Regulators bite into food advertisements

Until very recently, the EU had no rules specifically targeted at food advertising.

Though faced with strict legislation to prevent false or misleading advertising claims, food and drink were regulated by many of the same rules used to promote shampoo, cars, children’s toys, or any other product sold on the EU market.

That is about to change. Under a new health claims regulation agreed last year, food manufacturers will only be allowed to make health claims about products meeting specific criteria.

The advertising industry has welcomed the move. Bertrand Cazes of the European Group on Television Advertising, the association of television and radio sales houses, said that the new rules would replace a patchwork of national legislation posing barriers to cross-border advertising.

He said the regulation also made it clear that manufacturers, and not advertisers, were responsible for making sure food health claims were legal. "Advertising agencies will apply the claims [that] manufacturers make," said Cazes. "We just have to assume manufacturers will carry out the rules."

Most importantly from an advertiser’s point of view, the regulation does not restrict what products can be sold, but only the manner in which they can be marketed.

But some member states have gone further than the EU regulation and introduced national rules restricting the promotion of specific foodstuffs.

The UK and Romania have both recently banned advertisements selling to children foods with high quantities of salt, fat or sugar. The UK ban in particular was widely criticised for placing cheese and honey on the same blacklist as burgers and crisps.

In France, as of March this year slogans such as "For your health, exercise regularly" have to be part of all advertisements for processed food and drinks.

EGTA says it has no objection to member states drawing up new qualitative rules for advertising, but opposes a quantitative approach like that taken in the UK and Romania. Cazes said: "We are quite worried that, if member states continue to adopt restrictive quantitative rules at national level, at some stage the EU will follow their example."

Even the French rules are unfair, according to EGTA, because they single out advertising as a cause of obesity and "give the impression that viewers have to be vigilant".

"We have a firm belief in the added value of advertising," said Cazes, "and want to be able to advertise any product that is legal and not harmful per se. Essentially nowadays that means anything apart from tobacco."

Opinion is also divided over the best way to ‘advertise’ health information to shoppers. The Confederation of the Food and Drink Industries of the European Union (CIAA) recommends labelling food products with the percentage they contain of a guideline daily amount (GDA) of salt, sugar, fat and calories, as well as the total amount of these nutrients measured in grammes and calories.

The EU obesity platform, the stakeholder group chaired by the European Commission, has concluded that most consumers prefer a colour-coded, or ‘traffic light’, labelling scheme.

Brussels-based lawyers Darren Abrahams and Craig Simpson of US firm Steptoe & Johnson point to evidence to support the industry preference for GDAs. British supermarket chain Tesco reported that sales of high fat, salt or sugar products fell between a quarter and a third (depending on the product) when it started printing GDAs on the front of packaging in 2005.

The European Public Health Alliance (EPHA) says it supports the UK approach of not advertising unhealthy foods when children are most likely to watch.

"The problem is not just the way things are advertised, but the amount of advertisements," said Lara Garrido-Herrero, secretary-general of EPHA. "There are studies that show the more adverts you see, the more likely you are to want something."

She said the nutrient profiles being developed under the claims regulation could also be used by member states to decide what can and cannot be advertised to children. She said exceptions should not be made for products such as cheese and honey: "We don’t favour certain products because of their cultural or traditional value," said Garrido-Herrero. "This is a scientific thing."

EU governments voted against a ban on advertising junk food to children under the TV Without Frontiers directive. The Commission now hopes to draw up a voluntary code of conduct for advertisers, with the support of health groups.

Garrido-Herrero said that she understood the political barriers to agreeing more EU-wide legislation, but added that the code of conduct would have to include sanctions if it was to have an effect on industry behaviour.

EPHA also argues that it is better to use a colour-coded food labelling system than GDAs. "We should be giving shoppers simple information," she said, "not a lot of technical facts they probably do not have time to understand in the shop."

Until very recently, the EU had no rules specifically targeted at food advertising.