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Food and Drink Advertising and Promotion Forum terms of reference

  • Last modified date:
    12 March 2007
  • Series number:
    Cm 6374
Choosing Health? the Government's White Paper on public health calls for action to restrict the promotion of food and drink high in fat, salt and sugar to children. They include a commitment to:

'work with industry, advertisers, consumer groups and other stakeholders to encourage new measures to strengthen existing voluntary codes in non-broadcast areas, including:

  • setting up a new food and drink advertising and promotion forum to review, supplement, strengthen and bring together existing provisions and
  • contributing funding to the development of new health initiatives, including positive health campaigns'.

The Department of Health is working with the Food Standards Agency to develop nutritional criteria to define 'foods high in fat, salt or sugar'.

Objectives

  • Identify and agree a range of proportionate measures to develop a comprehensive approach to restrict the advertising and promotion other than broadcast advertising of high fat, salt and sugar foods to children building on existing voluntary provisions across all media and promotional settings.  This includes:
  1. Non-broadcast (eg press, posters, cinema and internet) 
  2. Labels, wrappers and packages
  3. Sponsorship (eg sports and schools) and brandsharing  
  4. Point of sale advertising and display and in-store promotions.
  • Identify and agree a range of action that industry can adopt that has a positive impact on children's food choices across all non-broadcast media and promotional types and settings.
  • Advise on methods and targets by which changes in the nature and balance of food promotion and food preferences of children can be measured and evaluated.

Membership

Membership of the Steering Group will comprise representatives from major stakeholder organisations (industry, advertisers, consumer groups) and child health and food promotion experts. It is proposed that the Steering Group meet every quarter from July 2005 or as required.

Governance

The steering group will be chaired by Fiona Adshead, DCMO, with DH acting as secretariat.

The work of the group will form part of the Choosing Health programme arrangements as part of the delivery plan and progress will inform the work of the Obesity Programme Board, which is responsible for monitoring progress towards the obesity PSA target.

Openness and transparency

Meetings of the Forum will be under the Chatham House rule defined as:

'When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), not that of any other participant, may be revealed.'

To ensure that the workings of the Forum are open and transparent, non-attributable meeting notes and relevant papers will be placed on the Department of Health and Food Standard Agency websites, as will the terms of Reference and membership.

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