebody has to have that alcohol to unwind, they’re really advocating alcohol as stress reduction – which is problematic alcohol use. Does that mean everybody who has a beer to unwind is drinking in an irresponsible way? No, of course not. But when you bring it in as a deliberate advertising point you run the danger of promoting alcohol to relieve stress. I would call that irresponsible advertising. Another ad for a bourbon brand shows a scene from a saloon in the Old West with the tag line “When the bottle was the glass.” If we were to make a formal complaint, the company would likely claim that it’s a historical reference.

But if you gauged the actual perceptions of the people in the target psychographic who read that ad—as opposed to the claimed intentions of the alcohol company—they would perceive it as glorifying that kind of hypermasculine excess. “Drink this bourbon because it’s what hard drinkin’ menfolk drink! It will make you a latter-day cowboy!”

That is why the only accurate way to determine the impact of a marketing campaign is to determine the perceptions of the target market. Anyone can claim innocent intentions.

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CHW: In your opinion, what is the top alcohol control issue that advocates like you should focus on in the coming year.

RP: I’ll talk about two different issues: an overarching national issue that reaches across the federal, state, and local levels, and a concern about New York State.

The national issue is that of alcohol taxes. George Hacker of the Center for Science in the Public Interest has rightly called increases in alcohol taxes the gold standard of evidenced-based alcohol control policy. The body of research shows that increasing alcohol taxes limits alcohol abuse, especially among young people who are particularly price-sensitive. Alex Wagenaar at the University of Florida has been a leader in assembling that evidence, and the book Paying The Tab: The Costs and Benefits of Alcohol Control by Philip J. Cook does an excellent job of presenting what he calls the “unique advantages” of alcohol taxes as an alcohol control measure.

When you combine all that evidence with state governments’ “revenue hunger” precipitated by the economic crisis, increased alcohol taxes should be on the top of the public policy agenda. But that hasn’t been the case.

CHW: Why is that?

RP: A lot of it is due to the influence of the alcohol industry. Earlier this year, there was a bill proposed in the House of Representatives to roll back the beer tax from what it’s been since 1991 (H.R. 836). Now, bear in mind, this is a tax that hasn’t been adjusted for inflation, so it’s already historically low—about one-fourth the value it was fifty years ago. Even so, 242 members of Congress signed on as co-sponsors of the beer tax rollback, which really shows the enormous power the alcohol industry has in Washington. [In 2008, according to Open Secrets, the beer, wine and liquor industries made political contributions totaling $14,122,519, the highest level since reporting began in 1990.]

CHW: You also mentioned a New York State concern?

RP: Yes, many of my colleagues – most notably my colleagues with the Council on Addictions of New York State (CANYS) – are concerned about recent attempts to deregulate our state alcohol control system. There have been several bills proposed in our state legislature that appear to have been written by alcohol industry lobbyists. One bill (A08026) actually proposes that wine be excluded from the state sales tax on wine, arguing that because current guidelines exclude products that are over 70% fruit juice, and is a “beverage made wholly from fruit juice.” It would be laughable if it were not for the fact that an elected official actually. Another bill (S6184) seeks to shift the mission of the New York State Alcohol Beverage Control law from one of public safety and public health to one where the state would “promote economic development and job opportunities by promoting the expansion and profitability of the beer, wine and liquor production industries in this state.” It’s difficult to imagine a proposal that is more radical or more wrong-headed.

Another New York State issue that has been bubbling over is the proposed expansion of wine and/or liquor into grocery and drug stores. The proponents of that expansion have framed it as an economic issue of grocery stores versus liquor stores, conveniently sidestepping the public health implications. In reality, research has shown that states that offer wine and/or liquor in more places have higher levels of alcohol consumption, and thus more alcohol problems. In addition, big grocery stores in New York State have pushed the local economic benefits, as if the primary effect will be greater availability of boutique New York State wines in their gourmet section. But the proposal would result in corner stores, conveniences stores and bodegas being allowed to sell fortified wines like Thunderbird and Mad Dog, which are street drinks that are designed for abuse. To make these products available so widely would really be a nightmare for public health and public safety.

Our leaders need to realize that alcohol—in the words of the World Health Organization—is “no ordinary commodity”. Or, as alcohol policy consultant Pam Erickson has put it, we can’t sell alcohol like tires and mayonnaise.

CHW: You mentioned the alcohol tax, what are some other alcohol control measures that have reduced harm associated with drinking in the past few decades?

RP: The reraising of the Minimum Legal Drinking Age, putting it back to 21 after it had been lowered to 18 or 19 in several states—has been shown to have a number of positive public health effects.

Also, the lowering of the Blood Alcohol Content standards for driving to .08 grams of alcohol per 100 grams of individual’s blood has been unquestionably positive.

CHW: How would you try to persuade those who aren’t involved in public health or substance abuse issues that alcohol control policies are worth while, How do you convince the general public that alcohol control policies are a critically important issue?

