by Marion Nestle

Currently browsing posts about: Food-industry-regulation

Jan 12 2024

Weekend reading: UK report on industry’s role in poor health

I’m just getting around to reading this report from three groups in the UK: Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), the Obesity Health Alliance (OHA) and the Alcohol Health Alliance (AHA): Holding us back: tobacco, alcohol and unhealthy food and drink.

I learned about it from an article in The Guardian:

The report gives the health statistics: 13% of adults in England smoke, 21% drink above the recommended drinking guidelines, and 64% are overweight or living with obesity,.

NOTE: this report—unlike so many others—examines the political and economic causes of poor health.  It says practically nothing about personal choice or responsibility.  Instead, it focuses on industry profits and the costs of industry profiteering to society.

Big businesses are currently profiting from ill-health caused by smoking, drinking alcohol and eating unhealthy foods, while the public pay the price in poor health, higher taxes and an under-performing economy.

The wage penalty, unemployment and economic inactivity caused by tobacco, alcohol and obesity costs the UK economy an eye-watering £31bn and has led to an estimated 459,000 people out of work.

Meanwhile each year, the industries which sell these products make an estimated £53bn of combined industry revenue from sales at levels harmful to health.

The press release emphasizes the need to curb industry practices: More needs to be done to tackle the unhealthy products driving nearly half a million people out of work.

It recommends, among other things:

  • The Government should take a coherent policy approach to tobacco, alcohol and high fat, salt and/or sugar foods, with a focus on primary prevention.
  • Public health policymaking must be protected from the vested interest of health-harming industry stakeholders.

To do this, it suggests these actions to decrease sales of harmful products (my summary):

  • Restrict advertising
  • Set age limits  for purchase.
  • Do not allow prominent placement in shops.
  • Raise prices; tax.
  • Educate the public about risks (the one place where personal responsibility is considered).
Oct 24 2023

Who knew? I. Bribery in food supply chains

This week, I’m posting some items that surprised me.  Here’s the first: How to deal with bribery in your supply chain.

Really?  This is an international problem?  Apparently so, at least for the U.K.

We have approximately 160 coudntries from all over the world contributing to our food supply and this can lead to vulnerabilities in respect of fraud and financial crime.

The vulnerabilities:

  • Bribery and corruption
  • Food fraud such as adulteration and mislabeling
  • Dealing with entities on international fraud and sanction lists
  • “Dealing with individuals or entities that do not share your own approach to issues such as sustainability and modern slavery.”

This particular article deals with bribery.  A few excerpts from this discussion:

  • It is not necessary to show the payment was made with a corrupt motive or intention to persuade or influence the agent; the payment is presumed to have been corrupt if the principal was unaware.
  • There is also no need to show the principal suffered a loss as a result of the agent being bribed.
  • Given the serious consequences which can flow from bribery (corporate criminal conviction, fines, reputational damage) and the cost of carrying out your own investigation, prevention is clearly better than cure.
  • In the food industry, supply chains can be particularly long and complex, with suppliers involved from all over the world; therefore, it is crucial that businesses invest time in getting to know their suppliers.
  • The key message is to keep the risk of bribery in mind at all stages of dealing with suppliers and ensure that all counterparties are aware of your organisation’s understanding of how the civil law of bribery can protect and help scrutinise suppliers, so to maintain a robust supply chain with in-built deterrents for rogue parties.

One more thing to worry about if you are in the food business.

May 5 2023

Weekend reading: Corporate control of foods systems

 

IPES—the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems—states the problem:

Over recent decades, corporations have succeeded in convincing governments that they must be central in any discussion
on the future of food systems. [No, they should not.]

Publicprivate partnerships and ‘multi-stakeholder’ roundtables (e.g., on ‘responsible soy’, or ‘sustainable palm oil’) have normalized a prominent role for corporations and given them an inside track to decision-making. [This is wrong.]

Public governance initiatives have also become reliant on private funding. [Also wrong.]

Why wrong?  IPES says:

Behind the scenes, leading corporations have consolidated their grip by ensuring an industry friendly regulatory environment (via lobbying and ‘revolving door’ approaches), shaping trade and investment agreements, putting up barriers to competition, sponsoring research, and making political donations.

What is to be done?  For starters:

  • Keep food corporations out of public health policy discussions.
  • Hold corporations accountable.

Take a look and see if you agree.

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Nov 10 2022

The British food industry needs to do better on sustainability

The Food Foundation in Great Britain has produced a report on the status of the British food industry.

The full report is here.

 

Here’s what the writers of the report would like the food industry to do:

Like American food companies, British food companies put profits to shareholders as their top priority.  Knowing this, the report calls on government to set mandatory standards.

