Radio advertising food rules announced
17 September 2007
The Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice (BCAP) has announced new rules for food and drink product advertisements to children on radio. Those restrictions follow the recent tightening of the food advertising rules for TV and non-broadcast media and are designed to protect children’s health by ensuring advertisements do not encourage poor nutritional habits or unhealthy lifestyles. The rules come into force on 17 September 2007.
The new radio rules closely reflect the content restrictions laid down for other media. Most of the rules apply to all children, defined as persons under the age of 16, but BCAP has created a set of robust and rigorous rules to protect primary school and pre-school children. As a result, the rules ban the use of celebrities and licensed characters, promotional offers and health or nutrition claims in food or drink advertisements directly targeted at those age groups through their content.
In summary, the new radio rules state that advertisements for food and soft drinks should not:
- Encourage or condone excessive consumption of any food
- Encourage poor nutritional habits or an unhealthy lifestyle
- Make nutrition or health claims if targeted directly at pre-school or primary school children
- Use promotional offers, licensed characters and celebrities popular with children if targeted directly at pre-school or primary school children
- Suggest that confectionery and snack food products may be substituted for balanced meals
- Encourage children to eat or drink a product only to take advantage of a promotional offer.
Advertisements for fresh fruit and vegetables are exempt from the restrictions designed to protect pre-school and primary school children.
The rules will come into effect on 17 September 2007. Existing food and drink campaigns and those at an advance stage of development will have a period of grace, until 16 December 2007, to ensure compliance. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) will be responsible for administering the rules.
The Chairman of BCAP, Andrew Brown, says: “This is a significant milestone, with a strict, consistent and sound set of principles now applying across all media. The advertising industry has responded to Government and public concern about rising levels of childhood obesity and demonstrated its commitment to playing its part in tackling the problem through the formulation of stringent advertising rules.”
Access the new rules
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
1. Why is BCAP introducing new radio restrictions on food and drink advertising to children?
In 2002, the Government’s Chief Medical Officer reported that: “the risk factor which is causing the most concern for the future health of our country is obesity… Action is needed to help and support people – particularly children – to reshape their diet.”
In November 2004, the Department of Health (DH) published its ‘Choosing Health’ White Paper, which set out a comprehensive approach to improving the nation’s health. It included measures for reducing obesity and improving diet and nutrition. To those ends, Government called for action to restrict the advertising and promotion to children of foods and drinks that are high in fat, salt or sugar (HFSS) in broadcast and non-broadcast media.
The DH and Food Standards Agency (FSA) “identified television advertising as an area where action should be considered to restrict the advertising of HFSS products to children. The Government therefore asked Ofcom to consider proposals for strengthening its rules on the television advertising of food to children.”
To have maximum effect, the Government considered action needed to be taken in all forms of food advertising and promotion, including: broadcast, non-broadcast, sponsorship, brand-sharing, point of sale advertising, vending in schools, labels, wrappers and packaging.
2. When will the new rules take effect?
The rules will take effect from 17 September 2007. A grace period, ending 16 December 2007, will apply to existing food and drink campaigns and those at an advanced stage of development.
3. Why do the new restrictions protect primary school and pre-school children only? Why not all children?
The new rules do protect all children, defined as persons under the age of 16. The rules ensure that marketing communications do not condone or encourage poor nutritional habits or an unhealthy lifestyle in children. For example, advertisements should not:
- encourage excessive consumption or attitudes associated with poor diets
- place unfair pressure on children to buy products or ask others to purchase products on their behalf
- encourage children to eat or drink a product only to take advantage of a promotional offer.
BCAP has created supplementary rules to protect further what the Government recognises as the most vulnerable age group – primary school children. Those rules ban the use of celebrities and licensed characters, promotional offers and health and nutrition claims in food or drink advertisements directly targeted at primary school and pre-school children. Advertisements for fresh fruit and vegetables will be excluded from those restrictions.