RP: Sometimes it’s a tough sell now, for several reasons. Most Americans accept that tobacco is a threat to public health, and that we should be moving toward a tobacco-free society. In addition, with all the research and the exposure of the tobacco industry after the Master Settlement Agreement, it’s been relatively easy to portray the tobacco industry as largely irresponsible. There’s a different reality and a different history with alcohol. Most people outside of the field really don’t have a lot of information about the impact of alcohol or the tactics of the alcohol industry. And the goal for alcohol control advocates is arguably more complex: reducing overall consumption, reducing high-risk drinking, reducing underage drinking, and limiting alcohol-related harms while still acknowledging the role of low-risk drinking and the possible health benefits of light consumption for individuals over the age of 35.

And the people in the alcohol industry and their allies and symbionts have used public relations techniques effectively to polarize that debate. They’ve done this pretty explicitly—painting anyone who wants to implement effective alcohol control policy as a “Neo-prohibitionist,” tied to a cartoonish popular understanding of Prohibition. So it’s the false dichotomy with Prohibition on one side and laissez-faire and “self-regulation” on the other.

As a result, most of our societal efforts are still focused on education and reactive punitive approaches. It’s going to take sustained advocacy to help people understanding the public health research of the last 30 years, especially the relationship between general availability and alcohol problems. We need to disseminate the research in ways that people can relate to. It’s really basic economics. If you make something more available, reducing the opportunity cost, the more you’ll get of it.

CHW: What about educating the public about the cost burden associated with the misuse of alcohol and greater per capita consumption like Fetal alcohol syndrome, domestic violence and drunk driving. I know with drunk driving you have organizations like MADD but it seems like there isn’t a cohesive manner going about this kind of advocacy.

RP: Yeah, getting folks to communicate across these silos is one crucial element. A broad, national public health campaign – whether from a private public health organization or the Office of National Drug Control Policy—would also be beneficial. It’s a matter of finding the political will.

Alcohol is the third leading cause of mortality and it’s extremely costly to society, because many its victims are often young, resulting in considerable DALYs [Disability Life Years].

As Lori Dorfman and her colleagues at the Berkley Media Studies Group have pointed out, changing hearts and minds about these issues is largely about media advocacy and framing. When an alcohol-related tragedy affects our community, how do we frame it?

CHW: Can you give me an example?

RP: We had a tragic case in the Syracuse area a few years ago, where an underage drinker drove under the influence and crashed, killing her best friend who was a passenger in her car. At this young lady’s funeral, her young friends put bottles of Captain Morgan and Bud Light on her tombstone because those were her favorite beverages. When we consider a tragedy such as this, how are we going to frame the problem? Are we just going to see it in terms of individuals and poor choices and not look at the environments which contributed to those poor choices? Or should we also point out that the alcohol brands placed on her tombstone are brands that have been aggressively marketed and have been shown to have youth appeal?

CHW: How can our readers learn more about alcohol control policy? How can they be better advocates, whether with their local elected officials representatives or in their community?

RP: As for resources, I’ve put together a resource list on alcohol policy at my blog.

First, I would say don’t underestimate alcohol as a problem, regardless of your personal experience with drinking. Pathological drinking is more of a burden to society than they probably suspect. For example, when I talk about the connection between alcohol and gonorrhea, people are frequently surprised. [Cohen DA, Ghosh-Dastidar B, Scribner R, Miu A, Scott M, Robinson P, Farley TA, Bluthenthal RN, Brown-Taylor D. Alcohol outlets, gonorrhea, and the Los Angeles civil unrest: a longitudinal analysis. Soc Sci Med. 2006; 62(12):3062-71.] Alcohol problems are so systemic and ingrained in our society that they touch on nearly every social problem and public health issue. We in the alcohol control field need other public health practitioners to become our allies and to find ways to help each other.

Secondly, I would urge advocates not to underestimate the impact of the alcohol industry on alcohol-related problems. In some ways, the alcohol industry has been even more effective than the tobacco industry in stanching reform. They’ve picked their fights more carefully and learned from the tobacco industry’s mistakes. If they can’t beat ’em, they buy ’em, as when Anheuser-Busch hired Mike Moore, the Attorney General of Mississippi who led the Master Settlement against the tobacco industry, as a consultant. That tactic is typical of that industry’s ethical orientation.

Clearly, it’s going to take sustained, united effort to reverse these trends.

Image Credits:

1. Bulleit Bourbon Credit: schluesselbein
2. Saranac Credit: mdu2boy

The More Things Change: Examining Alcohol Industry Issues Management Strategies

Posted on by Corporations and Health Watch

Every industry carefully plans how to advance its business agenda and counter threats to profitability. What makes industries change the strategies they use to respond to public pressure to modify health damaging practices? Do announced changes in practice reflect real change or are they simply old wine in new bottles? In this report, Corporations and Health Watchanalyzes changes in alcohol industry responses to criticisms of its marketing practices.

One source for such an analysis is the documents disclosed by the tobacco industry. One of the stipulations of the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement between the tobacco industry and the attorneys general of 46 states was that several million formerly confidential tobacco industry documents would be made publicly available.

1 Many of these documents also pertained to the alcohol industry (AI), since the tobacco giant Philip Morris had owned Miller Brewing Company from 1970 to 2002 and was closely involved with the Beer Institute.2 (Altria Group, Philip Morris’ parent corporation, continues to own 27% of the stock in the multinational alcohol company SABMiller.)

