Michele Simon

Cross-posted from Grist.

While most media outlets dubbed it the “Happy Meal toy ban,” the ordinance passed in San Francisco last year didn’t ban anything. The law just placed a few reasonable nutrition guidelines (a maximum of 600 calories per meal and limits on fat and salt, for example) for restaurants using free toy incentives to lure kids into a lifetime of bad eating habits. In a rare victory for children’s health, the bill passed despite heavy lobbying by McDonald’s.

The law is scheduled to go into effect today, but the fast food giant — who didn’t want to change the nutritional makeup of its Happy Meals — has devised a clever gimmick to maintain the status quo.

Instead of giving the toys away for free, parents will now pay 10 cents for the latest plastic action figure. And for bonus PR, the dime will be donated to the city’s Ronald McDonald House.

Some media outlets have claimed that McDonald’s has successfully found a loophole, or has dodged or skirted the law. And it may look that way on the surface, but I’m not so sure.

It’s not clear to this lawyer that the clown trick is in full compliance with the law. What has really changed and how exactly will this new 10-cent rule play out at the cash register? Is McDonald’s HQ requiring its San Francisco franchises to ask if a parent would like to pay 10 cents extra for the toy? Even if they are, the reality is that the Happy Meal business model depends on toys being automatically included.

Fast food outlets manipulate so-called “default options” on the menu to ensure maximum sales. For example, when you order a “combo meal” it’s likely to automatically come with a soda — not, say, juice or milk — because soda has higher profit margins.

McDonald’s is determined to keep Happy Meals tied to toys, because a new toy every week ensures repeat business (and repeated nagging). The easiest way to do this is to include the toy as the default option. If parents started refusing the toys, it would defeat the entire purpose of the Happy Meal: to fulfill the company’s (likely very lucrative) contractual agreements with media companies that require them to cross-promote the latest movie, kids’ TV show, etc.

It’s no wonder then, that McDonald’s is so desperate to retain the toys. But is this true compliance with a law that was meant to disassociate toys from unhealthy food? I don’t think so.

McDonald’s has a history of acting irresponsibly, despite its claims to the contrary. For example, the company proudly touts its membership in the Children’s Food and Beverage Initiative. Through this voluntary, self-regulatory trade group, the company makes numerous claims about how responsible its child marketing policy is, including:

McDonald’s is proud of our long heritage of responsible communication with our customers, especially children, and continues to play a leadership role in the development of standards that govern advertising for children and adults.

However, an in-depth investigation by the Rudd Center on Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University found that McDonald’s has failed to live up to its voluntary pledge — in numerous ways. For example, the study found that McDonald’s increased its TV advertising from 2007 to 2009, with preschoolers seeing 21 percent more ads for McDonald’s and older children viewing 26 percent more.

The Rudd Center study also found:

• McDonald’s web-based marketing (on Ronald.com) is aimed at children as young as 2.
• McDonald’s 13 websites attracted 365,000 unique child visitors and 294,000 unique teen visitors on average each month in 2009.
• African American teens viewed 75 percent more TV ads for McDonald’s compared to white teens.

All this is despite McDonald’s “commitment to responsible marketing to children.”

The Rudd Center also found that this type of marketing works. Forty percent of parents reported their child asks to go to McDonald’s at least once a week, with 15 percent of preschoolers asking to go every day. Wonder why? Toys play a huge part in that incessant asking. The fact that McDonald’s is so determined to keep toys shows just how huge.

Can’t parents just say no? Of course they can, but both ideas can be true: Parents need to set limits and McDonald’s needs to stop marketing to children. As ample science tells us, marketing to young children is inherently deceptive because they do not have the cognitive capacity to understand that they are being targeted. Therefore, under both federal and state law, marketing to young children is already illegal. (Read my previous article for the full legal explanation.)

As I see it, voluntary pledges are a dismal failure. Only better laws enforced over time will change the behavior of companies like McDonald’s. And when advocates do get laws passed to protect kids, McDonald’s will keep trying to avoid them. But we don’t have to let them get away with it. Here’s how you can get involved:

1. If you live in San Francisco, contact San Francisco Supervisor Eric Mar’s office (the author of the bill) and tell him not to allow the City to accept this move by McDonald’s. San Francisco may still be able to fix the law with new language or change how it is enforced.
2. Contact the San Francisco city attorney’s office to tell them the same thing.
3. If you live elsewhere in California, contact the state attorney general’s office, which has authority to enforce consumer deception laws. If you live outside of California, you can find your state attorney general listed here.
4. File a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, the agency responsible for regulating advertising at the federal level. Deceptive marketing is already illegal, and marketing to young children is inherently deceptive.
5. File a complaint with the industry-sponsored Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative about McDonald’s irresponsible marketing practices.
6. Just for fun, contact McDonald’s to tell them what you think.
7. Finally, support nonprofits that are working to hold companies like McDonald’s accountable. The two I recommend are The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and Corporate Accountability International.

