Background
Since the adoption of the World Health Organisation’s Recommendations on food and beverage marketing to children in May 2010, WHO has been busy putting the issue of food marketing on government agendas worldwide. In an effort to raise awareness and encourage implementation of the recommendations, WHO organised a press conference in January this year where high-ranking WHO officials called on governments to "reduce the exposure of children to marketing messages that promote foods high in saturated fats, trans-fatty acids, free sugars, or salt, and to reduce the use of powerful techniques to market these foods to children."

WHO has since succeeded in putting Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) on the agenda of the High-level Meeting of the United Nations General Assembly (Heads of State and Government) to be held on 19-20 September 2011 in New York. While the meeting will look at the issue of NCDs more broadly, food marketing to children will feature on the agenda.

Latest developments
WHO held the First Global Ministerial Conference on Healthy Lifestyles and NCD Control on 28-29 April in Moscow. The conference represents a major achievement for WHO in raising the profile of the NCD agenda in the run-up to the New York Summit. The Ministerial Conference resulted in the adoption of the Moscow Declaration, which renews governments’ commitment to action against NCDs – without a specific focus on food marketing.

The Ministerial Conference was preceded by a Global Forum on NCDs, a high-level stakeholder meeting to feed into the Ministerial Conference. Attended in full by WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan, the most significant outcome of the Global Forum was the broad recognition that industry should have a seat at the table as an essential stakeholder in addressing the burden of NCDs.
In respect to food marketing however, the WHO Director-General underlined that industry must “walk the talk” if it wants to be a trusted partner. This means implementing its commitments fully in developed and developing countries alike (see Dr Chan’s speech in full here). WHO has repeatedly pointed out in recent months that it does not believe industry commitments are yet implemented to the same extent worldwide.

To coincide with the Moscow conference, WHO released a Global Status Report on NCDs, which highlights the extent of the burden of diseases, underlines the role of poor nutrition as a determining factor (alongside physical inactivity, alcohol consumption and tobacco use) and calls for limiting food marketing to children as a cost-effective policy instrument.

The September NCD Summit
The Summit to be held in New York in September will be the first UN Summit to be dedicated to NCDs. Summit discussions will inevitably be top line and holistic and are unlikely therefore to focus on the specific detail of marketing policies. However, marketing is likely to attract disproportionate attention for three key reasons: the WHO recommendations on food marketing is one of a few tangible outputs that WHO will be able to showcase as part of its NCD agenda; public health advocates have been lobbying hard on this front and will be staging a number of parallel workshops on food marketing; and a number of reports and studies published in preparation of the summit by WHO Secretariat (in conjunction with OECD) have focused their attention on food marketing.

The Summit is likely to significantly raise the issue of NCDs – and, by extension, the WHO’s work on food marketing - in government policy-making globally. It is likely to put the issue on the agendas of member states which are not yet dealing with it. For markets where these issues have long been controversial, it will give added ammunition to campaigners in favour of food marketing restrictions. The material output of the Summit will be a Declaration on NCDs.

WFA engagement
WFA was invited to and participated at both the Private Sector Dialogue in November 2010 and the Moscow Global Forum in April 2011. WFA joined the International Food and Beverage Alliance on a panel during the Global Forum to advocate effective food marketing self-regulation.

The overwhelming message from both meetings was WHO’s willingness to engage with industry. Dr Chan reiterated though that trust would be dependent on ensuring that “what your companies commit to at a global level, your marketers don’t run off in different directions.”

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