Earlier this year, researchers at the Curtin University of Technology in Australia sifted through the tobacco documents in order to identify alcohol industry themes, strategies, and tactics.2 They identified the following industry strategies designed to forestall regulatory action: 1) Industry-run education programs; 2) Focusing blame on individuals and groups with a “problem”, including minorities ; 3) Promoting responsible drinking; and, 4) Denying any association between advertising and consumption.

Granting the validity of their analysis, a question that arises is: Have the alcohol industry’s issues management (IM) strategies changed substantially since 2002, the last year studied by Bond and colleagues?

Source of alcohol industry profits

To understand the goals and tactics of the AI requires an understanding of the source of their profits. While the majority of Americans either do not drink or drink very little alcohol, a considerable portion of U.S. alcohol sales can be attributed to pathological and underage drinking. Greenfield and Rogers found that the top 5% of drinkers consume about 42% of the alcohol sold in the U.S.3 Moreover, about 17.5% of total consumer alcohol purchases are drunk by youth under the legal drinking age, according to Foster and colleagues.4

With that in mind, one can speak of the AI’s goal for alcohol sales to be As High As Reasonably Achievable (AHARA). This is analogous to the environmental health concept of ALARA (As Low As Reasonably Achievable) for exposure to radiation and toxic chemicals.5 (pp260-261) “Reasonably achievable” for the alcohol industry means avoiding a popular or political backlash which could drastically reduce sales.

As we shall see in examining the individual IM strategies, maintaining AHARA requires a risk analysis that is stable over the long term yet nimble with regard to details.

The Four Strategies

1) Industry-run education programs

Since even relatively well-designed education and persuasion interventions are largely ineffective in achieving sustained behavior change,6, 7 it is no surprise that they remain a favored AI intervention. In fact, industry-run education programs in particular could be said to have four benefits: 1) they do not appreciably affect consumption (and thus do not cut into industry sales); 2) they draw attention and resources away from more effective interventions; 3) they offer a branding opportunity; and, 4) they create a “halo effect”, making the industry look beneficent.8

Currently, many industry-created education efforts are directed at parents. Examples include Family Talk About Drinking(Anheuser-Busch); Let’s Keep Talking (MillerCoors); Parents, You’re Not Done Yet (Century Council); and, Are You Doing Your Part? (Century Council). These efforts seek to frame underage drinking as ultimately the responsibility of parents. While, certainly, parents are an important factor in underage drinking,9 a large body of research points to the role of alcohol availability in youth drinking, including alcohol prices,10 alcohol outlet density,11 and enforcement of underage drinking laws.12

Thus, industry education programs consist primarily of amplification of half-truths in conjunction with omission of other (especially environmental) factors and minimization of the full range of risks to public health and public safety.13

2) Focusing blame on individuals with a “problem”

As Dan Beauchamp made clear in his seminal Beyond Alcoholism: Alcohol and Public Health Policy,14 the rise of the alcoholism paradigm redirected attention away from the substance of alcohol and onto the problem drinker. While this perspective did have many positive aspects,15 it also gave the alcohol industry a “free pass,” since alcohol control strategies were seen to be irrelevant, at best.16, 17

Whereas within the mainstream alcohol studies community the alcoholism paradigm has largely been superseded by the public health paradigm, the AI and its apologists continue to embrace the former because of its IM utility. A prime example of that paradigm’s focus on the “problem” individual is the so-called “hard-core drunk driver,” the favored target of the Century Council and the American Beverage Institute. The Century Council defines these individuals as

those who drive with a high BAC of 0.15 or above, who do so repeatedly as demonstrated by having more than one drunk driving arrest, and who are highly resistant to changing their behavior despite previous sanctions, treatment or education.19

Chamberlain and Solomon19 observe that a disproportionate focus on the hard-core drunk driver tends to obscure the fact that “social” drinkers who binge occasionally are responsible for about 60% of alcohol-impaired driving trips and “are at a much higher relative risk of crash per trip than frequent drinking drivers with the same BACs” (p. 274). And yet, by blaming hard core drinking drivers, proponents of these stereotypes allow mainstream “social drinkers” to separate themselves from the impaired driving issue, without ever having to critically assess their own drinking and driving habits. (p. 272)

3) Promoting responsible drinking

Even the most cursory examination of alcohol advertising today will reveal the ubiquity of the “drink responsibly” message. In fact, many brands have even incorporated the r-word into their brand identity. For example, Captain Morgan message on rum commands: “Drink Responsibly – Captain’s Orders!”.

