According to a new report from scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, the Institute of Atmospheric Physics and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, in 2050, the air quality worldwide will be as bad as it already is nowadays in urban areas of Southeast Asia, one of the most polluted places on Earth. Air pollution in Europe and North America would also increase, but due to the effect of mitigation policies – that have been in place for more than two decades now – to a much lesser extent than in Asia. Urban air pollution is estimated to kill 1.2 million people each year and the largest single source is motor vehicle exhaust.
More on New York City Soda Limits Proposal
Cross-posted from the Center for Food Safety
Last week I had the pleasure of lending my support, on behalf of the Center for Food Safety, to New York City’s proposal to limit the size of sugary beverages sold at food service outlets. (I wrote previously about why this policy makes sense.) The hearing room at New York’s health department was packed with media outlets and hundreds of folks eager to witness the showdown with Big Soda.
Interestingly, no one from an actual soda company spoke up. But we did hear from several trade associations, along with members of the city council, several of whom objected to the idea over potential negative impacts on small business. As I explained in my own remarks, this talking point is a classic misdirect put up by major corporations. Here are a few excerpts from my comments:
This isn’t about choice or any other distracting rhetoric.
The soda industry, because it does not have science (or even common sense) on its side, is resorting to methods of distraction such as claiming that this proposal is an affront to consumer choice. Of course, this proposal doesn’t take anybody’s choice away. New Yorkers who wish to consume more than 16 ounces are free to purchase more.
But let’s take a closer look at the concept of choice. It is the soda industry that has taken away the choice of reasonable portion sizes. Nobody demanded larger beverages. Cups got larger and larger over the years because the soda industry (in coordination with food service outlets) realized it has a gold mine on its hand. When the beverage industry and its cohorts use the word “choice,” it’s really code for threatened profit margins — which are estimated to be as high as 90 percent. 90 percent.
The soda industry is acting like Big Tobacco.
One tried and true tactic of the tobacco industry is inventing “grassroots” smokers’ organizations, a strategy known as Astro-turfing (as in fake grass). It’s a great way for companies that don’t want their fingerprints on a controversial campaign to hide behind a front group. Such groups tend to garner public sympathy and support while attracting media attention.
“New Yorkers for Beverage Choices” is a classic Astro-turfing campaign led by the American Beverage Association, the soft drink industry’s lobbying group, which has retained powerful political and PR consultants. Who made this list of alleged New Yorkers so concerned with their choices? For starters, other lobbying groups outside of New York, such as:
- The Grocery Manufacturers Association
- The International Franchise Association
- The National Association of Concessionaires
- The National Association of Theater Owners
- The National Restaurant Association
Also, restaurant chains like Chick-Fil-A, Denny’s, and Darden Restaurants, owner of Olive Garden and Red Lobster, among others. Not quite the sort of grassroots activism members you hope for in a campaign about personal choice.
Additional Big Tobacco-style tactics from the soda lobby include:
- Shooting the messenger and name-calling, by depicting Mayor Bloomberg as a “nanny” in full-page ads taken out by the industry front group, Center for Consumer Freedom, which not coincidentally, began with funding from Philip Morris and is run by notorious tobacco lobbyist Rick Berman;
- Claiming to take the side of small businesses because they know the public and the press have more sympathy for the little guy than multinational corporations such as Coca-Cola and PepsiCo;
- Claiming to care about the economic plight of poor people, never mind the fact that the soda industry targets these same populations with advertising designed to get them hooked for life on their unhealthy products.
Ultimately, the tobacco industry lost all credibility with the American public (along with most policymakers) by engaging in such deceitful tactics.
In conclusion, the soda industry is running scared because they know the jig is up; that the public health crisis their products have helped create means that industry cannot keep enjoying the same unfettered regulatory environment. This common sense proposal will catch on as other cities take New York’s lead. This is an idea whose time has come.
You can read the submitted comments here. A decision by New York’s Board of Health is expected in September.
UN Fails to Agree to Arms Trade Treaty
One person every minute dies from armed violence around the world, and arms control activists say a convention is needed to prevent illicitly traded guns from pouring into conflict zones and fueling wars, criminal violence and atrocities. Last week, however, delegates from 170 nations who had spent the last month negotiating a treaty, announced their failure to reach agreement, at least for now. Ultimately, reports Reuters, arms-control activists blamed the United States and Russia, two of the world’s largest arms exporters, for the inability to reach a decision, as both countries said there was not enough time left for them to clarify and resolve issues they had with the draft treaty.
MCDONALD’S, COCA COLA SEEK GOLD IN LONDON OLYMPICS
As the London Olympic Games draw to a close, let’s take a closer look at the performance of the biggest, best-funded and most highly trained team to compete in this year’s Olympics: representatives of multinational corporations.
A few statistics illustrate the scope of the corporate investment in the Olympics:
- The 11 biggest corporate sponsors paid nearly $1 billion for the rights to flaunt the Olympic seal during the London Games and 2010’s Winter Games in Vancouver.
