Food and beverage industry reports progress on commitments

In December 2015, the International Food and Beverage Alliance (IFBA) released a report reviewing the progress its member companies have made on the global commitments to health and wellness strategies they adopted in 2014.

Founded in 2008, IFBA represents 11 leading companies in the food and beverage sector with a common goal of helping consumers achieve balanced diets and healthy, active lifestyles.

The report laid out a set of "enhanced commitments" in 5 work areas and the achievements its members have made in each area as of 2014: product reformulation and innovation; nutrition information; responsible advertising and marketing to children; and the promotion of healthy lifestyles and physical activity.

It highlighted IFBA and its members' substantial progress in reformulating and developing products to suit dietary needs, implementing front-of-pack (FOP) labelling systems and supporting initiatives that promote healthy lifestyles including sporting events, education campaigns and school-based programmes around the world.

On marketing to children, IFBA's commitment to "extend responsible advertising and marketing initiatives to children globally", as reinforced by the IFBA Global Policy on Advertising and Marketing Communications to Children, has delivered positive results.

Since 2009, Accenture has been commissioned to monitor and report on members' compliance with the IFBA Global Policy. In 2014, they examined more than a million TV ads on 470 channels across seven markets, 46 print publications and 101 websites in five markets. The results showed a high level of compliance, consistent with the results of previous years.

Key IFBA Global Policy monitoring results:

Compliance with the commitment on TV advertising: 88.5%

Compliance with the commitment on print: 100%

Compliance with the commitment on internet advertising in child-directed media: 99.5%

The progress report also underlined the efforts of IFBA members to promote best practice models in relation to marketing to children, such as pioneering regional and national pledge programmes to encourage regional and local food companies to improve products being marketed to children.

The report also highlighted IFBA and its members' 2016 targets. On marketing to children, they aim to cover more media including radio, cinema and all forms of digital communications, address issues of advertising content and ensure that marketing communications directed to children under 12 will be used solely to promote products meeting specific nutrition criteria, and harmonise nutrition criteria on a regional or national basis.

You can read the full report here. For more information about IFBA, visit www.ifballiance.org or contact them at secretariat@ifballiance.org.