We need to do this too.

May 11 2022

Food industry opposes the UK’s strategy to improve health

Last month, the UK government announced guidance for the food industry on compliance with its new policies on dealing with foods High in Fat, Sugar, or Salt (HFSS): Restricting promotions of products high in fat, sugar or salt by location and by volume price: implementation guidance.  

The food industry is not happy about these policies.

Kellogg has launched a legal challenge.

Kellogg has launched a legal challenge against the Government’s upcoming restrictions on retail promotions for food and drink high in fat, salt and sugar (HFSS), claiming the rules unfairly represented breakfast cereals.

On what basis?

The manufacturer argued that the formula used tomeasure the nutritional value of food was wrong when it came to breakfast cereals, as the Nutrient Profiling Model (NPM) only accounted for portions of dry cereals and not for a bowl of cereal and milk…Breakfast cereals are dehydrated foods, that are intended to absorb milk to make the food more palatable and give the food its intended flavour and texture.  Hardly anyone sits down to a bowl of dry breakfast cereals in the morning – cereals are almost always eaten with milk.

What’s really at stake?

From October this year, new legislation will restrict retail promotion of HFSS products. The changes could lead to a reported loss of 1.1bn per year.

The food industry is also arguing that the new regulations will cause a consumer backlash.

These restrictions might escape public scrutiny, but consumers will get a horrible shock when they wake up one day and find their favourite brands have been ruined by regulation and cost more.  Unless manufacturers fight back, be it in the courts or out in the public square, it’ll be too late to do anything about it.

And that the HFSS regulations won’t do any good.

The soft drink industry, however, sees the regulations as no problem: “The soft drinks category will be affected by new HFSS legislation coming into force in England. But having already done plenty of work in reformulating and innovating for the UK sugar tax, the sector is well placed to turn a challenge into an opportunity.”

What’s all this about?  Here’s a quick review of the HFSS history:

2018: In Chapter 2 of the Childhood Obesity Plan,  the UK government set out its intention to end the promotion of high fat, sugar and salt (HFSS) products by location and by price.  It committed to consult on how this should be implemented.  This was based on evidence that food retail price promotions are widespread and effective at influencing food preferences and purchases (particularly for children), and on previous reports recommending reducing and rebalancing promotions towards healthier food and drink to help prevent obesity in children.

2019: The consultation on restricting the promotion of HFSS products was held.

2020:  The government theld a consultation on technical enforcement of the restrictions.  It announced in Tackling obesity: empowering adults and children to live healthier lives, that it would legislate to end promotion of HFSS products by volume (for example, “buy one get one free”) and location both online and in store in England.  It published a formal consultation response.

2021: The government introduced legislation to restrict the promotion of HFSS products by volume price both online and in store in England., based on the nutrient profiling technical guidance 2011.) These regulations will come into force on 1 October 2022.

2022: The new restrictions on HFAA promotion. 

Apr 22 2022

My latest article: Regulating the Food Industry

The American Journal of Public Health has just published a first look—ahead of its print in June—at my most recent article, Regulating the Food Industry: An Aspirational Agenda [if you are not a member of the American Public Health Association, this will be behind a paywall, alas].

It begins:

I end it with policy recommendations for:

  • Dietary guidelines
  • Mass media campaigns
  • Taxes
  • Warning labels
  • Marketing restrictions
  • Portion size restrictions
  • Farm subsidies

Hence, aspirational.

And, I say,

While we are thinking in aspirational terms, let us not forget root causes. We must also demand policies that link agriculture to public health, keep corporate money out of politics, reduce corporate concentration, and require Wall Street evaluate corporations on the basis of social as well as fiscal responsibility.  In comparison with those challenges, takin gon the food industry should be easy.

Let’s get to work.

Jan 11 2022

President Biden addresses the meat industry’s lack of competition

On January 3, the White House issued a press release to announce “The Biden-⁠Harris Action Plan for a Fairer, More Competitive, and More Resilient Meat and Poultry Supply Chain.

This came with a Fact Sheet explaining the plan and its rationale.

Even as farmers’ share of profits have dwindled, American consumers are paying more—with meat and poultry prices now the single largest contributor to the rising cost of food people consume at home.

The plan provides $1 billion to increase independent processing capacity: For example, 50 beef slaughter plants owned by just a handful of companies currently process nearly all the cattle in the United States.

  • Independent processing plants–$375 million
  • Financing for independent producers: $275 million
  • Back private lenders to independent processors–$100 million
  • Worker development–$100 million
  • Technical assistance–$50 million
  • Inspection support for small producers–$100 million

How this happened

Let’s start with a report from the White House Competition Council, which sets the tone by beginning with this quote from President Biden:

Capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism; it’s exploitation.  Without healthy competition, big players can change and charge whatever they want and treat you however they want.