What “responsible” drinking means exactly is left to the individual imagination, leading Smith and colleagues20 to characterize the term as “strategically ambiguous” in that the messages engender a “high degree of diversity in meanings of message content” while serving to “subtly advance both industry sales and public relations interests” (p. 1). Other researchers have also raised questions about the true impact of alcohol industry’s promotion of responsible drinking.21, 22

One of the more blatant AI attempts to take advantage of the murky nature of the “drink responsibly” meaning was a highly-publicized Anheuser-Busch telephone survey in which 94% of responding drinkers claimed that they drank “responsibly” and “in moderation”.23 Again, “responsibly” and “moderation” were conveniently left undefined. Moreover, it is a well-known marketing research axiom that survey respondents will tend to give socially desirable answers, especially in regard to questions about potentially sensitive topics like alcohol consumption.24

By contrast, if alcohol companies were sincere about promoting true responsibility, they could use their considerable marketing muscle to design campaigns similar to the 0-1-2 Domino Strategy from FACE, a national, non-profit organization that educates the public’s understanding about alcohol and its impact, or the 0013 campaign from the U.S. Air Force. While these campaigns may have their limitations, at least they are direct, specific, mnemonic, and use evidence-based guidelines.

4) Denying any association between advertising and consumption

A key element of the alcohol industry IM program—and, indeed, of any industry which knowingly harms human health—is the deliberate obfuscation of scientific knowledge.25, 26 This practice has been variously termed manufactured doubt,27denialism, and agnotology.28

With regard to the relationship between alcohol advertising and consumption, it was once a relatively easy task to deny a link, since many econometric studies found little evidence, perhaps due to methodological shortcomings.6,

The denialist task is now more difficult given the recent spate of well-designed longitudinal studies showing a significant effect of alcohol advertising and marketing on the alcohol consumption of adolescents, in particular.7

Despite this, the AI and its allies prefer to ignore the last decade of research, with industry talking points repeated by corporate-libertarian think tanks such as the Cato Institute,29 the American Enterprise Institute,30 and the Washington Legal Foundation,30 as well as related front groups such as the Statistical Assessment Service.31

Conclusion

Clearly, the AI has maintained a continuity in its IM strategies since the late 1970s, about the time the American public health community began to identify the AI as a significant factor influencing patterns of alcohol consumption.

Three of the four IM strategies identified by Bond, et al.2 (industry-run education programs; focusing blame on individuals and groups with a “problem”, including minorities ; and denying any association between advertising and consumption) tightly parallel strategies from other industries. For example, the automobile industry’s nut-behind-the-wheel defense identified by Ralph Nader in his 1965 book Unsafe At Any Speed32 was also an attempt to shift the blame to “problem” individuals.

The third strategy, to feature vague messages in advertising about responsibility, however, seems to be peculiar to the alcohol industry, although the “responsibility” meme has been increasingly adopted by the gambling industry (Griffiths, 2009).33

Countering these IM strategies and their concomitant deleterious effects on health and safety requires that public health practitioners, advocates, and activists to master two key competencies: Familiarity with the ways that the AI and its partners operate, and the research base that points toward truly effective prevention. (See Box 1 below for resources) , and Capabilityto communicate those concepts in ways that citizens can comprehend and appreciate, combined with facility with media advocacy techniques in order to effect a new social movement for the prevention of alcohol-related problems.34 See Box 2 below for resources.

BOX 1

Box 1: Resources on Alcohol Industry

American Medical Association (2004). Alcohol industry 101: Its structure & organization. Chicago: American Medical Association. Available at:http://www.alcoholpolicymd.com/pdf/AMA_Final_web_1.pdf

American Medical Association (2002) Partner or foe? The alcohol industry, youth alcohol problems, and alcohol policy strategies. Available at: http://www.alcoholpolicymd.com/pdf/foe_final.pdf

Jahiel, R. I., & Babor, T. F. (2007). Industrial epidemics, public health advocacy and the alcohol industry: lessons from other fields. Addiction, 102(9), 1335-1339.

Jernigan, D. H. (2009). The global alcohol industry: an overview. Addiction, 104(Supp 1), 6-12.

Marin Institute. http://www.marininstitute.org/site/

Stenius, K., & Babor, T. F. (2009). The alcohol industry and public interest science. Addiction, doi: 10.1111/j.1360-0443.2009.02688.x.

 

BOX 2

Resources on Media Advocacy

Dorfman, L., Wallack, L., & Woodruff, K. (2005). More than a message: framing public health advocacy to change corporate practices. Health Education & Behavior, 32(3), 320-336; discussion 355-362.

Freudenberg, N., Bradley, S. P., & Serrano, M. (2009). Public health campaigns to change industry practices that damage health: An analysis of 12 case studies. Health Education & Behavior, 36(2), 230-249.

Harwood, E. M., Witson, J. C., Fan, D. P., & Wagenaar, A. C. (2005). Media advocacy and underage drinking policies: A study of Louisiana news media from 1994 through 2003. Health Promotion Practice, 6(3), 246-257.

Mosher, J. F. (1999). Alcohol policy and the young adult: Establishing priorities, building partnerships, overcoming barriers. Addiction, 94(3), 357-369.

Wallack, L., & Dorfman, L. (1996). Media advocacy: a strategy for advancing policy and promoting health. Health Education Quarterly, 23(3), 293-317.

Wallack, L., Dorfman, L., Jernigan, D., & Themba, M. (19963). Media advocacy and public health: Power for prevention. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.

