PUTRAJAYA: Food industry players have joined forces with the Health Ministry's to combat obesity and non-communicable diseases, promising not to advertise any food or drinks that are high in sugar, salt or fats to children.

Health Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai said members of the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers' (FMM) Food Manufacturing Group have volunteered to implement guidelines on limiting children's marketing exposure to foodstuff that have little or no nutritional value.

“They have agreed to self-regulate. This is an industry pledge, and they will work with advertising associations to make sure products that do not meet the criteria of nutritional value are not marketed to children aged 12 and below,” he said after chairing the 11th Food Safety and Nutrition Council here.

The new guidelines are adopted from the global best practices outlined by the International Food and Beverage Alliance (IFBA), which promotes self-regulation among industry players by way of a formal pledge.

The Malaysian pledge requires that only products that meet company specific nutrition criteria can be advertised to children, be it on television or any other media.

The pledge also specifies that companies should not advertise food and drinks that contain high sugar, salt or fat content on television, where 35% of its captive audience is made up of children.

Companies that take up the pledge at the same time cannot promote products in primary schools, unless requested by or agreed with the school administration - but only for educational or informative purposes.

Liow pointed out that the pledge is significant as it represents a step forward in the country's bid to trim the fat and deal with the growing rate of non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and heart disease.

“As we can see from the statistics on non-communicable diseases, the figures are going up every year. We cannot wait... we cannot just continue to discuss the issue and not take any action. We have to step forward and we must fight obesity now,” he said.

FMM Food Group chairman Mohd Shah Hashim said they are currently working out the mechanism to implement the pledge, which would require a clear understanding between food manufacturers, advertising and media agencies on what can and cannot be promoted to children. “We are targetting to implement this by the first quarter of next year, in collaboration with the Health Ministry.

“This covers all levels of media. Currently the pledge applies to FMM members, but in time we will have to bring the other industry players on board,” he said.