Beyond nutrition and physical activity: food industry shaping of the very principles
      of scientific integrity

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Abstract

Background

There is evidence that food industry actors try to shape science on nutrition and physical activity. But they are also involved in influencing the principles of scientific integrity. Our research objective was to study the extent of that involvement, with a case study of ILSI as a key actor in that space. We conducted a qualitative document analysis, triangulating data from an existing scoping review, publicly available information, internal industry documents, and existing freedom of information requests.

Results

Food companies have joined forces through ILSI to shape the development of scientific integrity principles. These activities started in 2007, in direct response to the growing criticism of the food industry’s funding of research. ILSI first built a niche literature on COI in food science and nutrition at the individual and study levels. Because the literature was scarce on that topic, these publications were used and cited in ILSI’s and others’ further work on COI, scientific integrity, and PPP, beyond the fields of nutrition and food science. In the past few years, ILSI started to shape the very principles of scientific integrity then and to propose that government agencies, professional associations, non-for-profits, and others, adopt these principles. In the process, ILSI built a reputation in the scientific integrity space. ILSI’s work on scientific integrity ignores the risks of accepting corporate funding and fails to provide guidelines to protect from these risks.

Conclusions

The activities developed by ILSI on scientific integrity principles are part of a broader set of political practices of industry actors to influence public health policy, research, and practice. It is important to learn about and counter these practices as they risk shaping scientific standards to suit the industry’s interests rather than public health ones.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12992-021-00689-1.

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Most cited references 66

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Profits and pandemics: prevention of harmful effects of tobacco, alcohol, and ultra-processed food and drink industries.

Rob Moodie, David Stuckler, Carlos M.F. Monteiro … (2013)

The 2011 UN high-level meeting on non-communicable diseases (NCDs) called for multisectoral action including with the private sector and industry. However, through the sale and promotion of tobacco, alcohol, and ultra-processed food and drink (unhealthy commodities), transnational corporations are major drivers of global epidemics of NCDs. What role then should these industries have in NCD prevention and control? We emphasise the rise in sales of these unhealthy commodities in low-income and middle-income countries, and consider the common strategies that the transnational corporations use to undermine NCD prevention and control. We assess the effectiveness of self-regulation, public-private partnerships, and public regulation models of interaction with these industries and conclude that unhealthy commodity industries should have no role in the formation of national or international NCD policy. Despite the common reliance on industry self-regulation and public-private partnerships, there is no evidence of their effectiveness or safety. Public regulation and market intervention are the only evidence-based mechanisms to prevent harm caused by the unhealthy commodity industries. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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How Does the Tobacco Industry Attempt to Influence Marketing Regulations? A Systematic Review

Emily Savell, Anna B Gilmore, Gary Fooks (2014)

Background The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control makes a number of recommendations aimed at restricting the marketing of tobacco products. Tobacco industry political activity has been identified as an obstacle to Parties’ development and implementation of these provisions. This study systematically reviews the existing literature on tobacco industry efforts to influence marketing regulations and develops taxonomies of 1) industry strategies and tactics and 2) industry frames and arguments. Methods Searches were conducted between April-July 2011, and updated in March 2013. Articles were included if they made reference to tobacco industry efforts to influence marketing regulations; supported claims with verifiable evidence; were written in English; and concerned the period 1990–2013. 48 articles met the review criteria. Narrative synthesis was used to combine the evidence. Results 56% of articles focused on activity in North America, Europe or Australasia, the rest focusing on Asia (17%), South America, Africa or transnational activity. Six main political strategies and four main frames were identified. The tobacco industry frequently claims that the proposed policy will have negative unintended consequences, that there are legal barriers to regulation, and that the regulation is unnecessary because, for example, industry does not market to youth or adheres to a voluntary code. The industry primarily conveys these arguments through direct and indirect lobbying, the promotion of voluntary codes and alternative policies, and the formation of alliances with other industrial sectors. The majority of tactics and arguments were used in multiple jurisdictions. Conclusions Tobacco industry political activity is far more diverse than suggested by existing taxonomies of corporate political activity. Tactics and arguments are repeated across jurisdictions, suggesting that the taxonomies of industry tactics and arguments developed in this paper are generalisable to multiple jurisdictions and can be used to predict industry activity.

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A proposed approach to systematically identify and monitor the corporate political activity of the food industry with respect to public health using publicly available information.

M Mialon, B Swinburn, G A Sacks (2015)

Unhealthy diets represent one of the major risk factors for non-communicable diseases. There is currently a risk that the political influence of the food industry results in public health policies that do not adequately balance public and commercial interests. This paper aims to develop a framework for categorizing the corporate political activity of the food industry with respect to public health and proposes an approach to systematically identify and monitor it. The proposed framework includes six strategies used by the food industry to influence public health policies and outcomes: information and messaging; financial incentive; constituency building; legal; policy substitution; opposition fragmentation and destabilization. The corporate political activity of the food industry could be identified and monitored through publicly available data sourced from the industry itself, governments, the media and other sources. Steps for country-level monitoring include identification of key food industry actors and related sources of information, followed by systematic data collection and analysis of relevant documents, using the proposed framework as a basis for classification of results. The proposed monitoring approach should be pilot tested in different countries as part of efforts to increase the transparency and accountability of the food industry. This approach has the potential to help redress any imbalance of interests and thereby contribute to the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Mélissa Mialon:

ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9883-6441

melissa_mialon@hotmail.fr , mialonm@tcd.ie

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Global Health

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Global Health

Title: Globalization and Health

Publisher: BioMed Central (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 1744-8603

Publication date (Electronic): 20 April 2021

Publication date PMC-release: 20 April 2021

Publication date Collection: 2021

Volume: 17

Electronic Location Identifier: 37

Affiliations

[1 ]GRID grid.8217.c, ISNI 0000 0004 1936 9705, Trinity Business School, , Trinity College Dublin, ; Dublin, Ireland

[2 ]GRID grid.266818.3, ISNI 0000 0004 1936 914X, School of Community Health Sciences, , University of Nevada, ; Reno, USA

[3 ]World Public Health and Nutrition Association, London, UK

[4 ]U.S. Right to Know, Oakland, USA

[5 ]GRID grid.266818.3, ISNI 0000 0004 1936 914X, Ozmen Institute for Global Studies, , University of Nevada, ; Reno, USA

Author information

Mélissa Mialon http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9883-6441

Article

Publisher ID: 689

DOI: 10.1186/s12992-021-00689-1

PMC ID: 8056799

PubMed ID: 33879204

SO-VID: 4d2f12d2-4474-4868-8cce-b9dd7a75d449

License:

Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

History

Date received : 8 January 2021

Date accepted : 18 March 2021

Funding

Funded by: U.S. Right To Know, USA

Award ID: N/A

Custom metadata

ScienceOpen disciplines: Health & Social care

Keywords: conflitct of interest,commercial determinants of health,ethics,food industry,corporate political activity

Data availability:

ScienceOpen disciplines: Health & Social care

Keywords: conflitct of interest, commercial determinants of health, ethics, food industry, corporate political activity

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Beyond nutrition and physical activity: food industry shaping of the very principles of scientific integrity

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Tobacco Prevention & Cessation

Most cited references 66

Profits and pandemics: prevention of harmful effects of tobacco, alcohol, and ultra-processed food and drink industries.

How Does the Tobacco Industry Attempt to Influence Marketing Regulations? A Systematic Review

A proposed approach to systematically identify and monitor the corporate political activity of the food industry with respect to public health using publicly available information.

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