It’s clear this company won’t improve on its own. Maybe it’s time to Occupy McDonald’s?

 

Image Credit:

klavinka via flickr.

Cross-posted from Appetite for Profit.

[October 24th was] Food Day, a national grassroots campaign for healthy, affordable food produced in a humane, sustainable, and just way. Created by the Center for Science in the Public Interest and modeled after Earth Day, the idea appears to be a huge success, with over 2,000 events scheduled around the nation. Even the food industry is taking notice by putting out their own silly messages about how “every day is Food Day for the food and beverage industry.” (Exactly, that’s why we need our own day.)

But when all of [Food Day]’s positive energy dies down, many of us will continue to do the hard to work to make systemic changes to our very broken food system. And it’s getting harder all the time, with massive push back from a very powerful industry that has endless resources. But now there is more hope than ever before, coming in the form of the Occupy movement.

On Saturday, I marched with hundreds of my neighbors in Occupy Oakland, right past my local farmers market, which seemed entirely appropriate: a symbol of an alternative universe where local, fresh food made by caring individuals triumphs over chemical-laden concoctions churned out in far-away factories. I was in tears as marchers called out to on-lookers at the market to “join us, join us.” (The entire march was much more moving and inspiring than writing blog posts about the evils of food industry marketing.)

Everyone working to change the food system should find a way to hook up with Occupy. The connection should be obvious. The Occupy movement at its core is about corporate power. Indeed, every one of the six Food Day principles connects to the corporate takeover of our food supply:

1. Reduce diet-related disease by promoting safe, healthy foods
2. Support sustainable farms and limit subsidies to big agribusiness
3. Expand access to food and alleviate hunger
4. Protect the environment and animals by reforming factory farms
5. Promote health by curbing junk-food marketing to kids
6. Support fair conditions for food and farm workers.

Still not convinced? Read my smart colleagues’ calls to action:

– Mark Bittman, New York Times: Finally Making Sense on Wall Street
– Slow Food USA: Occupy Wall Street: What’s food got to do with it?
– Siena Chrisman, Why Hunger: Why the Food Movement Should Occupy Wall Street
– Tom Philpott, Mother Jones: Foodies, Get Thee to Occupy Wall Street
– Ben Lillitson, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy:
What does the occupation of Wall Street have to do with agriculture?

So enjoy Food Day. And tomorrow go join Occupy, it may be our best hope yet.

Cross-posted from Appetite for Profit.

Last week retail behemoth Walmart announced a $1.01 million donation to Milwaukee-based Growing Power, a well-known nonprofit whose founder Will Allen has gained much accolades for his hard work to bring local, healthy food to low-income areas.

So far the online debate over Growing Power taking this funding is predictable: some defend it for pragmatic reasons, while others deplore the move, either because they don’t like this particular company or they think all corporate money is evil. However, this donation cannot be viewed in such a narrow context. There is a pattern here that spans decades.

By partnering with a group that could otherwise be one of its staunchest critics, Walmart is taking a page right out of the Big Tobacco playbook: Buying silence.

Philanthropy to win over causes that could cause them trouble is a time-honored tradition of Corporate America, and this is the just the latest installment. The tobacco industry saw great success with sponsorships of women’s causes (Virginia Slims tennis anyone?) and both the tobacco and alcohol industries have bought off Latino groups along with plenty of others, as I’ve described before.

It’s easy to justify taking this sort of money. Of course Growing Power needs the cash and will do good things with it. It’s understandable, in these hard times, how the group could justify taking it. Why not put a corporation’s profits to good use? Viewed in that narrow frame, almost any donation can be justified.

But what happens when Walmart’s pledge made earlier this year–with the first lady by their side–to sell more fresh produce at affordable prices falls through (or squeezes farmers) as it inevitably will? What happens next year, when Allen needs more money, and Walmart ups the ante? One colleague had no problem with the deal as long as Walmart didn’t ask for a seat on Growing Power’s board. They just might.

It’s not at all clear where Growing Power is drawing the line. On their blog, Allen defends the move by arguing that we “can no longer refuse to invite big corporations to the table of the Good Food Revolution.”

