What would it look like if the alcohol industry really didn’t want an alcohol harm-reduction initiative introduced? No doubt they would invoke the tried-and-true harmful industry playbook that involves denying harm, distracting through implementation of industry-run voluntary systems, and delaying compliance with mandatory requirements. These strategies have been writ large in the protracted story of the introduction of a mandatory pregnancy warning label on alcohol products in Australia.
How it began…
After close to 25 years of public health advocacy, a pregnancy warning label became mandatory for packaged alcohol products on 1 August 2023. This was more than a decade after a government-commissioned expert committee recommended mandatory pregnancy warning labels. In the interim, the alcohol industry was permitted to implement a voluntary pregnancy warning system that was ultimately deemed to be inadequate by the relevant authority – Food Standards Australia New Zealand.
In response to industry concerns about re-labelling costs, a generous 3-year implementation period was allowed for the alcohol industry to implement the new mandatory warning label. This was notably longer than the 2 years permitted for food products to comply with a new country of origin labelling requirement. In addition, an exemption was provided for alcohol products packaged prior to the end of the transition period, substantially extending the effective compliance date.
What we found
So what has the alcohol industry done with its generous implementation time frame? At around the 2-year point in the 3-year period, we examined products in the ready-to-drink (premix) product category to monitor industry progress in meeting their pregnancy warning label obligations. We also assessed the extent to which the products displayed marketing claims such as ‘low sugar’ and ‘natural’. Such claims have been shown to confuse consumers about the healthiness of alcoholic beverages. The ready-to-drink category was selected because of its turnover rate – these products are not typically cellared like wine, for example. Products from three of the largest alcohol chains were assessed by data collectors visiting stores and taking photos of all sides of the products.
At the 2-year point, only 36% of the 491 assessed ready-to-drink products displayed the mandatory pregnancy warning label. By comparison, most food products were found to be compliant with the country-of-origin labelling requirement introduced over a similar time period.
In contrast to the very slow pregnancy warning label uptake, 52% of the assessed ready-to-drink products displayed at least one nutrition-related claim. Of note is that the pregnancy warnings were almost always on the back of products while the nutrition claims were on the much more visible front label. The alcohol industry is clearly gaming the system to minimise consumers’ exposure to information about alcohol harms while optimising their exposure to marketing messages designed to maximise sales.
People want to know about alcohol harms
Meanwhile, mass media campaigns informing the public about the harms associated with alcohol use have been recently broadcast in Australia. These campaigns have included a range of advertisements informing the public that:
- consuming alcohol while pregnant can result in lifelong harms for the foetus,
- children below the age of 18 years should not be provided with alcohol because it adversely affects brain development, and
- alcohol is a carcinogen.
Evaluation studies demonstrate that the campaigns have provided new information for many people, and have been effective in changing relevant beliefs and behaviours among substantial proportions of the community (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4). There is clearly a need to disseminate accurate information about alcohol-related harms to counteract the enormous quantity of alcohol advertising that misleads the public into perceiving alcohol as a harmless product. Pregnancy warning labels on alcohol products are a critical element of this public education process, and the importance of such warnings is clearly evident in the extent of industry pushback and their tardiness in complying with the requirement.
The Australian experience reinforces the need for governments to introduce mandatory, not voluntary, warning label systems. Providing extended implementation periods will be manipulated by alcohol companies to delay compliance for as long as possible. Monitoring and enforcement of labelling policies will be vital to ensuring consumers have access to the information they need to make informed decisions about alcohol use.
Written by Professor Simone Pettigrew, Program Director, Health Promotion and Behaviour Change, and Bella Sträuli, Research Assistant, The George Institute for Global Health, Australia.
All IAS Blogposts are published with the permission of the author. The views expressed are solely the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of the Institute of Alcohol Studies.