Food and Drink Companies Pledge to Change Advertising to Children

Under the EU Pledge programme, participating companies will make individual commitments on food and beverage advertising to children.

14/12/07 Eleven major food and beverage companies announced a common commitment to change the way they advertise to children. The move follows recent calls by the EU for the food industry to use commercial communications to support parents in making the right diet and lifestyle choices for their children.

Under the EU Pledge programme, participating companies will make individual commitments on food and beverage advertising to children. The EU Pledge programme is a voluntary commitment to the EU Platform on Diet, Physical Activity and Health, the multi-stakeholder forum set up by EU Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner Markos Kyprianou in 2005 to encourage interested parties to take initiatives aimed at fighting obesity in Europe. The participating companies all commit to:

* Implement, no later than 31 December 2008, company-specific voluntary measures on food and beverage advertising to children. All company commitments will meet the following minimum standards:
- Not to advertise food and beverage products to children under the age of 12, except for products which fulfill specific nutrition criteria based on accepted scientific evidence and/or applicable national and international dietary guidelines.
- Not to engage in any commercial communications related to food and beverage products in primary schools, except where specifically requested by or agreed with the school administration for educational purposes.
* Publish all company commitments on a dedicated website (www.eu-pledge.eu) in the course of 2008.
* Commission independently verified compliance monitoring of the advertising commitment on TV, print media and the Internet, starting in January 2009.

Signatories to the Pledge are currently the following companies: Burger King, Coca-Cola, Danone, Ferrero, General Mills, Kellogg, Kraft, Mars, Nestlé, PepsiCo and Unilever. Together, these companies represent more than 50% of the food and beverage advertising spend in the European Union. Some of these companies have already made commitments on advertising to children, but the EU Pledge programme will provide a common benchmark against which companies can jointly monitor and verify their implementation. The EU Pledge initiative is open to other companies that wish to join.