In response to recent reports that the cost of some generic drugs has been unexpectedly rising at a rapid clip, reports the Wall Street Journal, two members of Congress have launched an investigation and asked 14 generic drug makers to provide data about what the lawmakers called the “escalating prices they have been charging” for generic medicines.
A Million Ways to Die in the U.S.
In a commentary entitled A Million Ways to Die in the U.S. on the Daily Show, noted public health analyst John Stewart asks why America is eager to take action on threats to health from abroad but unwilling to act on those hazards manufactured in the US of A.
Public Policies and the Risk Factors for NCDs in Brazil
At the Todo Juntos Contra O Cancer (Together Against Cancer) conference in Sao Paulo, Brazil last week, several presenters explored the role of the food, alcohol and tobacco industries in non-communicable diseases in Brazil and elsewhere. The moderator of the panel was Claudia Collucci, a reporter for Folha de Sao Paulo, a major Brazilian newspaper. The panel at this session included:
Professor Carlos A. Monteiro, Department of Nutrition, School of Public Health, University of Sao Paulo, who spoke on Ultra-processed foods and health, exploring the need for public policies to reduce the proportion of calories derived from ultra-processed foods;
Dr. Maristela Monteiro, Senior Advisor for Alcohol and Substance Abuse at the Pan American Health Organization, who spoke on Alcohol as a risk factor for public health in the Americas , an overview of the burden of disease imposed by alcohol and the policies used to reduce this burden.
Paula Johns, Executive Director, ACT – Alliance for the Control of Tobacco Use, Brazil, who spoke on Success and challenges in tobacco control, a look at the challenges faced and strategies employed to curb smoking prevalence in Brazil.
Nicholas Freudenberg, Distinguished Professor of Public Health at City University of New York, who spoke on Changing the Practices of the Tobacco, Alcohol, Automotive, and Food Industries to Prevent Noncommunicable Diseases, an examination of the role of corporate business and political practices on NCDs.
Pennsylvania Could Give the NRA the Right to Sue Cities
Cities in Pennsylvania may have to think carefully before passing ordinances relating to guns and gun control in future years, reports the Washington Post, since doing so could land them in legal trouble with the National Rifle Association. The Pennsylvania state House last week passed a measure that would give anyone who may legally own a firearm, or a membership organization like the NRA, the legal standing to sue any municipality that enacts gun laws that are more stringent than the state’s.
Detailing Financial Links of Doctors and Drug Makers
The New York Times reports that a new federal reporting requirement shows that pharmaceutical and device makers paid doctors roughly $380 million in speaking and consulting fees during a five-month period last year. The data shed new light on the often murky financial ties between physicians and the health care industry. From August to December 2013, drug and device companies made 4.4 million payments to more than half a million health care professionals and teaching hospitals — adding up to about $3.5 billion.
Food Companies Should Obtain Legal Protection to Look Beyond Profit
Re-posted from Al Jazeera
In a marketplace full of greenwashing, I often scoff at the various certification programs that allow for-profit businesses to promote themselves as being sustainable or otherwise socially responsible.
But a closer look at a certification dubbed B Corp suggests real promise. Companies with B Corp certification are for-profit ones that meet certain public benefit standards. The private certification is offered by a nonprofit called B Lab, which uses a point system to assess companies in the areas of governance, workers, community and the environment. Businesses that gain the certification can place the B Corp logo on its marketing materials — like the Fair Trade label for coffee.
These B Corporations (which undergo the aforementioned private certification process) are not to be confused with benefit corporations (a legal status for for-profit companies allowed in certain states). But the rising popularity of B Corporations and the growing number of states — in just a few years, 27 — that have passed laws allowing benefit status, are related.
Forbes.com explained the advantages of the legal designation, saying, “Incorporating as a benefit corporation legally protects an entrepreneur’s social goals by mandating considerations other than just profit.” In other words, including social responsibility in a company’s legal status allows flexibility for companies that care about more than just the bottom line.
The same philosophy — of prioritizing positive social and environmental practices — guides certified B Corporations. And last month they got a big boost with the promise of $4 million in investment money from the venture-capital firm Collaborative Fund and CircleUp, a funding platform for nontech startups. CircleUp previously raised more than $10 million in investment funds for B Corporations, including $2.38 million for Peeled Snacks, an all-organic dried fruit company.