  

Robert S. Pezzolesi, MPH is Founder and President of the Center for Alcohol Policy Solutions in Syracuse, New York and blogs at Upstreaming Alcohol Policy at http://alcoholpolicy.org

 

References

1 Healton, C. G., Haviland, M. L., & Vargyas, E. (2004). Will the master settlement agreement achieve a lasting legacy?Health Promotion & Practice, 5(3 Suppl), 12S-17S.

2 Bond, L., Daube, M., & Chikritzhs, T. (2009). Access to confidential alcohol industry documents: From ‘Big Tobacco’ to ‘Big Booze’. Australasian Medical Journal, 1(3), 1-26.

3 Greenfield, T. K., & Rogers, J. D. (1999). Who drinks most of the alcohol in the US? The policy implications. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 60(1), 78-89.

4 Foster, S. E., Vaughan, R. D., Foster, W. H., & Califano, J. A. (2006). Estimate of the commercial value of underage drinking and adult abusive and dependent drinking to the alcohol industry. Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, 160(5), 473-478.

5 Michaels, D. (2008). Doubt is their product: How industry’s assault on science threatens your health. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

6 Babor, T.F., Caetano, R., Casswell, S., Edwards, G., Giesbrecht, N., Graham, K., et al. (2003). Alcohol: No ordinary commodity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

7 Anderson, P., Chisholm, D., & Fuhr, D.C. (2009). Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of policies and programmes to reduce the harm caused by alcohol. Lancet, 373(9682), 2173-2174.

8 Klein, J., & Dawar, N. (2004). Corporate social responsibility and consumers’ attributions and brand evaluations in a product–harm crisis. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 21(3), 203-217.

9 Van der Zwaluw, C. S., Scholte, R. H. J., Vermulst, A. A., Buitelaar, J. K., Verkes, R. J., & Engels, R. C. M. E. (2008). Parental problem drinking, parenting, and adolescent alcohol use. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 31(3), 189-200.

10 Hollingworth, W., Ebel, B. E., McCarty, C. A., Garrison, M. M., Christakis, D. A., & Rivara, F. P. (2006). Prevention of deaths from harmful drinking in the United States: The potential effects of tax increases and advertising bans on young drinkers. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 67(2), 300-308.

11 Truong, K. D., & Sturm, R. (2009). Alcohol environments and disparities in exposure associated with adolescent drinking in California. American Journal of Public Health, 99(2), 264-270.

12 MMWR (2004). Enhanced enforcement of laws to prevent alcohol sales to underage persons–New Hampshire, 1999-2004.Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 53(21), 452-454.

13 Lindsay, G. B., Merrill, R. M., Owens, A., & Barleen, N. A. (2008). Parenting manuals on underage drinking: Differences between alcohol industry and non-industry publications. American Journal of Health Education, 39(3), 130-137.

14 Beauchamp, D. E. (1980). . Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

15 Roizen, R. (1991). The American discovery of alcoholism, 1933-1939 (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved on November 20, 2009, from http://www.roizen.com/ron/disshome.htm.

16 Bacon, S. (1971) The role of law in meeting problems of alcohol and drug use and abuse. In: Kiloh, L.G. & Bell, D.S. (eds) 29th International Congress on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, Sydney, Australia, February, 1970 (Australia, Butterworths), pp. 162–172.

17 Room, R. (2004). Alcohol and harm reduction, then and now. Critical Public Health, 14, 329-344.

18 Century Council (n.d.). Hardcore drunk driving sourcebook. Arlington, VA: Century Council. Retrieved on November 19, 2009, from http://www.centurycouncil.org/files/materials/hdd_sourcebook1.pdf

19 Chamberlain, E. & Solomon, R. (2001). The tooth fairy, Santa Claus, and the hard core drinking driver. Injury Prevention, 7, 272–275.

20 Smith, S. W., Atkin, C. K., & Roznowski, J. (2006). Are “drink responsibly” alcohol campaigns strategically ambiguous?Health Communication, 20(1), 1-11.

21 Barry, A. E., & Goodson, P. (2009). Use (and misuse) of the responsible drinking message in public health and alcohol advertising: A review. Health Education & Behavior. doi: 10.1177/1090198109342393

22 DeJong, W., Atkin, C. K., & Wallack, L. (1992). A critical analysis of “moderation” advertising sponsored by the beer industry: Are “responsible drinking” commercials done responsibly? The Milbank Quarterly, 70(4), 661-678.

23 Harris Interactive (2008, November 12). Anheuser-Busch responsible drinking survey. Retrieved on November 23, 2009, from http://www.alcoholstats.org/mm/docs/6741.pdf.

24 Mick, D.G. (1996). Are studies of dark side variables confounded by socially desirable reporting? The case of materialism.Journal of Consumer Research, 23(2), 106-119.

25 Freudenberg, N. (2005). Public health advocacy to change corporate practices: Implications for health education practice and research. Health Education & Behavior, 32(3), 298-319.

26 Freudenberg, N., & Galea, S. (2008). The impact of corporate practices on health: Implications for health policy. Journal of Public Health Policy, 29(1), 86-104.

