Sam Kass Speaks To Food Marketing Pros

As the Obama administration struggles to create voluntary principles for advertising food to children, Kass takes the Let's Move! message to content creators...
As the chief ambassador for First Lady Obama's childhood obesity campaign, Senior Policy Advisor for Healthy Food Initiatives Sam Kass regularly speaks at food and health policy conferences. But late this afternoon in Washington, DC, he'll be making his first-ever appearance before a group of media professionals, explaining the Let's Move! campaign to food marketing and PR mavens as he gives the keynote address at the International Foodservice Editorial Council (IFEC) conference. (Kass, above)

The IFEC has located its three-day conference in Washington this year because it is specifically focused on food policy, something that is crucial to understand for a membership that's devoted to creating food product placements and food ad campaigns, lobbying campaigns, and editorial content for publications aimed at America's multi-billion dollar grocery, restaurant, agricultural product, and food and beverage sectors. Kass' speech comes as the Obama Administration is in the midst of re-tooling "voluntary principles" to guide food, beverage and media companies in their advertising campaigns aimed at children.

Among other Let's Move! initiatives, Kass is today expected to discuss the major private-sector commitment Mrs. Obama has gotten from America's largest chain restaurant corporation, Darden Restaurants, Inc, to change its menu offerings. Darden's commitment included changes in how it will market foods to the children visiting its thousands of restaurants. He'll also explain the Chefs Move to Schools initiative, and Walmart's partnership with the White House.

In April, the Federal Trade Commission unveiled a sweeping set of "voluntary principles" that included specific nutrition standards for food and beverages marketed to children. But in October, David Vladeck, head of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, testified at a House hearing that FTC is considering "significant revisions" to the proposal, offering a version that's far less stringent, which will cover just the 11-and-under crowd. That came after the food and beverage industry launched an aggressive lobbying campaign against the Administration's proposals, and also issued their own "voluntary" principles in response to the FTC proposal.

A relentless schedule for Kass...
It's been a busy Fall for Kass. He's on TV today, joining the First Lady on "The Nate Berkus Show," an NBC daytimer. Kass did plenty of TV last week too, leading ten different TV anchors on tours through the Kitchen Garden during a White House media day designed especially for local TV affiliates.

In September, Kass spoke at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York, and attended a UN High Level Meeting on health policy, and he was featured on The Rachael Ray Show. In October, Kass did a policy conference triple-header, speaking at three policy conferences in three states in three days, and he traveled to Chicago for the first-ever Let's Move! food desert summit. At the end of November, Kass will emcee a special event that's part of Partnership for a Healthier America's first national obesity summit. The First Lady is keynoting the conference.

All of this is in addition to Kass' other Administration duties, such as unveiling MiPlato, the Spanish-language edition of USDA's MyPlate, and his many White House meetings with stakeholders (one example is here). He also still reportedly cooks dinner each night for the First Family, and travels with them.

*Photo by Eddie Gehman Kohan/ObamaFoodorama.com

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House Hearing: FTC Announces Changes To Proposed Principles For Food Marketing To Children

FTC's David Vladeck unveils changes; Ronald McDonald is safe, and principles now only impact 11-and-under age group...
The House Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing today to examine the "Preliminary Proposed Nutrition Principles to Guide Industry Self-Regulatory Efforts," released by the Federal Trade Commission in April to support First Lady Obama's Let's Move! campaign, and covering foods marketed to children. The Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade and the Subcommittee on Health held the joint hearing, and heard testimony from federal officials, food and media corporation executives and lobbyists, consumer advocates, and child health experts. The hearing was titled “Food Marketing: Can ‘Voluntary’ Government Restrictions Improve Children’s Health?”

David Vladeck, head of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, testified that the inter-agency working group that created the principles "is considering making significant revisions to its initial proposed principles in crafting its final recommendations to Congress, including revising the marketing principles to more narrowly focus them on those techniques that are used most extensively to market to children." The revisions are based on the many public comments recived during the open comment period, which also included the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative issuing their own "voluntary" principles in response to the FTC proposal. Elaine D. Kolish, Vice President and Director CFBAI also testified at the hearing.

The revisions to the principles now leave out marketing aimed at children 12-17; only those under age 11 will be covered.

"Among other things, FTC staff is contemplating that, with the exception of certain in-school marketing activities, it is not necessary to include marketing directed to adolescents ages 12 to 17 within the scope of covered marketing activities."

FTC is also considering excluding advertising aimed at a general audience and advertising that is part of charitable or community events from its proposal. And it will not recommend banning clowns and cartoon characters--such as Ronald McDonald or Tony the Tiger--from being used to advertise unhealthy foods.