Invite them to the table? These corporations: McDonald’s, PepsiCo, Kraft, and especially Walmart, have already been to the table: they have set the table, and left a stinking mess for us to clean up.

Has Corporate America really been left out of the conversation about our food supply? My book was inspired by the response of the food industry to the criticism being leveled against them. Responses in the form of a massive public relations campaign designed to convince the American public and policymakers alike that they have it covered.

McDonald’s pushing cheeseburgers and fries? No problem, now they sell salads. General Mills promoting sugary cereals to kids? Enter whole grain Reese’s Puffs. Not enough access to fresh food in poor areas? Walmart to the rescue.

Meanwhile, any policy effort to reform the food system in more meaningful ways is resisted by these same companies with powerful lobbying campaigns. Walmart is no exception to this pattern.

Christopher Cook (author of Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis – which I highly recommend) recently hit the nail on the head, posting to a list-serve that such donations are “not only tainted but tied to political allegiance with the corporate agenda.” He goes on:

The PR and influence that Walmart and others gain from this “charitable giving” expands their corporate power and their market control–the very things that are directly undermining our food system, sustainability, and food access and justice. These corporations are a huge part of precisely why we are in such deep trouble with our food today. It’s not just about “tainted” dollars, it’s about how these corporations will profit (and they will) both economically and politically by buying market share in the food justice movement.

See also Andy Fisher’s excellent critique on Civil Eats concluding that Walmart cannot possibly be part of the solution to our broken food system because the company “hurts communities more than it helps them.”

So what then, I hear many asking, is the alternative given that the money is still sorely needed? Cook offers an admittedly more challenging solution: “We need a strongly united movement pushing aggressively for public investment in the great and vital work of Growing Power and other groups.”

Let’s get to work.

Cross-posted from Food Safety News.

For many good food advocates, the end of a legislative session often means disappointment that their bills to help fix our broken food system did not pass. But in some states, when lawmakers go home we should really all breathe a big sigh of relief.

Such was the case last week when the Iowa Legislature adjourned without passing one of the more obnoxious proposals to rear its ugly head in any state house this year. In the wake of video footage exposing the horrific conditions of animals raised for our consumption, agribusiness decided it was time to fight back.

Iowa House File 589 would have made it a crime to “produce” an image or sound recording at an animal facility without permission from the owner. To ensure that media outlets also got the message, even possession and distribution of such recordings would have been outlawed.

For the first offense, you could be charged with an “aggravated misdemeanor” while a second offense could bring felony charges. And that was just under the section, “animal facility interference.” You could also be brought up on charges of animal facility fraud, crop operation tampering, crop operation interference, and crop operation fraud, each with its own mind-bending definition.

Earlier this year, Minnesota and Florida introduced similar bills. New York jumped into the fray in June, the last month of the legislative session there. The New York bill, titled without a hint of irony, “unlawful tampering with farm animals,” threatened punishment up to one year in jail or a $1,000 fine.

While these bills are particularly egregious, it’s not the first time that Big Agribusiness has attempted to silence its critics through a state-by-state attack on free speech rights. In fact, one of the first op-ed articles I ever published was on the “veggie libel laws” that were passed in the late 1990s. These statues, which were enacted in at least a dozen states, essentially turned speaking negatively about any food into a potential libel lawsuit. It was under one such statute in Texas that Oprah Winfrey was sued by six cattle feeder corporations for doing a show on the risks of mad cow disease in beef. (She won the case.)

That state-by-state lobbying effort was also led by powerful agriculture interests able to find friendly legislators to do their bidding. Another familiar theme is how the ag gag bills are so obviously a violation of the First Amendment. At least two constitutional law experts (both in Iowa) agree that these measures are unlikely to withstand a court challenge. But that hardly seems to matter.

What does matter is that the message is sent loud and clear to anyone who seeks to expose the unspeakable atrocities that animals suffer daily on factory farms: that engaging in such reporting will have serious consequences. It’s called chilling speech.

The good news is that so far, no ag gag bill has passed. While some animal advocacy groups have hailed the failure in all four states where bills were introduced, I wouldn’t recommend a victory party just yet. Procedurally, the bills were not voted down or vetoed by any governor. Rather, they each passed through their respective committees and died before coming to a full chamber vote. A positive sign for sure, but still no guarantee the threat is over.

For example, in Iowa, the bill passed the House but was left to die without a full vote in the Senate. According to an interviewwith Iowa Rep. Jim Lykam (who is opposed), as a two-year bill, the measure doesn’t even have to be reintroduced for the Legislature to vote on it again, come January 2012. And Republican Gov. Terry Branstad is already on record in favor of the idea.