27 Krimsky, S. (2003). Science in the private interest: Has the lure of profits corrupted biomedical research? Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

28 Proctor, R., & Schiebinger, L. (2008). Agnotology: The making and unmaking of ignorance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

29 Basham, P. & Luik, J. (2009). Banning alcohol ads won’t cure alcoholism. Retrieved on November 18, 2009, from http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10371.

30 Calfee, J.E. (2004). A critical look at the new litigation against alcoholic beverage advertising. Retrieved on November 18, 2009, from http://www.aei.org/speech/20558.

31 Szalavitz, M. (2005). Alcohol and advertising. Retrieved on November 18, 2009, from http://www.alcoholnews.org/advertising.html..

32 Nader, R. (1965). Unsafe at any speed: The designed-in dangers of the American automobile. New York: Grossman.

33 Griffiths, M. D. (2009). Minimizing harm from gambling: what is the gambling industry’s role? Addiction, 104(5), 696-697.

34 Wallack, L., Winett, L., & Nettekoven, L. (2003) Preventing alcohol-related problems: Prospects for a new social movement [PowerPoint presentation]. Alcohol Policy XIII Conference, Boston, MA, March, 14, 2003. Retrieved on November 23, 2009, from http://www2.edc.org/alcoholpolicy13/presentations/wallack.ppt.

 

Photo Credits:
1. championsdrinkresponsibly
2. aleutia
3. maistora

Activists in Review: The Yes Men—taking on corporations, one prank at a time

Posted on by Corporations and Health Watch

In their ongoing efforts to reform corporations, advocates have used diverse tactics to expose detrimental practices or push for reform. On the one hand, public health professionals can change business practices that harm health by conducting research that documents the health problems associated with a particular product or industry and then bring these findings to the attention of policy makers. Another approach is to use tactics that expose and ridicule these types of corporate practices in an attempt to provoke media and public attention.

The two leading members of “The Yes Men,” known as “Andy Bichlbaum” and “Mike Bonanno” pose as Exxon oil executives shortly after making the announcement of a human-flesh-derived fuel called “Vivoleum” at the Oil and Gas Expo (GO-Expo 2007) in Calgary, Alberta.

The Yes Men, performance artists and global justice activists who expose corporate wrong doing, have used this latter approach by carrying out pranks and stunts to attract media coverage of dangerous or immoral business practices. In this profile, Corporations and Health Watch describes The Yes Men and analyzes the success of their antics in bringing about corporate change.

The Yes Men Fix the World

Perhaps the best way to explain The Yes Men, founded by performance artists and activists Mike Bonnano (real name, Igor Vamos) and Andy Bichlbaum (real name, Jacques Servin), is to describe some of their stunts.

In 1999, The Yes Men created GATT.org, a sham version of the World Trade Organization’s website that displays documents and reports satirizing the WTO’s approach to business. For example, a new release was posted stating : “At a Wharton Business School conference on business in Africa that took place on Saturday, November 11, the WTO announced the creation of a new, much-improved form of slavery for the parts of Africa that have been hardest hit by the 500-year history of free trade there.” After being mistaken for the real website, The Yes Men were invited to speak on behalf of the WTO with television reporters, schools and in other public settings.

In 2002, posing as trade experts, The Yes Men gave a lecture at a university in upstate New York proposing new solutions to world hunger. After serving the 100 students attending the talk free Big Macs, the lecturer proposed a new system for recycling Big Macs from human waste and serving them again. He showed a cost-benefit formula that proved the profitability of the recycling scheme, showing benefits for up to ten re-servings. By the end of the lecture, students were booing and hissing, just the reaction The Yes Men hoped to elicit.

In 2004, on the 20th anniversary of the toxic chemical disaster that killed about 20,000 people and left thousands more with chronic illnesses in Bhopal, India, The Yes Men posed as public spokesmen from Dow Chemical, the company that bought the Bhopal plant from Union Carbide. In an interview with BBC World News, the “spokesman” apologized profusely for the accident and promised that $12 billion would be donated to help clean up the waste site and provide compensation to the many people who were injured. Shortly after airing the interview, BBC World News discovered that the interview was a prank, leading it to apologize to its viewers for failing to uncover the deception. Dow denounced the hoax and reiterated their position that they had no responsibility for further compensation. Many newspapers and TV outlets covered the fake apology and the Dow response.

In 2007, Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum posed as an ethicist to deliver a speech to more than 300 oilmen attending Canada’s largest oil conference, GO-EXPO. During the speech, The Yes Men reassured the audience that even if oil procedures continue to cause environmental and health problems, the industry could turn the bodies of human victims into fuel. After lighting a candle of Vivoleum, a fuel allegedly made from human bodies, Bichlbaum was escorted off the stage. Yes Man Mike Bonanno joined the event posing as an spokesperson for Exxon. Later he told reporters, “If our idea of energy security is to increase the chances of climate calamity, we have a very funny sense of what security really is. While ExxonMobil continues to post record profits, they use their money to persuade governments to do nothing about climate change. This is a crime against humanity.”

