Corporate control of the global food system has resulted in greater global availability of highly processed, packaged and very palatable unhealthy food and beverages. Environmental harm, including ...climate change and biodiversity loss, occurs along the supply chains associated with trans-national corporations' (TNCs') practices and products. In essence, the corporatization of the global food system has created the conditions that cultivate excess consumption, manufacture disease epidemics and harm the environment. TNCs have used their structural power - their positions in material structures and organizational networks - to establish rules, processes and norms that reinforce and extend the paradigm of the neoliberal corporate food system. As a result, policy and regulatory environments, and societal norms are favourable to TNC's interests, to the detriment of nutrition, health and environmental outcomes. There is hope, however. Power, of which there is many forms, is held not just by the TNCs but by all actors concerned about and connected to the food system. This paper aims to understand these power dynamics, and identify how structurally weak, public-interest actors can release their agency and work to achieve positive structural change. Such an analysis will help understand how the status quo can be disrupted and healthy and sustainable food systems created. The paper draws from the health governance and social movement literature, examining the Doha Declaration on the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement and Public Health, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), and the Divestment movement. These cases demonstrate the many 'weapons of the weak' that can, against all odds recalibrate structural inequities. There is no one approach to transforming the corporate food system to become a healthy and sustainable food system. It involves coalition building; articulation of an ambitious shared vision; strategic use of multi-level institutional processes; social mobilization among like-minded and unusual bedfellows, and organized campaigns; political and policy entrepreneurs, and compelling issue framing.
Other such disputes include investor-state actions by tobacco companies against Uruguay and Norway and challenges within the dispute mechanisms of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) brought against ...both the USA and Australia by other countries.5,6 Through the ISDS mechanism, Philip Morris Asia is seeking the suspension of enforcement of Australia's plain packaging legislation, or millions of dollars in compensation on the grounds that the value of its investment has been affected by the supposed expropriation of its trademarks and related branding.7 Australia, however, has a strong case, in part because Philip Morris Asia acquired its holdings in Philip Morris Australia in February, 2011, after the Australian Government had announced its intention to introduce plain packaging.8 But the costs of such litigation can amount to millions of dollars, the ISDS process is without many of the safeguards and the transparency of domestic legal systems, and the mere threat of legal action can have a powerful deterrent effect on governments considering the introduction of new laws to regulate industry in ways that protect public health.3 On a global scale, the most recent trade-related threat comes from the negotiations for the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), a large regional trade agreement consisting of 11 countries around the Pacific Rim--Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, USA, and Vietnam.
Summary The Commission on Social Determinants of Health, created to marshal the evidence on what can be done to promote health equity and to foster a global movement to achieve it, is a global ...collaboration of policy makers, researchers, and civil society, led by commissioners with a unique blend of political, academic, and advocacy experience. The focus of attention is on countries at all levels of income and development. The commission launched its final report on August 28, 2008. This paper summarises the key findings and recommendations; the full list is in the final report.
Effective regulatory governance, which entails the actors, processes and contexts within which policies are developed, designed and implemented, is crucial for food policies to improve food ...environments, consumer behaviour and diet‐related health.
To critically assess Australian food policies for the presence of necessary and sufficient regulatory governance conditions that have been shown to effect positive nutrition outcomes from food policies.
We assessed the Australian National Association of Advertisers (AANA) Food and Beverage Advertising Code, Health Star Rating Front of Pack labelling system and Sodium reformulation under the Healthy Food Partnership (HFP). The policies were analysed for the presence/absence of five regulatory governance conditions – the extent of industry involvement, regulatory design, instrument design, monitoring and enforcement.
All three policies lack one or more regulatory governance conditions crucial for policy success. Each policy has high industry involvement, an absence of government‐led policy‐making underpinned by legislation and lacks comprehensive enforcement. Except for the Health Star Rating system, the policies did not have comprehensive monitoring – a necessary condition for policy success.
The efficacy of these three policies can be enhanced by minimising industry involvement, improving government oversight and improving monitoring systems.
Smart food policies for obesity prevention Hawkes, Corinna, Dr; Smith, Trenton G, PhD; Jewell, Jo, MSc ...
The Lancet (British edition),
06/2015, Letnik:
385, Številka:
9985
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Summary Prevention of obesity requires policies that work. In this Series paper, we propose a new way to understand how food policies could be made to work more effectively for obesity prevention. ...Our approach draws on evidence from a range of disciplines (psychology, economics, and public health nutrition) to develop a theory of change to understand how food policies work. We focus on one of the key determinants of obesity: diet. The evidence we review suggests that the interaction between human food preferences and the environment in which those preferences are learned, expressed, and reassessed has a central role. We identify four mechanisms through which food policies can affect diet: providing an enabling environment for learning of healthy preferences, overcoming barriers to the expression of healthy preferences, encouraging people to reassess existing unhealthy preferences at the point-of-purchase, and stimulating a food-systems response. We explore how actions in three specific policy areas (school settings, economic instruments, and nutrition labelling) work through these mechanisms, and draw implications for more effective policy design. We find that effective food-policy actions are those that lead to positive changes to food, social, and information environments and the systems that underpin them. Effective food-policy actions are tailored to the preference, behavioural, socioeconomic, and demographic characteristics of the people they seek to support, are designed to work through the mechanisms through which they have greatest effect, and are implemented as part of a combination of mutually reinforcing actions. Moving forward, priorities should include comprehensive policy actions that create an enabling environment for infants and children to learn healthy food preferences and targeted actions that enable disadvantaged populations to overcome barriers to meeting healthy preferences. Policy assessments should be carefully designed on the basis of a theory of change, using indicators of progress along the various pathways towards the long-term goal of reducing obesity rates.
Climate change is affecting the ability of food systems to provide sufficient nutritious and affordable foods at all times. Healthy and sustainable (H&S) food choices are important contributions to ...health and climate change policy efforts. This paper presents empirical data on the affordability of a food basket that incorporates principles of health and sustainability across different food sub‐systems, socioeconomic neighbourhoods and household income levels in Greater Western Sydney, Australia.
A basket survey was used to investigate the cost of both a typical basket of food and a hypothetical H&S basket. The price of foods in the two baskets was recorded in five neighbourhoods, and the affordability of the baskets was determined across household income quintiles.
The cost of the H&S basket was more than the typical basket in all five socioeconomic neighbourhoods, with most disadvantaged neighbourhood spending proportionately more (30%) to buy the H&S basket. Within household income levels, the greatest inequity was found in the middle income neighbourhood, showing that households in the lowest income quintile would have to spend up to 48% of their weekly income to buy the H&S basket, while households in the highest income quintile would have to spend significantly less of their weekly income (9%).
The most disadvantaged groups in the region, both at the neighbourhood and household level, experience the greatest inequality in affordability of the H&S diet.
The results highlight the current inequity in food choice in the region and the underlying social issues of cost and affordability of H&S foods.
Managing the health effects of climate change Costello, Anthony, Prof; Abbas, Mustafa; Allen, Adriana, PhD ...
The Lancet (British edition),
05/2009, Letnik:
373, Številka:
9676
Journal Article
Recenzirano
... policies must be adopted to reduce carbon emissions and to increase carbon biosequestration, and thereby slow down global warming and eventually stabilise temperatures. ... appropriate public ...health systems should be put into place to deal with adverse outcomes.
...consideration of the value-laden nature of policy interventions and the creation of forums to debate the moral and ethical dimensions of different approaches to urban health and city environments ...are essential. ...attention to health inequalities within urban areas should be a key focus of planning the urban environment.
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