This shift toward social responsibility is especially important for food companies. As I’ve argued for years, even if a food corporation might want to sell healthier foods or stop marketing to children, it can’t because it is bound by the legal requirement of prioritizing shareholders, which means maximizing profit. And profit too often means selling poor-quality foods, paying workers low wages or harming the environment.
Getting Big Food on board
Several food companies have decided to incorporate as legally recognized benefit corporations, including one recently bought out by Big Food. Plum Organics, which makes food products for children, was purchased by Campbell Soup Co. last year, making it the first B Corporation to be a wholly owned subsidiary of a publicly traded company. While Plum Organic has been a certified B Corp since 2008, the company took legal steps to become a benefit corporation in Delaware last year after the state passed legislation recognizing that status.
Plum CEO Neil Grimmer explained for Co.Exist the importance of the legal change, saying, “When these ideas become inscribed in your corporate bylaws, it becomes the compass of the company. Now more than ever that’s part of our charter.” The company is also helping Campbell get recommended as a good investment.
According to Grimmer, Campbell embraced the idea of Plum’s becoming a benefit corporation. That a leading food company not only tolerates but also embraces the benefit model signals potential for more positive change. With Big Food increasingly buying out organic companies — General Mills, for instance, is about to buy organic food company Annie’s — the benefit corporation could help prevent the potential diluting of values.
While Plum Organic’s mission is focused mainly on ingredients, other benefit corporations emphasize the importance of its workers. Given that food workers are often paid slave wages and otherwise exploited, could the benefit corporation be a path to improving working conditions? One company that thinks so is Greyston Bakery, which in 2012 became New York’s first benefit corporation.
Greyston, which also has B Corp certification, prides itself on its open hiring system, in which anyone who wants a job can get one, regardless of experience and despite any history of “homelessness, incarceration, substance abuse, welfare dependence, domestic violence or illiteracy.” All the company’s profits go to the Greyston Foundation, which operates several self-sufficiency programs in the company’s community of Yonkers, New York. But the bakery’s biggest claim to fame may be that it’s a supplier (30,000 pounds of brownies daily) for Ben and Jerry’s, another certified B Corp. Greyston scored an impressive 133 out of 200 on B Lab’s assessment. In a sign that B Lab’s questionnaire encourages improvement, Greyston increased its score by 35 percent between its 2011 and 2013 audits. In addition to creating good jobs, the bakery has installed solar panels and purchases sustainable cocoa and sugar.
Other food companies that have attained B Corp certification include the Better Bean Co., Revolution Foods, Numi Organic Tea, Nutiva, Guayaki and Happy Family (another baby food company). B Lab has certified 1,000 businesses in 33 countries. So far, most certified B Corporations are small. But with the growth of the organic and natural food industry surpassing conventional food’s, it could only be a matter of time before existing B Corps grow and big corporations start to realize the economic value of joining the movement.
Increasing the scope
Benefit corporations are held accountable mainly in the same way as traditional corporations — through their shareholders. But they also have additional reporting requirements.
“Benefit corporations have a higher level of transparency than any other business form because they must produce an annual benefit report made available to the public,” B Lab’s policy director, Erik Trojian told me.
B Corp certification, which must be renewed every two years, raises the accountability bar even more by providing a third-party assessment. (Companies must score at least 80 out of 200 possible points to get certified. Trojian said the typical corporation in the United States would score 35 to 40.)
But there is still a ways to go. B Lab’s assessment tool doesn’t cover certain important societal issues. I was disappointed to learn, for example, that it doesn’t assess companies’ marketing practices. As I’ve written, companies shouldn’t market to children because a child cannot understand how marketing works, making the practice exploitive. A food company designated as a benefit corporation could refuse to do so; the decision would certainly qualify as a material positive impact on society — one of the criteria for being a benefit corporation. Other important issues could include animal welfare, disclosure of ingredients (such as those hidden by euphemisms like “natural flavors”) and even lobbying that undermines democracy.
It remains to be seen if benefit corporation laws and private certifications such as B Corp will have broader positive effects on the food system. The growing interest in and support of big companies such as Campbell is a positive sign. Moreover, removing an important legal barrier to caring about more than just profit is a great first step.
Defining Strategies for Promoting Product Through ‘Drink Responsibly’ Messages in Magazine Ads for Beer, Spirits and Alcopops
A study of “drink responsibly” messages in US magazines published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence found that “responsibility messages were overwhelmingly used to promote product rather than convey relevant public health information… Existing responsibility messages are largely ineffective at conveying relevant public health information, and should be supplemented by or replaced with prominently placed, externally developed, cognitively tested warnings that do not reinforce marketing messages.”
