Summary:
This report focuses on harm reduction and explores how this model can be applied to other issues, such as food and nutrition, by using regulatory tools to improve health outcomes.
Description:
General Overview: harm reduction and the right to health
In this report, the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, Dr. Tlaleng Mofokeng, examines how the harm reduction model can be applied across a wider realm, including for food and nutrition issues. For this analysis, she “addresses how harm
reduction can align with the right to health and related rights in the context of universal health coverage and with the rights of those in situations of vulnerability, including conflict, health emergencies and climate change”. For these purposes, she uses the social, political and commercial determinants of health frameworks, with the considerations on substantive equality.
Key Insights on Food and Nutrition environments
For the purposes of FULL, the most relevant part of the report is the application of the harm reduction model to unhealthy products, especially ultra-processed ones. In this context, the Special Rapporteur analyzes how effective regulation of corporate actors serves as means of harm reduction (para 3). Considering that corporations often co-opt the harm reduction narrative, analyzing this issue becomes even more crucial to encourage States to implement effective regulations (para 43).
The following points highlight the key aspects of the report concerning ultra-processed products:
- “Unhealthy diets are responsible for 11 million preventable global deaths every
year112 and are a major risk factor for preventable non-communicable diseases, including
cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes and other conditions” (para 50). - “Ultra-processed products pose significant health risks”, but they are still “heavily advertised and marketed” (para 50).
- Unhealthy products affect marginalized groups disproportionately (para 51).
- The food and beverage industry is reformulating its products “not only to avoid
labelling requirements, but also to add micronutrients to promote products through
nutrition or health claims” (para 52). This is a direct response to mandatory front-of-pack nutritional labeling. - ““Surrogate marketing” is frequently an avenue to circumvent legally mandated advertising bans or restrictions” (para 81). Moreover, sponsorship and other corporate social responsibility programmes, with dubious health benefits, are marketing tactics that increase brand reputation (para 81).
Recommendations: harm reduction applicable to food and nutrition issues
The Special Rapporteur suggests the States actions that can lead to reduce harm stemming from diet-related non-communicable diseases (para 84). Particularly, endorses public policies that are the focus of FULL (front-of-pack nutrition labeling, marketing restrictions, and fiscal policies). In this sense, the report suggests:
- “[T]he food industry to provide accurate and easy-to-read information through front-of-package nutrition labelling; and healthy food procurement policies” (para 84).
- “Fiscal policies, including taxation and subsidy strategies, [that] can redistribute the relative cost of food, thereby promoting equity and empowering decision-making” (para 84).
- Reducing “children’s exposure to food and beverage advertising”, because “they are vulnerable to the advertising of unhealthy food and drinks” (para 86).
- Adopting, implementing and monitoring “effective and evidence-based regulations to prevent health or environmental harms stemming from the use of products such as […] ultra-processed products”. (para 115.c)
- Enforcing, “through regulation, the expectation that all businesses must respect human rights throughout their operations” (para 115.c).
- Strengthening existing regulations on the advertising, promotion and sponsorship of harmful products, including by developing new regulations on “surrogate marketing”. (para 115.d)