Our Advertising Regulator Is Funded by the Food and Beverage Industry. Should It Be Allowed to Block Public Health Messaging?”
Mail & Guardian / The Examination reports:
“A review of more than 700 ARB decisions by The Examination found that the board had intervened to challenge or weaken public health messaging in advertisements on multiple occasions while declining to block advertisements for products aimed at children — actions that critics contend reflect a pro-industry bias.
“The 14 members of the ARB’s two appeals committees include a judge and a senior lawyer who serve as independent parties and marketing executives and have decades of experience between them. Three appeal committee members are employed by major alcohol companies, while two have worked with national and international beverage companies in the past.
“‘We are being blocked from running a public service announcement or a public health message by a group that is then funded by the very people whose products are being impugned,’ Petronell Kruger, programme director of Heala, told The Examination.
“Parliament is considering legislation that will restrict food, tobacco and vape companies from marketing unhealthy products to children and give the department of health, not the ARB, the final authority over the issues.”
Assessment
The Advertising Regulatory Board (ARB) is South Africa is a self-regulatory body that directly represents the interests of the alcohol industry. The Drinks Federation South Africa (DF-SA) is a “member organisation” and directly represents multinational alcohol industry giants Diageo, Heineken, Pernod Ricard, and SAB (AB InBev).
The Examination investigation reveals that the self-regulatory structure functions as a shield for commercial interests against public health action. Approximately one third of the board’s budget comes from alcohol, food and beverage companies, creating a direct financial dependence on the industries whose advertising it is mandated to police. The conflict runs deeper than funding – three of the 14 appeals committee members are employed by major alcohol companies, and two more have beverage industry backgrounds.
When Heala, a health advocacy alliance, challenged the blocking of its evidence-based public health advertisement about sugary drinks, the appeals panel included a former PepsiCo and Pioneer Foods executive who had represented the fruit juice industry in government consultations on sugar taxation. The ARB’s CEO Gail Schimmel acknowledged the “very strange funding system” but defended the inclusion of industry representatives ignoring the apparent conflicts of interest.
The pattern of ARB rulings documented by The Examination reveals industry capture of regulatory structures. The board blocked a public health advertisement by Heala warning about the harms of sugary drinks. It blocked a separate public service advertisement from the government’s own health department about sugar harm. Yet it ruled in favour of Coca-Cola’s campaign associating sugary drinks with rugby athletes, and permitted the use of Barbie on children’s sugary chocolate milk packaging. The pattern is clear: the ARB intervenes against public health messaging while giving corporate marketing of health harming products to children a pass. The board has also lobbied the government to lower the proposed age threshold for food marketing limits from 18 to 13, and claimed that advertising regulation should remain under its own authority rather than be transferred to the health department.
The alcohol industry’s direct involvement in this structure carries significant implications for alcohol policy in South Africa. With alcohol company employees sitting on the body that adjudicates advertising complaints, any effort to protect South Africans from alcohol marketing – including marketing that targets children and young people – faces an inherently conflicted self-regulatory gatekeeper. South Africa has had draft legislation to ban alcohol advertising for more than a decade, consistently blocked by industry lobbying.
For alcohol policy advocates, the pending parliamentary legislation to give the health department authority over food and tobacco advertising sets an important precedent. If Parliament transfers regulatory authority away from industry-funded self-regulation for those product categories, the same principle should apply to alcohol advertising.
The Examination investigation into ARB conflicts of interest strengthens the case: self-regulation of health harming industry practices is no regulation. The WHO’s alcohol policy best buys include comprehensive limitations on alcohol marketing precisely because industry-led oversight consistently fails to protect people from harm.