The Council’s goal for reducing competition in agriculture: Lowering food prices for consumers and increasing earnings for farmers and ranchers.

The 2021 timeline

July 9  President Biden issues Executive order on promoting competition in the American economy

Robust competition is critical to preserving America’s role as the world’s leading economy. Yet over the last several decades, as industries have consolidated, competition has weakened in too many markets, denying Americans the benefits of an open economy and widening racial, income, and wealth inequality…Consolidation has increased the power of corporate employers, making it harder for workers to bargain for higher wages and better work conditions…Consolidation in the agricultural industry is making it too hard for small family farms to survive.

July 9  The White House presents a Fact sheet on the Executive order

The markets for seeds, equipment, feed, and fertilizer are now dominated by just a few large companies, meaning family farmers and ranchers now have to pay more for these inputs. For example, just four companies control most of the world’s seeds, and corn seed prices have gone up as much as 30% annually.

September 8  The White House issues a report Addressing Concentration in the Meat-Processing Industry to Lower Food Prices for American Families  [Note: this contains many useful charts]

December 10  The White House finds Recent Data Show Dominant Meat Processing Companies Are Taking Advantage of Market Power to Raise Prices and Grow Profit Margins  [Note: I did a blog post on this one]

The meat-processors are generating record profits during the pandemic, at the expense of consumers, farmers, and ranchers…the prices the processors pay to ranchers aren’t increasing, but the prices collected by processors from retailers are going up…At the same time, we have seen some of the top firms in this industry generate record gross profits and their highest gross margins in years.

The Reactions

The North American Meat Institute: Government Intervention in Markets Will Not Help Consumers, Producers 

For the third time in six months, President Joe Biden and his Administration announced the same plans to spend $1 billion to fund government intervention in the market in an attempt to increase prices livestock producers receive while blaming inflation on private industry…The Biden Administration continues to ignore the number one challenge to meat and poultry production: labor shortages.

Washington Post Opinion: Why President Biden is suddenly talking about meat

Now that President Biden has unveiled a plan to combat monopolistic practices in the meat industry, much of the media coverage is treating this effort as little more than an attempt to mitigate the political fallout of inflation by blaming large corporations for it…But the truth is that the White House plan only makes passing mention of inflation. Its primary focus is on the power dynamics of an industry that puts small faWilrmers and ranchers at the mercy of large meatpacking corporations, and the role this plays in causing higher prices and creating other problems.

The Counter: Can $1 billion really fix a meat industry dominated by just four companies?

The Biden administration’s newly announced investment in small, independent processors is intended to level the playing field. But without addressing the root causes [larger plants, union busting] of market concentration, critics fear it may have limited impact.

The Meatrix: the 2.5-minute trailer provides an excellent summary of the issues.  It also comes with a Take Action page

The Hagstrom Report’s list of links

Comment: Will any of this do any good in reducing the monopolistic power of Big Meat?  This depends on anti-trust legislation, and for that we must wait and see.  And where is Big Chicken in all of this?  Most of the attention here is on beef production, but the unfair practices of chicken companies need just as much attention.

Sep 10 2021

Weekend reading: Break up Big Ag

Two articles on similar themes have come out recently.

Is It Time to Break Up Big Ag? — The New Yorker

Nationally, the four largest dairy co-ops now control more than fifty per cent of the market. They’ve been able to grow so big, in part, because of a 1922 law called the Capper-Volstead Act, which provides significant exemptions from antitrust laws for farmer-owned agricultural coöperatives. “The agricultural industry is different than other industries because Capper-Volstead allows them to combine in ways that other individuals would go to jail for,” Allee A. Ramadhan, a former Justice Department antitrust attorney who led an investigation into the dairy industry, told me.

The law’s protections were intended to give small, independent farmers the right to collectively bargain prices for processing and selling their goods, but many large co-ops, such as D.F.A., have increasingly come to resemble corporations.

Break Up Big Chicken — The New York Times

Most chicken that Americans eat is processed by a handful of big companies because, in recent decades, the government gave its blessing to the consolidation of poultry processing, along with a wide range of other industries. The unsurprising result: In recent years, the surviving companies took advantage of their market power to prop up the price of chicken, overcharging Americans by as much as 30 percent.

Evidence of the industry’s misconduct became so blatant — thanks in part to lawsuits filed by wholesale poultry buyers — that regulators were roused from complacency. Beginning in 2019, the government has filed a series of charges against the companies and their executives.

And while we are at it, let’s not forget Philip Howard’s work, which I’ve written about previously.