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.
No comments:
Post a Comment