Download the text of the testimony. [PDF]

Download the original proposed principles [PDF].

The changes come following an outcry and major public relations campaign from lawmakers and food and media industry critics--some of whom also testified at the hearing. In particular, a coalition of food and media corporations have organized under the banner "The Sensible Food Policy Coalition," and two of their leading members argued against the proposal during the second witness panel: Jim Baughman of Campbell Soup Company and Dan Jaffe, Executive Vice President, Association of National Advertisers. The group has run an aggressive and high-profile marketing campaign against the proposal, created by PR expert Anita Dunn of public relations firm SKDKnickerbocker. Dunn previously served as President Obama's White House Communications Director.

From FTC's recap of its testimony:
The testimony explains that the Interagency Working Group was convened in 2009 in response to a bipartisan effort led by Senator Tom Harkin and former Senator Sam Brownback. Congress charged the Working Group’s members – the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the FTC, the Food and Drug Administration, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture – with developing nutrition standards for foods marketed to children and defining the scope of marketing to which those standards would apply. In response to this charge, the Working Group has been developing recommendations to Congress for voluntary principles to guide industry self-regulation. As the member agency with marketing expertise, the FTC’s role has been to develop workable parameters to define children’s marketing.

The testimony details the FTC’s history of support for strong and meaningful self-regulation to improve the nutritional profile of foods marketed directly to children. It states the Commission’s view that regardless of whether food marketing contributes to childhood obesity, marketing can be an effective tool to encourage children to make more healthful choices. The testimony also recognizes that many food marketers have already pledged to play a role in improving children’s nutrition and health through marketing.

The Working Group released preliminary proposed voluntary principles to guide industry self-regulation for public comment in April 2011. During the comment period, the food industry’s self-regulatory program, the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI), proposed a uniform set of nutrition principles of its own that is considerably stronger than the current individual pledges of the member companies, and represents “substantial progress by industry,” the testimony notes.

As a result of the many comments received from various stakeholders, and an assessment of the CFBAI proposal, the Working Group is considering making significant revisions to its initial proposed principles in crafting its final recommendations to Congress, including revising the marketing principles to more narrowly focus them on those techniques that are used most extensively to market to children, the testimony states. Among other things, FTC staff is contemplating that, with the exception of certain in-school marketing activities, it is not necessary to include marketing directed to adolescents ages 12 to 17 within the scope of covered marketing activities.

FTC staff is working to develop recommendations on the scope of marketing to children that will cover all the most important aspects of children’s marketing without being unduly restrictive, the testimony concludes.

The Commission vote authorizing the testimony was 4-0.

FTC's original proposal in brief...
The principles issued by FTC have two basic tenets: Food advertising and marketing aimed at children up to age 17 should encourage them to choose foods that "make meaningful contributions to a healthful diet from food groups including vegetables, fruit, whole grains, fat-free or low-fat milk products, fish, extra lean meat and poultry, eggs, nuts or seeds, and beans."

Additionally, the saturated fat, trans fat, added sugars, and sodium in foods marketed to children should be "limited to minimize the negative impact on children’s health and weight."

The principles are in keeping with the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, and FTC is proposing that the food industry gets on board with the self regulation by 2016; after that year, any food that contains any trans fat, more than one gram of saturated fat, more than 210 milligrams of sodium or more than 13 grams of added sugar per serving should not be advertised to children.

For sodium, the proposal includes interim targets for 2016 and final targets for 2021.

Witnesses for the hearing:

Panel 1
Dr. William Dietz
Director
Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Dr. Robert Post
Deputy Director
Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion
U.S. Department of Agriculture

David C. Vladeck
Director
Bureau of Consumer Protection
Federal Trade Commission

Panel 2
Jim Baughman
Senior Marketing Counsel
Campbell Soup Company

Dan Jaffe
Executive Vice President
Association of National Advertisers

Elaine D. Kolish
Vice President and Director
Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative

Beth Johnson, MS, RD
on behalf of Grocery Manufacturers Association
Principal
Food Directions LLC

Margo Wootan, DSc
Center for Science in the Public Interest

Dale Kunkle, PhD
University of Arizon

John Irons, PhD
Economic Policy Institute

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Does Obama Administration Proposal For Marketing Foods To Kids Violate the First Amendment?