The lead sponsor in Iowa was Republican Rep. Annette Sweeney, a cattle rancher and former executive director of the Iowa Angus Association. Also on record in support of the bill are the Iowa Cattlemen’s Association and the Iowa Poultry Association. Other Big Ag backers according to one account included “Monsanto, DuPont, and other mammoth agriculture corporations and trade associations.”

Such heavy hitters don’t let one minor setback get them down. Dave Murphy, founder and executive director of Food Democracy Now — an advocacy group based in Iowa — agrees we should not get complacent. “Iowans were fortunate this year. Intense opposition and media scrutiny helped kill it in the end. This victory, however, is temporary as proponents are promising to reintroduce the bill next year,” he said.

This is what agribusiness does best: keep up the lobbying pressure wherever they can. Indeed, signs indicate that these bills are part of a nationally coordinated effort. For example, the language of the Iowa and Minnesota bills bear a striking resemblance, suggesting a state-by-state attack strategy – just like the veggie libel laws. The language of those earlier bills was virtually identical.

The sponsor of the Minnesota bill is Rep. Rod Hamilton, past president of the Minnesota Pork Producers. And, apparently, the bill was aided by the Minnesota Agri-Growth Council, a powerful agricultural lobbying group. Dayrn McBeth, president of the organization, explained their strategy: “Neither we nor the authors expect to pass these bills. It was intended to start a conversation.”

Or maybe stop one?

Here’s what I wrote in 1998: “These laws are nothing more than an effort by big business to chill the free speech efforts by those seeking to raise legitimate questions about the safety of our nation’s food supply.” Just add “and concerns about animal welfare” and it’s déjà vu all over again.

 “Big Ag’s Latest Attempt to Chill Free Speech” was originally published at Food Safety News on July 7, 2011. Republished with permission from Food Safety News. C Marler Clark and Michele Simon. All rights reserved.

Cross-posted from Appetite for Profit.

It seems some thought I was a tad too harsh in my critique of the new MyPlate, the federal government’s latest attempt to teach Americans how to eat right. So in the spirit of recognizing positive moves coming from Washington D.C., here is some good news.

Last week, First Lady Michelle Obama announced the latest addition to her effort to reduce childhood obesity: Let’s Move Child Care, which includes a checklist for child day care providers to follow. The most impressive recommendation is to limit screen time. Specifically, to “none under age 2″ and for 2 and up, limit to 30 minutes/week during child care and no more than 1-2 hours/day of quality screen time at home.

This is a very strong recommendation (backed by the American Academy of Pediatrics) and cannot have made the television industry or its advertisers very happy. And it could help reduce the negative impact of marketing because the earlier children form emotional bonds with cartoon characters, the sooner junk food pushers can exploit those connections. Remember that scene in the film Super Size Me when Morgan Spurlock showed how easily young toddlers recognized images of icons such as Ronald McDonald?

Kudos to the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood(CCFC) for its leadership on this issue. (Full disclosure, I am on their steering committee.) In recent years, CCFC has been fighting Disney over its controversial videos, Baby Einstein. The upshot of that battle was Disney changed its advertising claims.

We have certainly come a long way. Here’s what Let’s Move has to say on videos for babies:

Not too long ago, moms and child care providers all over the country were buying and showing videos and DVDs galore geared entirely toward the infant audience. But now we know that babies and even toddlers (ages 0 to 2 years old) shouldn’t get any screen time at all — zero, not even a few minutes here and there.

Take that Disney! (Here is CCFC’s statement applauding the first lady’s campaign.)

Other positive recommendations for day care centers include serving fruits or vegetables at every meal, avoiding fried foods, saying “so long to sugary drinks” and my favorite: just give kids water, imagine!

When it comes to keeping kids hydrated, it doesn’t get much better than plain old water. And it’s wise to serve toddlers and preschoolers only water at meals — so that they don’t get filled up with milk or juice, making it less likely they’ll have room to eat.

Did you hear that American Beverage Association and National Dairy Council?

Why is this a big deal? In addition to providing leadership and supporting parents, the Let’s Move campaign says it has already received commitments from the Department of Defense, General Services Administration, and the nation’s second largest childcare provider, Bright Horizons, to implement the checklist, which will impact the lives of more than 280,000 children.

And that, is a very good start.

You can watch the first lady’s video announcement here.

 

 

 

Image Credits:

1.     Let’s Move

2.     Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood

The following op-ed was recently published in numerous newspapers across the country through McClatchy-Tribune News Service.

