Press Releases: Public Health

Press Release: One in three American children and adolescents are overweight or obese, and restricting unhealthy food marketing to youth is one important step to addressing this crisis, according to a new report by national consumer organization Food & Water Watch. It Pays to Advertise: Junk Food Marketing to Children analyses recent trends in food marketing aimed at children and concludes that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) must step up and actively regulate marketing to youth, including food and beverage marketing, rather than rely on the food industry’s ineffective voluntary system.

Today Nestlé announced it has purchased Pfizer’s infant nutrition unit to expand into fast-growing emerging markets, particularly in Asia. This renewed focus on growing the market for its infant formula products is troubling given the corporation’s track record of using dubious practices to market infant formula in developing countries, where it is often prepared in unhygienic conditions with unsafe water. It appears this investment will pave the way for more dubious marketing practices, which as recently as last year have been criticized by public health groups in Laos.

Media Statement: “Today Food & Water Watch joins food inspectors, other food safety advocates and consumers in front of the U.S. Department of Agriculture headquarters to protest plans to privatize and hasten the inspection of poultry slaughter plants. The USDA wants to cut back on its meat and poultry inspection program and let company employees do the job currently done by 800 professional federal inspectors.

“Cutting the budget does not justify putting the health and safety of consumers and workers in the balance. USDA inspectors receive extensive training to protect public health in poultry facilities, but there is no similar requirement for company employees to receive training before they assume these inspection responsibilities in the proposed privatized inspection system. This short-sided thinking could actually cost the federal government more to deal with a potential increase in foodborne illnesses caused by unsanitary, defective poultry and meat.”

Press Release: Whether or not Congress shuts down this week lawmakers will likely cut food and water protections, which could increase foodborne illness, cut badly-needed federal money allocated to maintaining our aging water infrastructure, and hurt the economy, according to a national consumer organization.

Washington, D.C. – Decades of trade rules that dismantled or restructured farm safety net programs in the European Union have displaced sustainable, domestic feed grain production and escalated dangerous soy imports from Latin America—and helped turn European farms into polluting factory farms while driving down food quality and expanding waistlines, according to a new report from consumer organization Food & Water Watch.