Expose the Guts, Embarrass the Powerful, Have Fun

Under the teaching section on their website, The Yes Men explain their pedagogical approach:

When trying to understand how a machine works, it helps to expose its guts. The same can be said of powerful people or corporations who work hard to make themselves richer—regardless of consequence for everyone else. By catching powerful entities off guard, you can momentarily expose them to public scrutiny. This way, everyone sees how they work and can figure out how to control them. We call this identity correction. In a Nutshell:

Find a target (some entity running amok) and think of something sure to annoy them—something that’s also lots of fun.

If you’re stumped, imagine the target losing control and acting stupidly. What would it take to make them do that?

Capitalize on the target’s reaction. Write a press release and e-mail it to hundreds of journalists. In 1967, Yippies threw a hundred one-dollar bills from a balcony onto the New York Stock Exchange floor. The journalists they’d brought along told the world how the brokers, consumed with greed, dropped their trading and scrambled around for the money.

Preparing the Press Release. Imagine an “objective” newspaper story about the event. How would it read? Be realistic. Then write that story. (Got qualms? This is just what corporations do every day to sell products or candidates.)

The easiest way to embarrass someone powerful is to show how petty they are. Learn to embrace legal threats and use them as evidence in the court of public opinion.

After a screening of the Yes Men Fix the World at the Roxie, audience members and other members participated in a performance about Chevron.

Yes Men Impact

So what’s the impact of The Yes Men? First, they have been successful in attracting media coverage. The confusion and excitement that their events elicit have brought their message to millions of people not often reached by corporate reformers. In the process, the group has cast a shadow on the public images of several major corporations, including Dow Chemical, Halliburton, ExxonMobil, and McDonalds and business organizations like the Chamber of Commerce and the World Trade Organization.

Two films have been made about The Yes Men and their exploits, The Yes Men (2003) and The Yes Men Fix the World (2009), allowing their messages to reach a wider audience and to educate and raises consciousness among activists and reformers.

Some critics accuse The Yes Men of being insensitive—creating hoaxes that could raise false hopes or deceive victims. Others say they are sophomoric, simply ridiculing companies without leading people to meaningful action. In a review of, The Yes Men Fix the World, the New York Times movie critic Stephen Holden observes: “Whether their high jinks accomplish much beyond momentarily embarrassing the corporations and government agencies they misrepresent at business conferences and public forums is an open question. But it is great fun to watch them do their dirty work.”

To be effective, public health researchers, professionals and activists seeking to change harmful business practices need to use a range of tactics and strategies. The Yes Men suggest a model that warrants consideration.

Angela Donadic is a Masters of Public Health student and writes for Corporations and Health Watch.

The two leading members of “The Yes Men,”, known as “Andy Bichlbaum” and “Mike Bonanno” pose as Exxon oil executives shortly after making the announcement of a human-flesh-derived fuel called “Vivoleum” at the Oil and Gas Expo (GO-Expo 2007) in Calgary, Alberta.

 

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1. itzafineday
2. joeathialy
3. ari
4. itzafineday

After criticism, food industry abandons Smart Choices Program

Posted on by Corporations and Health Watch

In August 2009, major U.S. food manufacturers—including Kellogg, Kraft, ConAgra, General Mills, Pepsico, Sun-Maid, and Unilever—implemented the “Smart Choices” nutrition labeling program. Spending more than $1.47 million in 2008 and 2009 to develop the system featuring a green check mark and logo on foods that meet certain nutritional standards, 14 processed foods giants developed the system to promote their own products as “healthy.” 1 Two months later, on October 23rd, the Smart Choices program announced that it would “voluntarily postpone active operations and not encourage wider use of the logo at this time by either new or currently enrolled companies.” What happened?

While the idea of putting a label on the front of the package to guide consumers in making healthy choices holds much appeal, food researchers and media critics were outraged by the standards used. “Smart Choices Foods: Dumb as They Look?” asked a headline in Forbes magazine. When Kellogg gave its sugar-dense Froot Loops and Cocoa Krispies the Smart Choice check (because of the vitamins they added and the milk children poured in), Walter C. Willett, chairman of the nutrition department of the Harvard School of Public Health told the New York Times, “These are horrible choices.” Awarding checks to these products, he explained, is “a blatant failure of this system and it makes it, I’m afraid, not credible.”

While media and scientific criticism of the Smart Choices program may have made the food industry uncomfortable, it was two government agencies that sent the industry-funded architects of Smart Choices back to the drawing board. On October 15th Connecticut State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal announced an investigation into “a potentially misleading national food label program that deems mayonnaise, sugar-laden cereals and other nutritionally suspect foods ‘Smart Choices.’’’

Blumenthal noted that, “These so-called Smart Choices seem nutritionally suspect—and the label potentially misleading… Our investigation asks what objective scientific standards, research or factual evidence justify labeling such products as ’smart.’ … Busy moms and dads deserve truth in labeling—particularly when their children‘s health is at stake.”

About a week after Blumenthal’s announcement, the U.S. Food and Drug Agency released a letter warning that Smart Choices may actually do more harm than good. They noted that their research suggested that Smart Choices, as implemented, may mislead customers about the health benefits of certain foods and may make consumers less likely to read the detailed nutrition facts panel. FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg told reporters that “There are products that have gotten the Smart Choices check mark that are almost 50 percent sugar.” 2 In the cautionary letter, the FDA affirmed its position that, “both the criteria and symbols used in front-of-package and shelf-labeling systems be nutritionally sound, well-designed to help consumers make informed and healthy food choices, and not be false or misleading.” 3 Two days later, Smart Choices’ suspended operations and declared it welcomed the “opportunity to collaborate on front-of-package labeling with the FDA.” 4

Do health advocates support a unified Front of Package (FOP) labeling systems?