The one-year anniversary of the first lady’s Let’s Move campaign to “end childhood obesity within a generation” was marked by celebratory speeches and fanfare – much of it generated by the White House itself.

It’s certainly true that Michelle Obama has been tremendously successful in summoning both the resources of her office as well as her own positive energy and enthusiasm to get the nation to focus its attention on this important problem. She also deserves credit for specific gains made in the past year, including championing school food and shining a light on the serious problem of “food deserts,” neighborhoods that lack even a basic grocery store, let alone a farmer’s market.

However, her highly touted “Let’s Move” campaign can make no claims of progress in combating the 800-pound gorilla in America’s dining rooms: Junk food marketing to children.

While Mrs. Obama may have elevated the national conversation about childhood obesity, that discourse has actually been going on for almost a decade now. In 2006, a damning report from the Institute of Medicine on food marketing to kids called upon Congress to act within two years if industry made no significant improvements on its own.

In the wake of that threat, food companies made many promises to clean up their act; commitments were announced, self-regulatory bodies were formed. It all sounded very impressive. And yet recent reports coming out of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University as well as the government’s own Federal Trade Commission continue to document ubiquitous junk food and fast-food marketing to children.

Just take a stroll down the cereal aisle and you can find such childhood-obesity-inducing products as Cupcake Cereal and Cookie Crisp Sprinkles Cereal. Even Cheerios now comes in a chocolate variety. And these days, the ads aren’t just on TV. Our digital world contains endless marketing opportunities designed to reach kids wherever parents are not.

The first lady does mention this problem in her speeches, but her campaign is unable to tackle the issue directly, not only because Mrs. Obama has no policymaking powers but because to do so means threatening her husband’s business-friendly image. A sure sign of how small a threat “Let’s Move” is to the food industry is just how eager companies have been to jump onto its bandwagon.

Most successful was Wal-Mart, which recently gained Mrs. Obama’s endorsement of the company’s 5-year plan to improve the quality of its foods. Merits of the announcement aside, particularly troubling was that the first lady’s staff had been meeting in secret with Wal-Mart executives for months, negotiating the final – albeit vague terms of the plan.

The real question may not be if “Let’s Move” is going far enough, but what role is it playing in our national agenda on solving childhood obesity? Negotiated deals with the likes of Wal-Mart cannot become a substitute for actual policymaking. As messy and as imperfect as the democratic process is, it needs to be based on serious policy – not public relations gestures – to work well.

Meanwhile, it seems clear that the Obama administration is unwilling to seriously address junk-food marketing. One idea is to have the government suggest guidelines for industry. In December 2009, a taskforce of several federal agencies did just that – releasing draft nutrition guidelines on the marketing food to children. Apparently, this meager first step – it would be entirely voluntary – set off such alarm bells within the food industry that we haven’t heard a peep from the task force since.

Instead of meaningful government actions we have only “Let’s Move” and more voluntary industry promises. Solving the complex problems of childhood obesity won’t be solved with cute slogans or deal-making with the likes of Wal-Mart. To win this battle, we need our political leaders to take on seriously the politics of marketing junk-food to our children.

Image Credits:

1. Let’s Move logo
2. The Shifted Librarian via flickr

Cross-posted from Appetite for Profit, the author’s website, posted March 23.

I just returned from a 2-day meeting in Brussels. I was asked to participate with other experts from around the world (mostly from Europe) to address the problem of cross-border marketing of unhealthy food to children. In the age of satellite TV, the Internet, and other technologies, one country’s standards may be insufficient to protect children from being exposed to junk food marketing. Because the meeting was not open to the general public, I cannot share all of what was discussed (the standards are still in draft form), but I can highlight a couple of presentations made to a larger group of “stakeholders.”

The only industry presentation was made by Rocco Renaldi, the managing director of a PR firm called Landmark Europe, which apparently is handling the food industry’s self-regulation charade there. Mr. Renaldi briefly described the voluntary program, which bears some similarity to the American version. In the US, it goes by the lofty name of the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, under the rubric of the Better Business Bureau, and consists of a series of “pledges” by various companies on how they market their products to children. Oddly, while McDonald’s takes part in the US, it has not joined in the UK, at least one not-so-subtle difference.

By way of showing off about how great the system is working in Europe, Mr. Renaldi explained how food ads aimed at children on TV had declined from 2005-2010. (Note the industry program didn’t start until 2009.) I thought this was misleading data for another reason so I asked him during the Q&A: what about other forms of advertising, did they look at anything else? Because the evidence suggests in the US that when TV ads go down, children are still plenty exposed to junk food messages through other forms of media, such as the Internet. He had no good answer, except to admit he only had data for TV, saying “how hard” it was to measure other forms of media. Well, it certainly is hard for actual researchers and advocates, but if you’re working for industry, maybe not so hard? Just convenient to be selective.

