A/HRC/19/59 (b) Revising the existing system of subsidies 40. Where subsidies are an agricultural policy instrument, they are often biased in favour of large grain and soybean producers, or of the livestock industry. The potential negative externalities on public health and the environment were never considered in shaping those subsidies.65 The existing subsidies must now be re-examined in order to align agricultural policies with the requirement of adequate diets. (c) Regulating marketing practices 41. States should implement fully in legislation the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes and subsequent WHA resolutions. But the marketing practices of the food industry have impacts such that bolder action is required. Self-regulation by the agrifood industry has proven ineffective. As noted by the International Obesity Task Force Working Group experts when they developed the Sydney Principles for reducing the commercial promotion of foods and beverages to children, industry codes cannot ―substantially reduce the large volume and high impact of marketing obesogenic foods and beverages to children‖.66 It is one thing to prohibit advertising that ―exploits the credulity of children,‖ but quite another to control the amount of advertising delivered and the appeal it creates for the products, influencing children‘s diets.67 Even the best practices in the area, such as the EU Pledge initiated in December 2007 by a number of large agrifood companies, do not go as far as they should, namely, to prohibit all advertising that could encourage children to consume more HFSS foods.68 42. The General Assembly recognized the problem. It recommended further implementation of the WHO set of recommendations on the marketing of foods and nonalcoholic beverages to children,69 and that States consider statutory regulation as the most effective way to reduce the marketing of HFSS foods to children (see para. 22 and recommendation 8 of the WHO recommendations). Indeed, the protection of the human right to adequate food requires nothing less. But efforts should not stop there. Children are not the only victims of marketing practices that promote HFSS foods and make questionable health claims. The power of the agrifood industry to influence diets has been well documented,70 and the public budgets for nutrition education are no match for the advertising budgets of fast food and sweet beverage companies. 71 The Special Rapporteur sees no reason why the promotion of foods that are known to have detrimental health 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 18 T. Lang and M. Heasman, Food Wars: The Global Battle for Mouths, Minds and Markets (London, Earthscan, 2004), pp. 171-175. ―The ‗Sydney Principles‘ for reducing the commercial promotion of foods and beverages to children‖, Public Health Nutrition, vol. 11, No. 9 (2008), p. 883. C. Hawkes, ―Self-regulation of food advertising: what it can, could and cannot do to discourage unhealthy eating habits among children‖, Nutrition Bulletin, vol. 30, No. 4 (2005), p. 375. For the determination of HFSS foods, see the nutrient profiling system developed in the United Kingdom by the Food Standards Agency, which the British Office of Communications used in its regulation of advertising in television programming addressed at children (available from www.food.gov.uk/consultations/ukwideconsults/2008/nutrientprofiling). Political Declaration of the High-level Meeting of the General Assembly (footnote 22 above), para. 43 (f). See M. Nestle, Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health, 2nd ed. (University of California Press, 2007). M. Story and S. French, ―Food Advertising and Marketing Directed at Children and Adolescents in the US,‖ International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, vol. 1, No. (3) (2004), second page. In 2001, the budget of the United States Ministry for Agriculture for nutrition education was $333 million; for the same year, McDonald‘s advertising budget was $635 million, Burger King‘s $298 million, and advertising for Coke and Diet Coke cost $224 million.