Wed, Jun-28-17, 03:03
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Plan: P:E/DDF
Stats: 225/150/169
BF:45%/28%/25%
Progress: 134%
Location: NC
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Long feature article in the CrossFit Journal on on the ungodly amounts of money the Beverage industry spends on advertising, specifically how they defeat "soda taxes"
https://journal.crossfit.com/article/soda-cecil-2017-2
Quote:
Big Soda: Buying Chronic Disease
BY ANDRÉA MARIA CECIL
June 26th, 2017
If there’s one thing the beverage industry has, it’s money.
And an agenda.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2011: The city council for a second time does not vote on the mayor’s proposed tax on sugary drinks. The American Beverage Association (ABA), the trade organization representing the likes of The Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo, then gives US$10 million to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Richmond, California, 2012: Shortly after a city council member—a retired chief of cardiology—introduces a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs), about a dozen anti-beverage-tax billboards appear in the town of roughly 100,000 people. All of them are paid for by organizations tied to the beverage industry.
Mexico, 2013: About half of the lower Congress’ seats are routinely empty as lawmakers enjoy steakhouse meals paid for by beverage-industry lobbyists. Meanwhile, lawmakers consider a nationwide SSB tax in a country where Coke is used in religious rites.
Berkeley, California, 2014: As the Northern California city is poised to become the first in the nation to pass an SSB tax, ABA-funded groups buy every available advertising space inside the local Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station, at public bus shelters and on buses, urging voters to reject the measure.
The tactics will sound familiar to proponents of SSB taxes and health-warning labels. The ABA—representing America’s non-alcoholic beverage makers—and its members spare no expense when it comes to fighting such measures.
Aside from the $10 million it spent in 2011 in Philadelphia, the beverage industry also spent $2.7 million from January 2012 to June 2013 in Richmond and $2.4 million from January 2014 to January 2015 in Berkeley, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a consumer-advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C. But because of Philadelphia’s lacking disclosure laws at the time, former city officials believe the industry spent more than just $10 million fighting the sugary-beverage tax.
“The absence of lobbying disclosure laws in Philadelphia during the 2010 legislative cycle makes it difficult, if not impossible to quantify industry’s financial and political influence at that time,” according to a May 2012 CSPI fact sheet titled “Soda Industry Political Spending.”
As for Mexico, it is unknown how much the industry spent there.
Article continues at above link
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And many people may have missed yet another bit of craziness out of Washington, since there was so much of it in early June, but the FDA "delayed indefinitely" the changes required by the new nutrition labeling law.
Translation: it ain't never goin' happen.  Big food lobbyists had bought that one with some spare change.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...m=.7cc3a7ba52f1
The food industry lobbyists letter to Price: https://cspinet.org/sites/default/f...nt/NFletter.pdf
(It asks for an extension to 2021, but likely the new label is in the trash already) |