New code for marketing children's food

As the government proceeds with the development of a voluntary code of practice for the marketing and promotion of food and drink to children, the Food Standards Agency and the Department of Health (DoH) have begun to assess proposals from external consultancies on how it might look.

Once a consultancy has been chosen, the aim is to have the code of practice out by the end of 2009.

The code will cover aspects of food and drink advertising that are not covered by current voluntary or mandatory codes such as Ofcom's Code of Advertising Practice. Key areas are packaging, digital marketing such as websites, and point-of-sale material.

In April this year, the secretary of state for health, Alan Johnson, said in a report on health: "We will re-balance the marketing of food to children to ensure that children are properly protected from the marketing and promotion of unhealthy food."

The report: 'Healthy weight, healthy lives: one year on', said the aim was to reduce the proportion of overweight and obese children to 2000 levels by 2020. "Our key priorities for the year going ahead [are to] look at developing a set of voluntary principles to underpin all forms of marketing and promotion of food and drink to children, particularly where established mandatory or self- or co-regulatory regimes do not exist."

Alison Ross, who heads up projects on the promotion of foods to children at the DoH, said: "We are looking at the softer forms of advertising that currently have no regulation. We want to map what's happening so that we can target areas for action. Although the Ofcom rules are stiff, Ofcom can't make people eat healthier."

The Food and Drink Federation said it was concerned about how far a code of practice would go.