- Corporate valuation specialist Brand Finance valued the Olympic brand as being worth just over $47.5 billion That leaves it behind only Apple ($70.6 billion) and above the corporate world’s next biggest brand, Google ($47.4 billion), although valuation of an event such as the Olympics is difficult.
- Proctor and Gamble, an Olympic sponsor, expects its 2012 Olympic sponsorship to result in $500 million in additional sales, while NBC, the Olympic broadcaster expect to net an additional $1 billion in revenue from the Olympics.
For most corporate sponsors, however, the take-home rewards are not the green, gold or silver that flows into their bank accounts but the opportunity to shape their image. Coca Cola, an Olympic sponsor since the 1928 games in Amsterdam, expects to reach 1.5 billion people worldwide via its create-your-own-beat social-media and mobile campaign. The Coke promo begins with the sounds of six athletes set to a musical track, then asks consumers to add their own sounds to the track — and share it. Wendy Clark, Coca Cola’s senior vice president of integrated marketing, says this campaign provides “share-worthy” content that gives young adults “cred” in their social-media circles. “We don’t spend this amount of time on things that don’t work,” she said.
McDonald’s, another corporate sponsor, has built the world’s largest McDonald’s in London’s Olympic Village. It seats up to 1,500 people and is expected to serve 14,000 people a day during the games and offer free Olympic-themed Happy Meals to children. “Many athletes tell us we are their favorite place to eat,” says a McDonald’s spokeswoman. Mickey D expects to make £3 million selling fast food during the Games, after which the Olympic Golden Arches will be bull-dozed to the ground.
Heineken UK, the beer maker, is an Olympic supplier. It has erected digital outdoor screens throughout London underground and rail stations that display near-live content that directly feeds from the Heineken® Fanhub. The public screens include a daily calendar of events, Heineken pubs nearby, relevant Olympic and Paralympic facts and details of medals celebrations – “all updated regularly to drive consumer intrigue and interest.”
The outsized corporate presence at the Olympics has drawn some criticism. The Associated Press reported: A protest last week, the largest so far against the games, drew a mix of left-wing and green activists who decry the Olympics as a corporate juggernaut rolling over residents and their civil rights. They marched peacefully, chanting against what they called the “Corpolympics,” watched by police officers on foot and motorcycle. The protesters contend that the often-cited Olympic boost to traditionally gritty, working-class east London is an illusion, whereas major corporate sponsors such as McDonald’s and Coca-Cola gain from the 9.3 billion pound ($14 billion) games. They said the mass arrests at the cycling demonstration, and limits on corporate branding designed to protect sponsors, show that the games are a threat to civil liberties.
An editorial on the Games called “Chariot of Fries” in Lancet, the British medical journal, noted: Health campaigners have rightly been dismayed. On June 20, the London Assembly (an elected body that scrutinizes the work of the Mayor of London) passed a motion urging the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to adopt strict sponsorship criteria that exclude food and drinks companies strongly associated with high calorie brands and products linked to childhood obesity. Meanwhile, the UK’s Academy of Medical Royal Colleges has said that the presence of McDonald’s and Coca-Cola at the 2012 Games sends out the wrong message to children. Indeed, their presence is hardly subtle… Cadbury’s has joined forces with McDonald’s to offer what it states on its website will be the “perfect snack” to enjoy whilst watching the Games—a chocolate bar-ice cream concoction with a whopping 395 calories per serving. Coca-Cola, meanwhile, has raised its profile considerably by branding the Olympic torch relay.
As the Olympics finish in London and planning begins for the 2016 Rio Games, Michael Jacobsen from Center for Science in the Public Interest asks: Brazilians are one of the world’s biggest consumers of soda (fueled by Coca-Cola’s billion-dollars-a-year investments), and host to over 650 McDonald’s outlets. Experts predict that Brazil’s bulging waistlines may grab the world record from the United States by 2022. Will junk-food marketers get an Olympic carte blanche again?
In his recent book What Money Can’t Buy The Moral Limits of Markets, Harvard political scientist Michael Sandel warns that the most fateful change of the last three decades has been “the expansion of markets, and of market values, into spheres of life where they don’t belong.” In the distant past, the Olympic Games provided a celebration of fitness, athletic discipline, fair play and internationalism. Now they have become one more place for multinational corporations to promote the patterns of hyper-consumption that contribute to premature mortality and preventable illness.
Court Upholds Restrictions on Tobacco Industry
In the latest skirmish in the federal government’s long-running racketeering case against the tobacco industry, reports the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit last week rejected the tobacco industry’s argument that Judge Gladys Kessler’s restrictions should be set aside because Congress in 2009 passed a law that imposed other restrictions on the industry and gave the Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco products. The appeals court said Judge Kessler acted reasonably when she decided last year to move forward with the earlier restrictions.
Corporations and Health Watch 