Advocacy for Reducing the Role of the Global Alcohol, Food and Beverage, and Tobacco Industries in Health Education

Posted on by Corporations and Health Watch

 

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In recent decades, the alcohol, tobacco and food and beverage industries have become the leading global providers of public information about their products and their health impact, spending far more than governments or public health agencies to disseminate messages to consumers.

 

At the American Public Health Association meeting in Boston last week, Corporations and Health Watch sponsored a session that examined the implications of this corporate takeover for the discipline and profession of health education and for the prevention of chronic diseases, now the world’s leading killers.

 

First, Cheryl G. Healton, Dean of the  New York University Global Institute of Public Health and former CEO of the American Legacy Foundation described the role of the tobacco industry in promoting its products and compared its strategies to those used by the food and beverage and alcohol industries.

 

Next, Michele Simon from Eat Drink Politics and the author of Appetite for Profit examined the food and beverage industry. In her report And Now a Word From Our Sponsors, she described the ways the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics collaborates with the food industry, jeopardizing the credibility of nutritionists and nutrition educators.

 

David H. Jernigan, the Director of the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University analyzed the role of the alcohol industry in educating consumers and policy makers about alcohol and described some of the ways the industry sought to influence alcohol policy.    

 

Finally, Nicholas Freudenberg from City University of New York School of Public Health and Hunter College, who served as moderator, discussed the roles that health educators and other public health professionals can play in mobilizing various constituencies to oppose the takeover of health education by the alcohol, food and beverage and tobacco industries. 

European Alcohol NGOs Quit EU Alcohol Forum to Protest Lack of Action on Alcohol Control Policies

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Eurocare, the European Alcohol Policy Alliance, announced that last month, several of its members left the European Alcohol and Health Forum (EAHF), a European Commission body formed to address and reduce alcohol-related harm. The NGOs have been disillusioned with the ability of EAHF to provide effective and efficient changes to reduce alcohol-related harm across the EU. A call for stronger regulations, abandoning of the self-regulation policy and exclusion of industrial interests follows the announcement.

Johnson & Johnson Agrees to Pay $2.2 Billion in Drug-Marketing Settlement

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Johnson & Johnson will pay $2.2 billion to resolve civil and criminal allegations involving the marketing of off-label, unapproved uses for three prescription drugs, Justice Department officials announced Monday, reports the Washington Post. The cases, which date from the late 1990s through the early 2000s, involve alleged kickbacks to doctors and pharmacies to promote the antipsychotic drugs Risperdal and Invega, and a heart drug, Natrecor. The widely anticipated agreement was one of the largest health-care fraud settlements in U.S. history.

Air Pollution, Cancer and the Concerns of U.S. Auto Executives

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The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) recently announced that it has classified air pollution as a human carcinogen. Automobile exhaust is a major source of such emissions.  “We now know that outdoor air pollution is not only a major risk to health in general, but also a leading environmental cause of cancer deaths,” said Dr Kurt Straif of the IARC in the organization’s announcement. A recent survey of more than 75 U.S. auto industry and auto supplier executives by Booz and Company /Bloomberg identified top concerns of these industry leaders. The survey found that executives were confident about continued growth of auto sales through 2015. Leading  concerns were the need for continued innovation in vehicle entertainment, telematics, and the “connected car”; the value of aggressive use of incentives to encourage more sales; and fears of a decline in sales growth after 2016. 

Institutional Corruption of Pharmaceuticals and the Myth of Safe and Effective Drugs

Posted on by Corporations and Health Watch

A recent study by researchers at Harvard and York Universities found that millions of patients suffer from adverse reactions to prescription drugs they take to get better. Patients experience an estimated 81 million adverse reactions a year. Although most of these are medically minor, about 2.7 million hospitalizations and 128,000 deaths are attributed to properly prescribed drugs. Prescription drugs are the 4th leading cause of death. Hospitalizations and deaths from prescribing errors, overdose, and self medication would add to these totals.

Scientists’ Ties to Food Industry Raise Questions in Europe

Posted on by Corporations and Health Watch

Nearly 60 percent of the scientists used as consultants by the European Food Safety Authority, or E.F.S.A., have direct or indirect ties to industries regulated by the agency, according to a report from the Corporate Europe Observatory, an advocacy group that criticizes corporate influence on public policy, reports the New York Times. Martin Pigeon, a researcher at the Corporate Europe Observatory, said the notion that there were no scientists free of industry entanglement was a fiction, noting that many already worked for the food safety agency. “It’s not true that such people don’t exist,” he said, “They do.”

Keeping Salmonella Out of Chicken

Posted on by Corporations and Health Watch

In an editorial, the Los Angeles Times writes that Sweden has virtually eliminated salmonella in store-bought chicken, even though poultry there is industrially produced, just like in the United States. And even in this country, a 2010 Consumers Union study found no salmonella in the organic store-brand chickens it tested. In other words, consumers shouldn’t have to accept salmonella-tainted chicken as just one of those unavoidable things.

Partnerships of Peril: Keeping Food, Alcohol and Beverage Industries Out of Global Health Governance

Posted on by Corporations and Health Watch

In a blog on PLOS Medicine, Heather Wipfli, from the University of Southern California, highlights the lack of consensus regarding the role of private industry in efforts to control the burden of non-communicable diseases. At the May meetings of the World Health Assembly, there was widespread discussion about the role of the private sector in NCD control. While WHO’s position on the tobacco industry is definitive, the definition and parameters of partnerships with other industries driving NCD epidemics are not, despite recent efforts to put safeguards in place. The lack of clarity on when and how to engage with the private sector and the increasing push for public-private partnerships to address global health challenges provides industries with vested interests in policy outcomes direct access to, and greater influence on, decision makers.  

Athlete Endorsements in Food Marketing

Posted on by Corporations and Health Watch

A new article in Pediatrics reports that 100 athletes endorsed 512 brands in 2010.  Food and beverages constituted 23.8% of these endorsements. Seventy-nine percent of the 62 food products in these athlete-endorsed advertisements were energy-dense and nutrient poor; and 96.4 % of the 46 advertised beverages had 100% of their calories from added sugar.  Peyton Manning and LeBron James had the most endorsements for energy-dense, nutrient poor products.