Next, a researcher named Ileana Sondergaard from the Metropolitan University College of Copenhagen, Denmark essentially tore apart everything the industry PR guy had just said. She explained how bad the standards are, how companies use misleading information while breaching their own standards, and that overall the system suffers from an inherent lack of transparency. (All of which sounded painfully familiar as problems I described in my book and we continue to see here.)

Nine of the 11 original corporate members of the voluntary pledges in Europe use distinct nutrient-profiling systems that are conveniently set to match each company’s own products. (This is the same game industry plays in the US: 16 companies, 16 different pledges.) For example, Unilever sets an upper limit for sugar at 20 grams per 100 grams of product, and then magically its Calippo Orange popsicle clocks in at 19 grams. Also, the upper limit for calories is 110 and Calippo contains 100, how convenient. Sondergaard also showed how Nestlé products often listed different nutrient information in different places on the Web and elsewhere, making it impossible to get reliable information. Finally, she explained how she tried to contact many of the companies, but to no avail. (Her research is not yet published, but I will share it when it becomes available.)

Back on the home front, Mary Engle of the US Federal Trade Commission gave an update on the stalled federal voluntary guidelines process here. In 2009, Congress authorized the Interagency Working Group on Food Marketed to Children, to “develop recommendations for standards for the marketing of food” to children age 17 or younger, mandating that a report be submitted “no later than July 15, 2010.” Oops. (The three other federal agencies involved are the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and the US Department of Agriculture, which put out the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans in 2011.)

The committee did release this draft proposal back in December of 2009, which was actually not bad as far as nutrition standards go. And this of course explains the delay. As Engle noted: “Industry was not happy; companies complained that under these guidelines, no products could be marketed.” (Isn’t that the point?) Engle said they heard from critics warning that industry would just ignore the standards, which seems likely in any case, because remember, it will be voluntary.

So now what? Engle predicted we should see the proposed guidelines released in the next 2-3 months, followed by a 45-day comment period. (Why we need regulatory comments for voluntary guidelines is unclear to this lawyer, but OK.) While Engle said the proposal “won’t be radically different,” from the draft, she also noted the standards “have to be feasible, something industry will adopt on a voluntary basis, and cannot be dead on arrival.” Translation: the final document will be watered down. (And then likely to be ignored by industry anyway, even after all the whining.)

I left Brussels with the impression that the food industry is engaging in the same charade all over the world: setting weak, self-serving, voluntary guidelines designed to ensure companies can keep right on marketing their unhealthy brands to children while mollifying regulators and distracting researchers with evaluating their useless pledges, commitments, and initiatives.

While none of this is surprising, more disappointing was the realization that advocates throughout Europe haven’t figured out how to address this serious problem any more than we have in the US. The junk food industry is way out in front of all of us, having co-opted the process the world over. Meanwhile, children continue to be exploited as the global public health crisis deepens.

With soda taxes becoming an increasingly attractive policy option to help prevent diabetes and obesity and to fill empty state coffers, the soft drink industry is fighting back, and hard. While tobacco is often mentioned as the analogous issue, in fact, alcohol and soft drinks have much in common. In this piece, experienced alcohol control advocate Michele Simon translates lessons learned from the ongoing fight against Big Alcohol into six practical lessons for soda tax advocates.

Since I started working at Marin Institute, an alcohol industry watchdog group, in 2007 it’s become painfully clear that corporations have the same playbook. Whether it’s the food industry, tobacco, or alcohol, they all use the same talking points and lobbying strategies. While Big Tobacco may be most infamous for decades of hiding scientific evidence of harm and the deceptive marketing, all industries have similar tactics.

In my work at Marin Institute, raising alcohol taxes has been a primary focus of our policy agenda because we know that increasing prices is one of the most effective ways to prevent underage drinking and adult overconsumption.

With soda taxes becoming an increasingly attractive policy option to help prevent diabetes and obesity, the soft drink industry is fighting back, and hard. While tobacco is often mentioned as the analogous issue, in fact, alcohol is more similar to soft drinks.

Besides the obvious (they are both beverages), alcohol and soft drinks each hold a special place in American culture. There’s nothing more American than relaxing with a Coke, or a Bud. Also, unlike smoking, which everyone (well, except the tobacco industry) can agree should simply be stopped, when it comes to beverages, the message is more about cutting down.

