• May 24, 2011

During Tuesday's public forum in Washington, D.C., to garner feedback on the proposal recently outlined by the government's Interagency Working Group (IWG) on Food Marketed to Children, regulators got an earful from Association of National Advertisers EVP Dan Jaffe.

According to Jaffe/ANA, the proposed voluntary guidelines would cost food/beverage makers "multibillions" in non-market-driven product reformulations and "the suppression of virutally unprecedented amounts of advertising to those 17 and younger."

This is particularly disturbing, he said, because IWG's report "provides virtually no evidence that the proposals, if fully complied with, "would provide any positive impact on obesity rates in the U.S." The IWG "completely failed to carry out the careful 'study' of these issues that was mandated by Congress," Jaffe contended.

In addition, applying the proposed marketing restrictions to teens as old as 17, who are nearly adults, is "severely misguided," and the  definitions of marketing and advertising "directed to children" are "breathtakingly overbroad," Jaffe said. "It is extraordinary that these proposals treat advertising as 'directed to children' even where 80% of the targeted audience is made up of adults," he stressed.

Other objections? Terming the proposals "voluntary," given the clout of the four federal agencies behind them, "should be found to violate truth in advertising," declared Jaffe.