GlaxoSmithKline Found Guilty of Bribery in China
The Wall Street Journal reports that a Chinese court found GlaxoSmithKline’s local subsidiary guilty of bribery and fined the company nearly $500 million, capping a scandal that has shaken China’s pharmaceutical industry. Five of the company’s managers, including Mark Reilly, its former top China executive, were convicted of bribery-related charges and received suspended prison sentences. Glaxo still might be fined in the U.S. and U.K., and it faces several continuing investigations around the world.
Action on Smoking and Health Releases Report on US Implementation of FCTC
Action on Smoking and Health, an organization founded in 1967 that seeks to ensure that the public health community addresses the tobacco epidemic in a unified and coherent manner, has released a report The WHO FCTC Implementation Guide for U.S. State and Local Officials. The introduction is below. The full report is here.
Introduction
Tobacco use is still the number one preventable cause of death in the U.S., killing about 480,000 people each year; it is responsible for over 20% of all American deaths. Tobacco kills about half of its long-term users. With approximately 44 million adult smokers, we can expect the death toll to continue for decades to come. And every day, about 3,200 children smoke their first cigarette. Over 1,000 of those children will eventually be killed by tobacco.1
The United States has made serious strides in combating the death and disease caused by tobacco. The federal government, states, and localities have enacted many effective laws and programs, severely limiting cigarette advertising, banning smoking in public places, and raising taxes on cigarettes. These actions have led to a decrease in cigarette consumption and averted many premature deaths. We’ve come a long way, but there is still a lot left to do.
To combat this epidemic, countries around the world negotiated and then, in 2003, adopted the first international treaty on health, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). Since that time, 178 countries and the European Union have become party to the FCTC,2 and countries all over the globe have begun implementing its life-saving measures. The FCTC sets out specific steps for governments on how to address tobacco use, including how to adopt tax and price measures to reduce tobacco consumption; ban or restrict tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship; create smoke-free work and public spaces; put prominent health warnings on tobacco packages; and limit tobacco industry interference when setting public health policies. In addition to the FCTC, the parties have drafted guidelines for implementation for many of the relevant articles, including Articles 5.3, 8, 12, 13, and 14. These guidelines were designed to give countries assistance when implementing the FCTC, to make sure the measures contained in the treaty are implemented as effectively as possible. The FCTC measures have had an immensely positive effect in countries that have ratified and implemented the treaty.
The United States negotiated and signed the FCTC on May 10th, 2004 but unfortunately, the U.S. has not yet ratified the treaty and is not a party to the FCTC.3 Action on Smoking and Health strongly encourages the United States to become a party. However, regardless of whether the United States ever ratifies the treaty, the FCTC still provides excellent lessons and examples that federal, state, and local governments can adopt in order to further protect the health of the U.S. population.
Now that most nations of the world have become parties to the FCTC, the focus on implementation is at the national level. In federal systems such as the United States, significant sovereign powers reside with state governments, which to varying degrees empower local governments to regulate in the public interest. While tribes and territories are not the target audience for this guide due to the wide variance in laws and sovereign status, many of the lessons would be applicable to those jurisdictions as well. This guide and the associated database are intended to help state and local officials adopt effective strategies, based on the FCTC, in their home jurisdictions.
Many of the most crucial advancements in tobacco control in the U.S. began at the local level. National ratification of the FCTC is not a prerequisite for greater action.
1 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, The Health Consequences of Smoking- 50 Years of Progress: A Report of the Surgeon General (2014), available at http://ash.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/full-report.pdf .
2 Action on Smoking & Health, A half Century of Avoidable Death: A Global Perspective on Tobacco in America 5 (2014), available at http://ash.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/US-TOBACCO-REPORT_FNL-WEB1.pdf.
Maker of Costly Hepatitis C Drug Sovaldi Strikes Deal on Generics for Poor Countries
Gilead Sciences, the maker of one of the costliest drugs in the world announced on Monday, reports the New York Times, that it had struck deals with seven generic drug makers in India to sell lower-cost versions of the medicine — a $1,000-a-pill hepatitis C treatment — in poorer countries. Gilead, which is based in California, also said it would begin selling its own version of the drug in India and other developing countries at a fraction of the price it charges in the United States.
Corporations and Health Watch 