Coalition of lawyers says no; White House declines to comment on letter sent to Administration...
A coalition of 36 lawyers is defending the Obama Administration's proposed preliminary voluntary principles for limiting the kinds of food products that can be advertised to children. Issued in April by the Federal Trade Commission's Interagency Working Group on Food Marketed to Children, the proposal supports the massive government effort to combat childhood obesity that's coordinated by First Lady Obama's Let's Move! campaign. The principles do not violate the First Amendment right to free speech, the legal eagles said today in an open letter sent to the top Administration officials at FDA, CDC, USDA, and FTC, as well as relevant parties at the White House, including Senior Policy Advisor for Healthy Food Initiatives Sam Kass and newly minted Let's Move! Executive Director Dr. Judith Palfrey.

The proposal has not yet been adopted in final form. Some of the lawyers who signed the letter are the top US experts in First Amendment law, according to Jeffrey Chester of Washington, DC's Center for Digital Democracy, a spokesman for the group.* The lawyers contend that because all food and beverage companies are entirely free to ignore the proposed federal guidelines, the draft principles “do not restrain or compel anyone’s speech."

"They are not, in fact, government regulations at all," the lawyers noted, and likened them to other voluntary federal guidelines, such as USDA’s MyPlate dietary recommendations.

The letter is scholarly pushback against the efforts of the Sensible Food Policy Coalition, a food/media corporate front group created in July to launch an aggressive attack against the FTC proposal. As reported here, the coalition includes PepsiCo, Viacom, Kellogg's, General Mills, Time Warner, with powerful lobbying group the Grocery Manufacturers Association on board as an "honorary member." They've hired Anita Dunn, who served in 2009 as President Obama's White House Communications Director, to create a multi-pronged PR campaign.

Of counsel to the Coalition is attorney Jim Davidson, chair of the public policy group at Washington, DC's Polsinelli Shughart law firm, who told Obama Foodorama that the principles are "de facto legislation," and the group's goal is to have them "completely withdrawn." The group has posted a "White Paper" on its website, claiming the principles violate the First Amendment.

"Attorneys retained by industry have invoked a variety of First Amendment arguments, a tactic with the potential effect of diverting policymakers’ attention from the substance of the draft nutrition principles," the lawyers' letter notes. "Nothing in the cases cited by these commenters bears on the IWG principles. The doctrines of “informal censorship,” “unconstitutional conditions,” and “de facto coercion” are completely inapt."

"The food and ad lobby are using the First Amendment argument as a political weapon designed to undermine public health," Chester said. "Today's letter says that the food marketing lobby is on very shaky legal ground."

David Vladeck, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, responded to some of the claims the food/ad industry is making in a July post on FTC's blog, calling many of these "myths."

"At the risk of being redundant, a report to Congress containing recommended nutrition principles can’t violate the Constitution," Vladeck wrote. "A report is not a law, a regulation, or an order, and it can’t be enforced. While we hope companies voluntarily choose to adopt the principles (when finalized), there’s no legal consequence if they don’t. So there’s no effect on their free speech rights."

Meantime, in mid-July, food industry giants proposed their own set of standards for marketing foods to children. These were laxer than those proposed by the Obama Administration, of course.

Lawmakers have joined the fray...
Members of the GOP over the summer spoke out against the FTC proposal, using the arguments created by the Sustainable Food Policy Coalition. Its opening salvo was an "economic impact report" that claimed that if adopted, the guidelines will lead to a 20% reduction in advertising expenditures, which will cause a multi-billion dollar "ripple effect" through the commerce chain, translating to at least 74,000 lost jobs for Americans in 2011.

Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Illinois) is the most recent lawmaker to take this particular bait. On August 30th, he published an op-ed piece in the Chicago Sun-Times, blasting the Obama Administration for proposing "regulations" that are bad for business.

"Illinois-based food producer Sara Lee could soon face lower sales and higher costs and provide fewer jobs if the administration goes through with a particularly overreaching food regulation that would dramatically restrict their ability to advertise many food products — in the name of fighting childhood obesity," Roskam wrote, adding that Sara Lee would no longer be able to sell foods such as hot dogs at sporting events where children under age 18 are present.

Letter recipients...and no comment from the White House
The letter from the legal scholars was sent to FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz; FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg; CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden; and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. According to Chester, in addition to Kass and Palfrey at the White House, two members of the Domestic Policy Council, Judith Moreno and Raquel S. Russell, were also sent the letter.

An East Wing spokesman declined to comment on whether the letter had been received.

The First Amendment experts included in the group that signed the letter are Tamara Piety, Vincent Blasi, Erwin Chemerinsky, Michael Dorf, Steven Heyman, Steven Shiffrin, David Strauss, and Mark Tushnet, according to Chester.

*The letter writing effort was organized by Public Health Law & Policy, an advocacy group in California.

*Obama O's cereal image created during Mr. Obama's 2008 election campaign

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