‘I had never seen so many lobbyists’: food industry political practices during the development of a new nutrition front-of-pack labelling system in Colombia

Abstract

Objective:

To identify and monitor food industry use of political practices during the adoption of nutrition warning labels (WL) in Colombia.

Design:

Document analysis of publicly available information triangulated with interviews.

Setting:

Colombia.

Participants:

Eighteen key informants from the government ( n 2), academia ( n 1), civil society ( n 12), the media ( n 2) and a former food industry employee ( n 1).

Results:

In Colombia, the food industry used experts and groups funded by large transnationals to promote its preferred front-of-pack nutrition labelling (FOPL) and discredit the proposed warning models. The industry criticised the proposed WL, discussing the negative impacts they would have on trade, the excessive costs required to implement them and the fact that consumers were responsible for making the right choices about what to eat. Food industry actors also interacted with the government and former members of large trade associations now in decision-making positions in the public sector. The Codex Alimentarius was also a platform through which the industry got access to decision-making and could influence the FOPL policy.

Conclusions:

In Colombia, the food industry used a broad range of political strategies that could have negatively influenced the FOPL policy process. Despite this influence, the mandatory use of WL was announced in February 2020. There is an urgent need to condemn such political practices as they still could prevent the implementation of other internationally recommended measures to improve population health in the country and abroad, nutrition WL being only of them.