GAPA gives qualified Welcome to the Declaration

While GAPA welcomed the UN Summit and the Declaration, it expressed concern about the adequacy of the commitments on alcohol and also disquiet at the potential conflict of interests between commercial needs and public health objectives inherent in the Summit process.

GAPA stated: Whilst the Political Declaration acknowledges that the global burden of NCDs constitutes one of the major challenges in the 21st Century and calls for “effective responses” and for “greater measures” to prevent and control NCDs, there are areas where it could be more explicit in the measures governments and the UN need to take. WHO Europe in its Regional Framework on alcohol stated that the ability of governments to use some of the most effective tools to prevent and reduce alcohol related harm had been substantially weakened, due to trade agreements. Also SEARO and WPRO Regional Committees have mentioned the hindrance to implement effective alcohol policy due to trade liberalization. The impact of WTO policies on health is not dealt with in the Declaration. The report of the WHO Commission on Social Determinants recommended caution be applied in the consideration of new global, regional and bilateral economic (trade and investment) policy commitments. However, the UN Political Declaration is silent on this issue. In addition to the failure to address this vital issue, the challenge of restricting the oversupply and marketing by the global alcohol industry has not been addressed. Market analysts concur that the Industry is highly innovative and the sophisticated marketing helps recruit young people to drinking and to influence them to drink more. New product development is a vital factor in its profitability. It has targeted young female drinkers with its alcopops. WHO Africa Regional Committee (June 2010) Stated: “There is need to regulate the content and scale of alcohol marketing and the promotion of alcoholic beverages, in particular sponsorship, product placement, as well as internet and promotional merchandising strategies”. It goes on to say “no other product so widely available for consumer use accounts for so much premature death and disability as alcohol”. Policies concerning alcohol need to be formulated by public health interests without interference from commercial interests. GAPA believes the alcohol industry must comply with national and international laws and regulations and implement public health friendly policy. GAPA concurs with the NCD Alliance concern that failure by the UN to address the conflict of interest between commercial corporations and public health will undermine the effectiveness of this initiative to reduce NCDs. National and international governmental bodies and the NGO movement must recognize that the need to promote global increases in sales of products such as alcohol mean that the industry cannot be engaged in partnership in the effort to reduce harm.

Prior to the Summit GAPA joined forces with over 100 other health NGOs to form a Conflict of Interest Coalition. The Coalition isued statments both before and after the Summit had taken place. See paes 6 - 8.

Conflict of Interest Coalition

Comment on Declaration

The U.N. Political Declaration shows that governments worldwide have achieved a much better understanding of the extent to which poor nutrition and excess alcohol consumption worsen public health, weaken workforce productivity, and drive-up expensive treatment-intensive costs related to cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes. Leaders also acknowledged that prevention must be a cornerstone of global and national responses to NCDs. Such newly acquired top-level awareness is, alone, a great achievement, but a clear commitment to implement prevention policies is still missing.

Effective public policy reform is the first casualty of timid “partnering” with companies that make products that contribute to an increase in disease risks or products that treat disease symptoms. To their credit, governments agreed that tobacco companies should have no place at the table, but risk trusting multi-trillion dollar global purveyors of alcohol, junk food, and pharmaceutical drugs to voluntarily change their for-profit stripes. Governments cannot continue to allow conflicts of interest with the private sector to go unchallenged and unmanaged in the policy-making process. An ethical code of conduct is needed to guide interactions with the private sector, which we must not forget is answerable primarily to shareholders and not to public health. The Political Declaration is silent on specifics and short on solid commitment to regulations that could, for example:

• Mandate salt and sugar reduction in high-salt and high sugar processed foods;

• Realign food VAT/GST policies for food and agricultural subsidies with sound nutrition science;

• Mandate easy-to-understand front-of-pack nutrition labelling;

• Mandate nutrition information (e.g., sodium and calories) on restaurant menus;

• Prohibit the use of trans-fatladen partially hydrogenated oils in food;

• Protect children and young people from marketing of products that raise the risk of disease (e.g. banning the promotion of breast-milk substitutes and high-fat, -sugar and -salt foods to children and young people); and

• Prohibit advertising and brand sponsorship for alcohol beverages;

• Increase taxes on alcohol beverages;

• Require and enforce effective restrictions on impaired driving (such as random breath testing),and minimum purchase age; and

• Expand nutritious school meal programs.

The Political Declaration reinforced its support for the World Health Organization’s landmark Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, but defers much of the job of addressing nutrition and alcohol to future work of WHO technical experts, Member States, and future U.N. meetings. Work left undone includes:

• developing tools to navigate the trade law barriers to health policy innovation

• establishing workable, but energetic disease reduction targets and detailed policy implementation schedules, and

• vitally, instituting a mechanism to keep commercially self-interested parties at arms-length and public-interest groups constructively involved.