AP reports that a federal administrative judge ruled last week that POM Wonderful used deceptive advertising when claiming that its pomegranate juice could treat or prevent heart disease, prostate cancer and other illnesses. Chief Administrative Law Judge Michael Chappell sided with federal regulators and ordered POM to halt all claims of health benefits and performance for its beverage. Expert witnesses testified in court that scientific evidence does not support claims made in company advertising, which appeared in national newspapers, magazines and online.
ALEC Takes on AGs
Pop Tort, a blog of the Center for Justice and Democracy at New York Law School, describes a new tactic of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to defund state attorneys general who have been acting to protect consumers against fraudulent or dangerous corporate practices. Funded by many of America’s largest corporations, ALEC has been lobbying for bills in Mississippi, Montana and elsewhere that seek to strip AGs of the resources needed to fulfill this function.
Irish Alcohol Industry Opposes Proposed Ban on Sports Sponsorships
“If I sponsor an event with a particular product, am I looking for somebody to buy more of it or young people to buy more of it? I’m actually looking for you to buy my product over my competitor’s product – it’s actually about brand differentiation.” So explained Kathryn D’Arcy of the Alcohol Beverage Association of Ireland. In the Irish Examiner, she admitted that alcohol misuse is a serious problem in Ireland and needs to be tackled, but argued the proposed ban on alcohol industry sponsorship of sports events would not achieve that goal.
Tobacco Industry Promoted Unproven Flame Retardants in Furniture to Avoid Creating “Fire-safe” Cigarettes
In a series of investigative reports on endocrine disruptors in flame retardants, Patricia Callahan and Sam Roe reported in theChicago Tribune that in the late 1980s, the tobacco industry convinced the National Association of State Fire Marshals to back the use of unproven flame retardants in furniture to reduce fire deaths. Why did the tobacco industry care? Because they wanted to avoid pressure to design “fire-safe” cigarettes, a difficult engineering task that might have cut into their profits.
Chinese Melamine and American Vioxx: A Comparison
In an article in The American Conservative, Ron Unz compares the media response to the 2008 contamination of infant formula in China with the response to the coverage of the 2004 coverage of Merck’s withdrawal of the pain killer Vioxx. He notes that “in comparing China and America, pundits often cite our free and independent media as one of our greatest strengths.” However, he concludes that “American journalists seemed to focus more attention on a half-dozen fatalities in China than they did on the premature deaths of as many as 500,000 of their fellow American citizens.”
Corporations Win in Battle Against Investment Regulation
In a world where governments are increasingly subservient to global finance capital, multinationals are gaining ground in the fight against state regulations that aim to protect the environment, public health or social policies. According to data reported by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the total number of known treaty-based investor–State dispute settlement cases filed by the end of 2011 grew to 450, an increase of more than 900% since 2000. Bilateral investment treaties establish the conditions for investment by companies of one country in another state. By allowing investors but not states to go to court to reverse the decisions of national governments, these treaties provide multinational corporations with new tools to fight state regulations against investments considered to harm health.
Jump in Sales of Used SUVs
The New York Times reports that retail prices for five-year-old full-size S.U.V.’s are 23 percent higher than a year ago, according to Edmunds.com, an automotive information Web site. That is more than double the average price increase of 11 percent for all five-year-old vehicles. Prices for three-year-old S.U.V.’s are up 6 percent, triple the 2 percent average increase for all vehicles that age. However, auto safety experts fear that used SUVs, driven by younger, less skilled drivers and less well maintained than new vehicles may cause even higher rates of driver and pedestrian injuries and fatalities than new SUVs, illustrating the long shadow of an environmentally destructive product.
Stop “Drink Responsibly” Charade, says Alcohol Justice
Market Watch reports that Alcohol Justice, the U.S. based alcohol industry watchdog, released an in-depth report debunking Big Alcohol’s cynical “Drink Responsibly” messages. “Alcohol producers and marketers are more interested in their public relations than public health,” said Sarah Mart, MPH, director of research at Alcohol Justice and co-author of the new report, How Big Alcohol Abuses “Drink Responsibly” to Market Its Products. “So it’s not surprising that they hide behind a vague, ineffective slogan that does nothing to reduce the annual catastrophe of harm caused by their products.”
Food Industry Continues to Thwart U.S. Public Health Policy
“After aggressive lobbying, Congress declared pizza a vegetable to protect it from a nutritional overhaul of the school lunch program this year. The White House kept silent last year as Congress killed a plan by four federal agencies to reduce sugar, salt and fat in food marketed to children.” In a special investigative report on food industry lobbying, Duff Wilson and Janet Roberts write for Reuters that “during the past two years, each of the 24 states and five cities that considered “soda taxes” to discourage consumption of sugary drinks has seen the efforts dropped or defeated. At every level of government, the food and beverage industries won fight after fight during the last decade. They have never lost a significant political battle in the United States despite mounting scientific evidence of the role of unhealthy food and children’s marketing in obesity.”
Cigarette Companies and Their Underhanded Tactics
“As a former cigarette company employee, I have no sympathy for their attempts to challenge the Federal Government’s plain packaging” writes David Donovan, a former tobacco company employee, in an op ed in Independent Australia in response to the Australian tobacco industry’s efforts to reverse new packaging rules. “Cigarette companies have bribed and subverted the political process for too long. I know this, because for three years in the mid-1990s, I worked for a cigarette company in Brisbane, where I saw this company blatantly try to ensure employees, including myself, were hooked on nicotine, as well as their bribery of politicians and public officials.”
Corporations and Health Watch 