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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 naďve 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.
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