While food advocates and government officials rejected the particulars of Smart Choices, many of these critics, most notably the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), have long argued for an easy-to-use symbol to supplement the nutrition facts panel. In fact, CSPI submitted a petition to the FDA in November 2006 arguing for a simplified uniform national program. In this petition, they describe the inconsistent, confusing and misleading systems have been implemented by various corporations to promote their own products. For example, the petition by CSPI notes that:

  • Pepsi Co’s “Smart Spot” symbol has been applied to their Munchies Kid Mix, a snack mix that includes Cap’n Crunch cereal and Cheetos and candy-coated chocolate
  • General Mills has a “Goodness Corner” symbol that has been applied to its Chocolate Lucky Charms
  • Kraft’s “Sensible Solution” program has been applied to several high-fat cheeses, salty hot dogs, and Nabisco Strawberry Newtons
  • Kellogg uses misleading “Best to You” banners to “draw attention to a product’s more healthful attributes” while overlooking less healthful characteristics. For example, one banner advertises that the product contains “iron” and “energy” while overlooking excessive sugar content
  • the dairy industry allows a “3-A-Day” symbol on its products regardless of fat content
  • the American Heart Association’s “heart check” does not consider trans fats or refined sugars
  • Unilever’s “Eat Smart” allows for its extremely salty products to earn this label

Next steps: a nutritionally sound Front of Package (FOP) labeling system

Had it been properly designed and implemented, the Smart Choices program could have created a more unified and less confusing system for consumers. Instead, the food industry paid for a rating system that would not force it to make changes that might jeopardize profitability. CSPI Director Michael Jacobson believed the corporations participating in Smart Choices were hoping to avoid federal regulation of Front-of-Package labeling by showing the FDA that they were capable of developing a system on their own. 5, 6 He told the New York Times, “It clearly blew up in their faces. And the ironic thing is, their device for pre-empting government involvement actually seems to have stimulated government involvement.” 6 In its October 21st letter, the FDA promises to devise rules for FOP labeling that American consumers can trust. 3

So what are the lessons from the temporary demise of Smart Choices? First, active public oversight and monitoring can yield action. The threat of investigations by the Connecticut Attorney General and perhaps other State Attorneys General and the FDA’s cautionary letter clearly got the attention of the food industry, which feared bad publicity or possible legal action that could damage their reputation in a very tough economy. Second, the rating system established by the industry-funded Smart Choices program clearly does not meet most reasonable professional nutrition standards—one more example of industry self-regulation failing to safeguard public health. (For more on this, see Voluntary Guidelines vs. Public Oversight: Finding the right strategies to reduce harmful corporate practices) Finally, the Smart Choices story shows that with a new administration in Washington, advocates and state officials can hope for at least some level of support for their efforts from federal regulators, a dramatic change from a year ago.

On the other hand, it may be easier to stop a bad program like Smart Choices than to start an effective front-of-package labeling system. The decisions the FDA makes in the coming months will show whether the agency is willing to lead the fight for a labeling system that in fact promotes health. As FDA Commissioner Peggy Hamburg told reporters, “There‘s a growing proliferation of forms and symbols, check marks, numerical ratings, stars, heart icons and the like… There‘s truly a cacophony of approaches, not unlike the tower of Babel.” Whether the FDA can quiet that cacophony by requiring the food industry to speak in a language that all Americans can understand and use to make healthier food choices remains to be seen.

Lauren Evans is a student in the Doctor of Public Health program at City University of New York.

 

References

1 Ruiz R. Smart Choices Foods: Dumb as They Look? Processed-foods giants spent more than $1 million to create nutritional guidelines for a labeling system that favors their own products. Forbes.com. September 17, 2009. Available at http://www.forbes.com/2009/09/17/smart-choices-labels-lifestyle-health-foods.html. Accessed November 22, 2009.

2 Foodprocessing.com. Maybe a not-so-smart choice. October 26, 2009. Available at http://www.foodprocessing.com/industrynews/2009/141.html. Accessed November 14, 2009.

3 Foodconsumer.org FDA concerned about Smart Choices. October 24, 2009.

4 FDA. Guidance for Industry: Letter Regarding Point of Purchase Food Labeling. October 2009. Available at http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/
GuidanceDocuments/FoodLabelingNutrition/ucm187208.htm. Accessed November 22, 2009.

5 Press Release from Smart Choices Program. Smart Choices Program™ Postpones Active Operations: Group Welcomes Opportunity to Collaborate on Front-of-package Labeling with the FDA. October 23, 2009. Available at http://www.smartchoicesprogram.com/pr_091023_operations.html. Accessed November 22, 2009.

6 Neuman W. Food label program to suspend operations. October 23, 2009. The New York Times.

 

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2. Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com