• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, May 24, 2011

During today's public forum in Washington, D.C., to garner feedback on a recent proposal outlined by the government's Interagency Working Group on Food Marketed to Children, regulators are getting an earful from Association of National Advertisers Executive Vice President 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 virtually 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."

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