4. Why did BCAP decide to treat all foods and drinks the same? Why did it not restrict “bad foods” only?
A balanced diet is fundamentally important to health. This is achieved through eating the correct combination of foods, taking into account how often foods are eaten and portion size. A banana and chocolate bar can both feature in a balanced diet. These new rules prevent advertisements from including content that undermines the principles of a balanced diet.
5. The rules covering the television advertising of food and soft drink to children discriminate between HFSS foods and non-HFSS foods using the FSA’s Nutrient Profiling model. Why didn’t BCAP use the same model for radio?
The FSA model was specifically intended to be used for television advertising Television is widely considered to be more influential than other media.
BCAP does not have the relevant expertise in nutritional profiling. It took expert advice on the Food Standards Agency’s Nutrient Profiling model and concluded that the model was not appropriate for radio. BCAP considers that the nutrient profiling model has serious flaws. For example:
- The combination of foods eaten, how often they are eaten and the portion size is important in achieving a balanced diet and none of those factors are considered in the Nutrient Profiling model
- It does not consider the vitamin or mineral content or how many additives a food contains - aspects that may be just as important as the nutritional content
- It seems to be based on the scientifically invalid assumption that 'good' nutrients can balance out 'bad' nutrients
- It classifies many nutritious products commonly eaten by children as 'unhealthy', for example cheese, raisins and breakfast cereals.
6. Why do BCAP’s radio rules differ from the rules on the television advertising of food and drinks to children?
Television advertising is different to advertising in other media. Research conducted for Ofcom by Professor Livingstone concluded that TV advertising, combined with TV viewing in general, has a modest effect on children’s food preferences. BCAP considered that that combination is simply not relevant to radio. Television provides dedicated children’s channels and programming slots that attract an almost exclusive or disproportionately high child audience. The same cannot be said for radio.
7. Who will consider complaints about potential breaches of these new rules? What will happen if these rules are breached?
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) will police these rules and respond to complaints about advertisements. In the event the ASA considers a breach has occurred it shall require the radio licensee to withdraw the advertisement.
8. Will all celebrities or only those celebrities popular with children be banned from appearing in food and drink advertisements?
The restriction on the use of celebrities and licensed characters is only relevant to food or drink advertisements that are directly targeted at primary school or pre-school children through their content. Those advertisements cannot include any celebrity, or licensed character, popular with children.
9. Why are brand equity characters exempted from the ban on celebrities and licensed characters featuring in food or dink advertisements directly targeted at primary school or pre-school children?
Brand-generated characters do not have the same status (iconic or of authority) as celebrities and licensed characters can have. They are uniquely associated with a particular branded product and children don’t engage with them in the same way as they can do with celebrities and licensed characters known from programming or film.
A number of advertising codes and regulations internationally have recognised that brand-generated characters are qualitatively different from celebrities and licensed characters and should therefore be treated differently from a regulatory perspective.
10. How does BCAP define if the content of advertisements is “directly targeted at” primary and pre-school children?
It’s for the ASA to decide if the content of an ad is directly targeted at certain age groups. The ASA is skilled at making such judgments for other advertisements and will take into account all aspects of the content of the ad.
11. Why didn’t BCAP hold a public consultation on the new rules?
There was an extensive period of public consultation supporting the development of the TV food and drink advertising content rules. This raised many of the issues that have been considered by BCAP as it has drawn up the new radio rules.
12. Who will review the impact of the new rules?
The Government will publish a progress report in autumn 2007 and will carry out a full review in 2008, to establish the extent of change to the nature and balance of food advertising. BCAP will carry out its own compliance and monitoring projects.
13. How will the restrictions help to tackle obesity?
These restrictions are in response to just one small part of a much wider Government initiative to reduce childhood obesity. The Government’s project touches on all aspects of children’s lives, including education, parenting and physical activity. The Government will review the combined effectiveness of these measures