Here, I offer a few of the lessons that alcohol control advocates have learned from decades of fights with industry over raising taxes, fights that continue to this day.

Lesson One:
Don’t let industry claim that soda doesn’t cause obesity or that taxes won’t work.

This is a tried and true tactic: attack the science, discredit the scientists, and make unscientific predictions that are in direct conflict with the published science. As is the case with tobacco, the alcohol industry has abandoned its futile attempts at claiming there is no scientific connection between alcohol consumption and health problems. However, because the science is less far along in obesity, the soda industry attempts to refute what science there is on the connection between drinking soda and poor health. Still, this argumentation is easily countered by showing those studies that claim no connection between soft drinks and obesity tend to be funded industry, big surprise.¹

A related argument is that raising taxes will not result in the desired public health goal of lowered consumption, and thus fewer health problems. The alcohol industry does try to make this argument, claiming that people will continue to drink and of course, what we really need instead is better education and parental oversight. The soft drink industry loves to point out how there are “many causes” of obesity and that they should not be singled out, and that soda taxes won’t work due to this “complexity.”

Now it’s true that we do have less science when it comes to predicting behavior change from soda taxes than either tobacco or alcohol, both of which have been studied for decades by economists and other researchers. So it’s imperative that when we are making claims related to “elasticity” (the economic term for consumer response to price change) that we get it right.

We also have to be honest by saying that we may need more research to fully understand pricing effects. One thing we’ve learned from alcohol is that taxes can be a very blunt instrument in effecting price change because companies are very clever in how they absorb the added business expense. Companies can keep cheap products cheap while marking up more expensive products, or simply cut costs instead. Product pricing is extremely complex and cannot always be predicted accurately. One study suggests that minimum pricing on all alcohol may be a better policy than raising taxes, due to price manipulation by industry.² Minimum pricing is when the government sets a floor; for example, that retailers cannot sell below cost. Such a policy has a more direct impact on prices than taxes. Perhaps minimum pricing should be considered for soda.

Lesson Two:
Don’t let industry claim that a penny per ounce tax will cause massive job loss.

Job loss and adverse economic impacts are industry’s most effective talking points. It cannot be underestimated how powerful and persuasive this argument is with politicians, as it gives them a convenient excuse to curry favor with industry by voting against a tax increase. Already, lobbyists for Big Soda have descended on New York State to convince lawmakers there to vote against a tax, with unsubstantiated claims of massive job loss. A recent story in the New York Daily News estimated that the beverage industry spent $3 million on lobbying against the state soda tax proposal.

The alcohol industry has been extremely effective claiming job losses so it’s no surprise the soda industry is following this path. And of course, in these tough economic times, such arguments carry even more weight. “We are already struggling. Don’t kick us when we are down. This is the worst time to raise taxes,” we hear all the time. Of course, meanwhile, every state legislature is in the red, desperate for revenue, which is precisely why soda taxes are even being considered in so many states in the first place.

But there is no good time to raise taxes. If and when the economy improves, the soft drink industry won’t suddenly stop opposing taxes. Alcohol control advocates have countered industry’s job loss claims in a few ways. First, they argue that the tax increase being proposed is so small that the impact on business will be negligible. Of course, it will still be enough to see a public health impact, but it won’t put anyone out of business, even the small “mom and pop stores.” Secondly, there is no good science to back up industry’s wildly exaggerated claims of job losses. Unfortunately, we do not have any science on the public health side either to examine what any potential job loss might be based on, either from an alcohol or soda tax increase, and this is an area of research that is sorely needed. We do have decent studies on indoor smoking laws that showed bars did not go out of business, despite industry claims to the contrary during those battles.³

Another response to the economic argument is that when people stop buying one type of product (whether tobacco or alcohol or soda) those consumer dollars do not disappear. Rather, people spend that money in other parts of the economy, so there is no net loss. Moreover, the money to be gained in tax revenue will be spent on programs that will create jobs. For example, in New York, the Healthcare Education Project is projecting that 29,000 healthcare jobs will be lost if the soda tax there does not pass. This dwarfs the beverage industry’s job loss projections of 6,000 if the soda tax is passed.

Lesson Three:
Don’t let industry claim they care about poor people and working families.

