AP Highlights Legislator Resistance to Food Ad Limits

“House Republicans are siding with food companies resisting the Obama administration’s efforts to pressure them to stop advertising junk food for children,” writes Associated Press reporter Mary Clare Jalonick in a July 6, 2011, article examining the efforts of individual legislators to stymie proposed Federal Trade Commission (FTC) food marketing guidelines. According to Jalonick, while food companies have lobbied “aggressively” against the proposal, Republican representatives have sought to include a provision in next year’s FTC budget “that would require the government to study the potential costs and impacts of the guidelines before implementing them.” As Representative Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.) explained, the guidelines might otherwise “lead to extraordinary pressure from the federal government” on those who do not conform to the voluntary measure.

But consumer advocates like the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) have disputed this reasoning. “The industry is exaggerating the influence of these voluntary regulations to gin up opposition,” said CSPI Director of Nutrition Policy Margo Wootan. “These standards are supposed to provide a model of how self-regulation can work.”

FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection Director David Vladeck has also reiterated the limits of the proposed guidelines. “Nobody’s saying Toucan Sam has to fly the coop,” he wrote on the FTC website. “Ideally, during the next five years it would be great to see the cereal companies voluntarily tweak their formulations to raise the whole grain content and lower the added sugars for cereals marketed to children.”