Instrumental Strategies | Practices | Mechanisms |
---|---|---|
Coalition management | Constituency recruitment - Establish relationships with key opinion leaders and health organisations | Promote public-private interactions with health and consumers organisations, among others |
Support professional organisations, including through their funding and / or advertising in their publications | ||
Establish informal relationships with key opinion leaders | ||
Support the placement of industry-friendly personnel within health organisations | ||
Constituency recruitment - Seek involvement in the community | Undertake corporate philanthropy | |
Support physical activity initiatives | ||
Support events (for youth, arts, etc.) and community-level initiatives | ||
Constituency recruitment - Establish relationships with the media | Establish close relationships with the media, journalists and bloggers, to facilitate media advocacy | |
Constituency recruitment - internal | Establish relationships with other actors in the industry | |
Constituency fabrication | Establish fake grassroots organisations (‘astroturfing’) | |
Procure the support of community and business groups to oppose public health measures | ||
Opposition fragmentation and destabilisation | Discredit public health advocates personally and publicly | |
Infiltrate and monitor the operations and advocacy strategies of public health organisations and advocates | ||
Create antagonism between health professionals | ||
Information management | Production | Fund research, including through academics, ghost writers, own research institutions and front groups |
Amplification | Cherry pick data that favours the industry, including through the use of non-peer reviewed or unpublished evidence | |
Participate in and host scientific events | ||
Propose industry-sponsored education | ||
Suppression | Suppress the dissemination of research that does not fit the industry’s interests | |
Emphasise disagreement among scientists | ||
Criticise evidence, and emphasise its complexity and uncertainty | ||
Credibility | Fronting: conceal industry links to information or evidence, including through the use of scientists serving as advisers, consultants or spokespersons | |
Direct involvement and influence in policy | Indirect access | Lobby directly and indirectly (through third parties) to influence legislation and regulation so that it is favourable to the industry |
Use the “revolving door”, i.e. ex-food industry staff goes to work in the government, and vice versa | ||
Incentives | Fund and provide financial incentives to political parties and policy makers (donations, gifts, entertainment or other financial inducements) | |
Threats | Threaten to withdraw investments if new public health policies are introduced | |
Actor in government decision making | Seek involvement in working groups, technical groups and advisory groups | |
Provide technical support and advice to policy-makers | ||
Legal actions | Use legal action (or the threat thereof) against public policies or opponents | Litigate or threaten to litigate against governments, public health professionals and other institutions or individuals |
Influence the development of trade and investment agreements | Influence the development of trade and investment agreements to include clauses favourable to the industry (limited trade restrictions, mechanisms for corporations to sue governments, etc.) | |
Discursive strategies | Domain | Argument |
The economy | Stress the number of jobs supported and the money generated for the economy | |
Governance | Demonise the ‘nanny state’ | |
Expected food industry costs | Claim that proposed policy will lead to a reduction in sales/jobs | |
Claim that cost of compliance will be high for the industry | ||
Frame the debate on diet- and public health-related issues | Stress the good traits of the food industry | |
Shift the blame away from the food industry and its products: focus on individual responsibility, the role of parents, physical inactivity, etc. | ||
Promote industry’s preferred solutions: education, information, balanced diets, etc. |