The beer industry has been particularly shameless about arguing that beer taxes are regressive because they hurt poor Joe and Jane Six-pack. We make the obvious counter argument, that beer, like soda, is not a necessity of life. (Moreover, research shows that people with higher incomes actually consume more alcohol.) The soda industry, through its ad campaigns and front group, Americans Against Food Taxes, is promoting the imagery of family picnics, and claiming that average Americans would never be in favor of such policies. In alcohol, polling has proven very useful to demonstrate the overwhelming support for higher alcohol taxes, especially when the funds are applied to alcohol-related programs. Polling could also be useful in countering soda industry claims that all Americans think taxes are always bad. Positive polls also offer politicians cover.

Lesson Four:
Make sure to index all excise taxes to inflation. (Industry hates this.)

One of the biggest challenges in the alcohol field is that excise taxes (based on volume sold) are not indexed to inflation. As a result, because most states have not raised their excise taxes in years, the real value of tax revenue has significantly declined. For example, in California, the real value of alcohol excise tax revenue, which was last raised in 1991, has declined 37 percent. (See Marin Institute’s maps that demonstrate the impact of neglected and outdated alcohol excise taxes in each state.) This amounts to a subsidy for industry, since product prices remain artificially low. Here, you have not only industry to battle, which hates indexing to inflation for obvious reasons, but also many lawmakers who do not believe in placing automatic increases on taxes. But without it, you will find yourself fighting the same battles year after year for increases. Note that because sales taxes are usually assessed as a percentage of price, sales taxes will go up as prices increase. This is one benefit to sales tax over excise tax.

Lesson Five:
If and when you start gaining success locally, do not allow industry to get preemption at the state or federal level. (This is really important.)

Most excise taxes on products such as tobacco and alcohol are assessed at both the federal and state level and for good reason, as both levels of government rely on the revenue generated by taxing these products. Some states also allow the local taxation of tobacco and alcohol, which is of critical importance, especially now when so many counties and cities are hurting for revenue. And of course, it’s at the community level that the adverse impact of harmful products is felt most severely. Unfortunately, the alcohol industry has successfully preempted localities from assessing taxes in most states. In other words, only states can levy alcohol taxes, not cities or counties. (There are some exceptions; for example, California allows local fees under limited circumstances.)

For soda taxes, it’s imperative that cities and counties retain the right to assess local taxes and fees as they see fit. Also, if there is ever to be a soda tax at the federal level, under no circumstance should such a law preempt state-level taxation. Doing so would be a public policy disaster and makes no sense from a states-rights or public health perspective.

Lesson Six:
Be Prepared for the Long Haul.

Finally, do not underestimate how much industry will lobby to the death against taxes. This is unlike any other fight–school food, menu labeling, you name it–and the food industry cares more about taxes. Taxes go to the heart of the corporate business model: having complete control over pricing, which is critical to maintaining steady profits.

Also, unlike other issues for which there may be grounds for compromise (such as menu labeling), industry will not compromise on taxes. This issue is non-negotiable.

Instead, industry will kill bills, and when they can’t stop a bill, they will successfully water it down to a much lower, perhaps insignificant tax rate. (Then when you try to raise it next time, it will look like a huge, unreasonable increase, which will be used against you.) Big Soda, in cahoots with distributors, restaurants, and the retail sector, will out-spend and out-maneuver public health advocates for decades to come. Already the soft drink industry has increased its lobbying against soda taxes by750 percent both in Congress and the states, which indicates how seriously they take this threat. They can spend millions of dollars fighting taxes and still get a good return on that investment due to the money they save in the long run.

And the fight will never be over, because even if you get a tax this year, it will probably be small, and you will have to fight to increase it next year, and the year after that. Public health advocates will have to decide if the enormous resources it will take to succeed are ultimately worth spending decades fighting on taxes, or if other policies, such as reducing corn subsidies, would be more effective. Either way, the lobbyists will remain employed.

Michele Simon is the Research and Policy Director for Marin Institute, an alcohol industry watchdog group, and the author ofAppetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back. Visit her website and read herblog.

References

1. Vartanian LR, Schwartz MB, Brownell KD. Effects of Soft Drink Consumption on Nutrition and Health: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, Am J Public Health. 2007;97:667-675.
2. Gruenewald PJ, Ponicki WR, Holder HD, and Romelsjoe A. Alcohol Prices, Beverage Quality, and the Demand for Alcohol: Quality Substitutions and Price Elasticities. Alcohol Clin Exp Res, 2006; 30 (1): 96-105.
3. See e.g., Klein EG, Forster JL, Erickson DJ, Lytle LA, and Schillo B. Does the Type of CIA Policy Significantly Affect Bar and Restaurant Employment in Minnesota Cities? Prev Sci. 2009 Jun;10(2):168-74.