London-based Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD), a collaborative group of U.S. and E.U. consumer organizations that develops and submits joint consumer policy recommendations to the U.S. government and European Union, is hosting a January 26, 2016, meeting in Brussels, Belgium, focusing on use of the precautionary principle in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Discussions at the event will include an overview of the precautionary principle in trade agreements and how it is used in the United States and European Union; and precautionary approaches to food safety (e.g., BSE, GMO, hormones, GRAS), pesticide/biocide regulation, digital and privacy rights, and intellectual property. Speakers will include U.S. Federal Trade Commissioner Julie Brill and E.U. Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström. Issue 585
Category Archives Other Developments
Police in Turin, Italy, are reportedly investigating seven companies, including Bertolli, Carapelli and Santa Sabina—for allegedly selling “Extra Virgin” olive oils (EVOOs) that fail to meet EU standards to be labeled as such. The investigation was reportedly launched after consumer magazine Il Test notified the police of its taste-test results. The police then hired the Italian customs agency to test 20 of the most popular brands of EVOO in a laboratory, finding that nine brands from seven companies were lower quality oil. “For months now we have been increasing quality controls. In 2014 our inspectors carried out 6,000 checks and confiscated oil worth 10 million euros,” Agriculture Minister Maurizio Martina told The Telegraph. “It’s vital to protect a sector as important as that of olive oil.” See The Telegraph, The Guardian and The Local, November 11, 2015. Issue 584
Conservationist group Oceana has issued a report purportedly finding that 43 percent of salmon samples purchased from U.S. restaurants and grocery stores were mislabeled. As a follow-up to a larger study, Oceana researchers DNA tested 82 salmon samples and compared them to the names under which restaurants and grocers sold them. Of the 32 salmon samples sold as "wild salmon," the tests indicated 69 percent were farmed; "Alaskan" or "Pacific" salmon was also likely to be mislabeled, with five of the nine samples discovered to be farmed Atlantic salmon. Large grocery stores were most likely to advertise their products correctly, while restaurants mislabeled 67 percent of fish offerings. The report further notes that salmon sold out-of-season was much more likely to be mislabeled. “The federal government should provide consumers with assurances that the seafood they purchase is safe, legally caught and honestly labeled,” Beth Lowell, senior campaign director at Oceana,…
U.K. medical journal The Lancet has announced establishment of a Commission on Obesity “to provide a multidisciplinary platform to contribute to accounting systems for action and to critically analyze the systemic drivers of, and solutions for, obesity.” The 22-member commission is a partnership among The Lancet, University of Auckland, George Washington University, and World Obesity Foundation. The commission’s activities will reportedly build upon various U.N. initiatives targeting obesity and aim to “stimulate action and strengthen accountability systems for the implementation of agreed recommendations to reduce obesity and its related inequalities at global and national levels” and “develop new understandings of the underlying systems that are driving obesity,” among other things. The group’s first meeting is scheduled for February 2016 at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. See The Lancet, October 31, 2015. Issue 583
“If any one name evokes unfettered truths about the sociopolitical machinations of ‘Big Food,’ it is that of Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University,” proclaims physician David Katz in a review of Nestle’s new book, Soda Politics: Taking on Big Soda (and Winning). “Dominions of fizz,” Nature, October 1, 2015. Nestle describes, according to Katz, “softball” strategies employed by industry—“… scientific evidence on health effects, the industry’s impact on the environment and the preferential marketing of soft drinks to children, specific ethnic groups and poor people …”—as well as “the correspondence between the tactics of the soft-drinks and tobacco industries.” Those alleged tactics, Nestle asserts, include “’hardball’ strategies such as litigation, lobbying of Congress, and front groups such as New Yorkers Against Unfair Taxes, established by the beverage industry to oppose a soft-drinks levy.” Issue 580
California Attorney General Kamala Harris has proposed amendments to the state’s Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986 (Prop. 65) that would require increased transparency and accountability in how the penalties paid by companies are spent by consumer groups, environmental organizations and other private enforcers of the law. In 2014, Prop. 65 actions reportedly resulted in payments of $29 million, of which $21 million was spent on attorney’s fees and costs. The proposed changes would require “clearly defined” purposes relevant to the violations that prompted the settlement. The proposal would also cap “in lieu of penalties” payments to ensure the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment receives sufficient funding and raise the bar for demonstrating that settlements requiring reformulation confer a significant public benefit. Public comments about the proposed revisions will be accepted until November 9, 2015. “California has led the nation for decades in protecting our residents…
The New York City Food Policy Center at Hunter College has organized an October 7, 2015, program featuring Jim Kreiger, executive director of Seattle’s Action for Healthy Food, and Marlene Schwartz, director of the University of Connecticut’s Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity, in a conversation about ways to challenge the “harmful effects of the food and beverage industry’s business and political practices.” The discussion will be moderated by Nicholas Freudenberg, director of the food policy center. Issue 579
Former New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Farley, who now leads The Public Good Projects, has authored a viewpoint in JAMA Internal Medicine that encourages the use of mass media advertising to promote healthy behaviors. Titled “Mass Diseases, Mass Exposures, and Mass Media,” the article highlights the success of mass media campaigns aimed at smoking cessation, noting that some of these advertisements were more valuable and cost-effective than routine one-on-one counseling, and calls for further research into the dose-response curve for advertising. As Farley explains, “[S]tudies suggest that smoking cessation or smoking prevalence rates can be changed populationwide by television ads shown at a dose of approximately 10,000 Gross Ratings Points (GRPs) per year,” meaning that “the average person is exposed to 100 ads.” The editorial also suggests that similar large-scale campaigns can be used to effectively counter sugar-sweetened beverage marketing. “Mass media messages, seen repeatedly by high percentages of…
With the launch of services targeting the grocery and alcoholic beverage segments, Amazon.com, Inc., has garnered media attention for its latest forays into a new and competitive marketplace. In a September 1, 2015, article, The Los Angeles Times compares Amazon’s Farmers Market Direct program to other food delivery startups aiming to bring fresh local products from farm to doorstep. A partnership with Connecticut-based Fresh Nation, the Farmers Market Direct program seeks to connect Southern California agricultural producers to Amazon’s consumer base, promising food delivery within 36 hours of harvest. As the Times notes, “Development of food-delivery technology has attracted an enormous amount of money. About $710 million was invested in the segment in the first half of 2015, more than the $681 million invested all of last year.” Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon’s one-hour delivery service for alcohol beverages joins “more than a half-dozen alcohol delivery startups……
“American consumers expect and deserve safe food. Yet, time and again, food producers have cut corners on food safety knowing full well that tainted products cause serious illness or even death,” asserted American Association for Justice (AAJ) President Larry Tawwater in issuing a report condemning industry for allegedly prioritizing profits over people. The report contends that consumer lawsuits have become the most effective “mechanism for deterring negligent behavior and rooting out systemic problems in the food chain” absent adequate food-safety practices by food companies and appropriate monitoring by regulators. Among other things, AAJ calls on Congress to declare multidrug-resistant Salmonella an official adulterant and to enact legislation creating a single food safety agency. AAJ was formerly known as the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (ATLA). See AAJ News Release, September 2, 2015. Issue 577
