Abstract
Reducing non-core food advertising to children is an important priority in strategies to address childhood obesity. Public health researchers argue for government intervention on the basis that food industry self-regulation is ineffective; however, the industry contends that the existing voluntary scheme adequately addresses community concerns. This paper examines the operation of two self-regulatory initiatives governing food advertising to children in Australia, in order to determine whether these regulatory processes foster transparent and accountable self-regulation. The paper concludes that while both codes appear to establish transparency and accountability mechanisms, they do not provide for meaningful stakeholder participation in the self-regulatory scheme. Accordingly, food industry self-regulation is unlikely to reflect public health concerns or to be perceived as a legitimate form of governance by external stakeholders. If industry regulation is to remain a feasible alternative to statutory regulation, there is a strong argument for strengthening government oversight and implementing a co-regulatory scheme.
Notes
The QSRI does not contain restrictions on the placement of advertisements. A revised version of the code contains similar placement restrictions to the RCMI and came into effect beginning November 1, 2012 (see AFGC 2012c).
P programmes are designed to be suitable for pre-school children, while C programmes are those suitable for children under 14 years of age. See the Children’s Television Standards 2009 CTS 5,6.
From 2010 the AFGC summarized companies’ annual reports in its Compliance Report but did not release these reports individually.
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Roger Magnusson for assisting me with this paper. The feedback from the two anonymous reviewers also proved very useful and some of their comments are incorporated into the final version.
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Reeve, B. Private Governance, Public Purpose? Assessing Transparency and Accountability in Self-Regulation of Food Advertising to Children. Bioethical Inquiry 10, 149–163 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-013-9441-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-013-9441-z