European soft drinks manufacturers have for the first time jointly
agreed voluntary measures to tackle obesity among young people.
Members of the Union of European Beverages Associations (Unesda), who
include Cadbury Schweppes, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Unilever, have
outlined the measures in a code of conduct committing them to ban
advertising to children under 12 and no longer install vending machines
in primary schools. It also requires the companies to supply machines
in secondary schools with healthier products such as water and juices
and to ensure that promotions, such as text message contests, avoid
requiring consumers to drink ‘excessive quantities’ of sugary drinks to
participate.
Coca-Cola and PepsiCo are among Unesda members to have had a
long-standing commitment to such standards, but Alain Beaumont, the
group’s secretary-general, said the initiative was significant in that
it creates a Europe-wide framework for all members and by the end of
2006 will be supported by a monitoring system. Beaumont hopes ‘one or
several independent third parties’ will measure Unesda members against
agreed key performance indicators linked to commitments in the code.
Members will be encouraged to train staff on the code and to make
distributors aware of it.
Unesda, which represents a large part of Europe’s €150billion-a-year
($180bn, £102bn) non-alcoholic drinks industry, said the code was a
response to ‘public concerns about today’s health issues’. However,
political pressure has been a more specific spur. The European
Commission recently called a meeting with Unesda to discuss obesity,
and last year Markos Kyprianou, the health and consumer protection
commissioner, raised the prospect of legislation if the soft drinks
sector did not take action.
Five food manufacturers – Danone, Kellogg’s, Kraft, Nestlé and PepsiCo
– announced last month that they will place nutritional labels on the
front of all their products in the UK later this spring. The move
pre-empts expected regulations from the UK government that will force
them to do so anyway.
