SUSAN LINN’S COMMENTS

FOR HHS/FTC WORKSHOP ON FOOD MARKETING,

SELF-REGULATION AND CHILDHOOD OBESITY

July 15, 2005 

I’m speaking today on behalf of the national coalition, Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood.  CCFC is about rights and freedoms: the rights of children to grow up, and the freedom for parents to raise them, without being undermined by commercial interests. 

There is no moral, ethical, or social justification for marketing junk food to children.  And given the projected costs of childhood obesity to American taxpayers, there appears to be no economic justification either.  Speaking for myself and my colleagues across the country, I am here to ask the FTC not to abandon children to the financial interests of the food industry. The question we should have been asking at this workshop is, “What’s best for children?”  Not, “How can we improve self regulation?” 

Self-regulation has failed. When the head of CARU endorses General Mills’ latest TV campaign to sell sugar cereals—that’s evidence of failure.  When Coca-Cola claims that they don’t market to children under twelve, yet their product placement is rampant on American Idol, a top-rated program for children 2 to 11 - that’s evidence of failure.   

When the advertising industry, which spent about 100 million on marketing to children in 1983, is now spending $15 billion—a significant portion of that on food advertising--that’s evidence of failure.  When McDonald’s pays rap artists to shout out “Big Mac” in their songs and there is no action from CARU—that’s evidence of failure. 

We are going to hear proposals from the Grocery Manufacturers of America for tweaking self-regulation. But let us remember as we listen that the GMA is on record as opposing just about every state bill that would restrict the sale of junk food or soda in schools and that the comments they submitted for this workshop deny the link between marketing and childhood obesity.   

These proposals may sound good. But they won’t address the fundamental issue. By relying only on voluntary self-regulation, we have turned our children over to an industry that generates profits by selling them junk food. As documented in comments submitted to the FTC by the Center for Informed Food Choices, companies routinely violate the existing GMA guidelines.   

Without the threat of real consequences from an outside agency whose first allegiance is to children and families, the incentives for business as usual--no matter what is said here today--are just too great. 

My colleagues and I are not naïve about the current political situation. Although we know that this administration is loathe to regulate corporations, we offer the following truth:  It’s the government--of the people, by the people and for the people—who should be the guardians of public health, not corporations whose allegiance is first and foremost to their stockholders.