It’s a “risky business” for the government to work with the food industry to tackle health crises like obesity, an international public health conference has been told, with effective food packaging labels already jeopardised.
Dr Dori Patay, a researcher with the Menzies Centre in Sydney, said despite ample evidence of the harmful influence of the food industry on health policy, governments increasingly regard the food industry as “partners” in addressing chronic diseases.
“We know it’s very risky business to get into a partnership with the food industry,” Patay said at the University of Sydney event, which is examining the way powerful industries influence and harm health.
“The Australian government believes they need to work as partners with the food industry, but what we see is these processes are rarely as independent as we need them to be … in reality the food industry hijacks these partnerships and stalls mandatory regulation that we know would actually work.”
Prof Simone Pettigrew from the George Institute for Global Health told the conference the Health Star Rating system is an example of this influence.
The Health Star Rating system was created after the food industry fought back against the more evidence-based traffic-light labelling system, which uses green, amber and red to easily show levels of fat, saturated fat, sugar and sodium in a product at a glance.
The traffic-light system was one of the key recommendations of the independent expert Food Labelling Review, chaired by former health minister Dr Neal Blewett, which was released in 2011.
But the food industry “fights back against independent research,” Pettigrew said.
A recent study by Pettigrew and her colleagues found fewer than four out of 10 products on supermarket shelves that should carry the Health Star Rating currently do.
The rating system is flawed because it is voluntary, which means the food industry only places it on their healthier products, she said. In addition, the label is black-and-white, whereas research shows coloured labels are more effective.
“They have that revolving door, where there are a lot of government officials who just walk through that door to a job in the food industry, which makes it really difficult for them [government] to stand their ground against the industry during [policy] consultations,” Pettigrew said.
She accused the food industry “denying there’s a problem” with the nutritional content of their foods and that the industry instead blames individuals for their food choices and exercise intake.
“So rather than what is in the drink that you’re putting in your mouth driving the obesity issue, [the industry claims] it’s the amount of exercise that you’re doing,” Pettigrew said.
She called for strengthened conflict-of-interest disclosure processes, a cooling off period before government officials can go work for the harmful industries, and an end to inviting powerful commercial industries into policy discussions.
Other talks at the two-day conference, hosted by the University’s Charles Perkins Centre, examined how big industries such as tobacco, gambling, food, and alcohol engage in lobbying and practices that harm health and the environment.
Keynote speaker Prof Laura Schmidt, from the University of California, conducted research into how tobacco companies bought food brands and applied their knowledge of flavours, colours, and marketing learned from cigarette marketing to develop leading children’s sugar-sweetened drink brands.
She told the conference commercial industries having a harmful influence on health is “driving us to existential crisis”.
