The new strategy to monitor the commitments of the soft drink industry

From now on, Icontec will be the entity that will verify that the beverage industry complies with the self-regulation commitments it promised in 2016 and that, so far, does not seem to comply fully.

This Monday, September 2, the representatives of the beverage industry, in the company of the Minister of Health, Juan Pablo Uribe, acquired a new commitment: from now on, Icontec will be the entity responsible for verifying that the promises of self-regulation they made in 2016 They are actually fulfilled. (Read Cancer could become the leading cause of death in the world)

The presentation of the new standard was made by the director of the Chamber of Beverage Industry of the ANDI, Luis Felipe Torres; the president of ANDI, Bruce Mac Master; the presidents and representatives of Bavaria, Postobón, Coca-Cola Company, Coca-Cola FEMSA, PepsiCo, Redbull and Monster; and executive director of ICONTEC, Roberto Enrique Montoya Villa. (Read the concern of 40 academics about the government's pact with the processed food industry)

According to Montoya, “raising self-regulation commitments to the Technical Company Standard is a great step for the beverage industry because this allows them to standardize the fulfillment of their five self-regulation commitments and establish a verification process. It should be noted that this is one of the first cases where an industry asks ICONTEC to verify voluntary commitments ”. (Read an unauthorized hormone for weight loss)

The five points to which Montoya refers were established three years ago, after the country had an intense debate following the proposal to impose taxes on sugary drinks. Then, this industry promised, among other things, to change the labeling for one with more information about its products; vary the sizes of the items; Do not present commercials of sugary drinks when the children's audience, in the case of television, exceeds 35%, and avoid selling in soda, teas, energy drinks and flavored soft drinks. Only products with real fruit.

However, as revealed a few months ago by an investigation of Dejusticia, led by Valentina Rozo, not all of these commitments are fully fulfilled. After interviewing rectors and store administrators of 21 schools of all strata in Bogotá and observing the advertising mechanisms used by some companies, he concluded that some promises only remained on paper.

"In general, the interviewees consider that none of the points are met, except for the diversity of sizes," Rozo noted then. “Companies continue to offer products that do not match the commitments they acquired. First, AJE offers sports drinks, soft drinks with sugar and tea with sugar. For its part, Coca-Cola offers flavored water, soft drinks with sugar and tea with sugar; while PepsiCo offers sports drinks and Postobón has flavored water, sports drinks, sweetened soda, soda with sugar and tea with sugar and sweetened (…) The low strata are the ones with the highest non-compliance (86%), followed by the media (70%) and the high (64%) ”.