McDonald's and PepsiCo to help write UK health policy

[oldironside]

"The Department of Health is putting the fast food companies McDonald's and KFC and processed food and drink manufacturers such as PepsiCo, Kellogg's, Unilever, Mars and Diageo at the heart of writing government policy on obesity, alcohol and diet-related disease, the Guardian has learned.

In an overhaul of public health, said by campaign groups to be the equivalent of handing smoking policy over to the tobacco industry, health secretary Andrew Lansley has set up five "responsibility deal" networks with business, co-chaired by ministers, to come up with policies. Some of these are expected to be used in the public health white paper due in the next month."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/nov/12/mcdonalds-pepsico-help-health-policy

This... is... insane!

[non sociopath skin]

1. Those whom the gods wish to destroy ....

... hopefully ...

The Skin

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. They prefer industry control of groups making voluntary suggestions to quangos

It's the 'small government' idea again; all the quangos have been demonised, and the Tories gleefully got rid of as many as possible, because that sounds popular. And then the 'Big Society' idea says "well, we can get volunteers and stuff, can't we - I'm sure those nice mega-corporations can help us out a bit in their areas of expertise". And so they hand over the influence that the corporations would have had to pay to get earlier. And since it's "the Big Society", anything they come up with is voluntary anyway.

I bet the Tea Party's backers are looking on enviously - all that money they have to spend to drown their government, and the coalition here are leaping into the ocean holding lead weights and taking off the lifebelts. And they didn't even have to pay for TV political ads to get them elected.

[LeftishBrit]

3. Foxes helping to write UK chicken protection policy...

[Al Jilwah]

4. Why

This is exactly why we need to legislate against these corporate giants and keep them out of any and all health related studies. They are poisoning us as badly as Tobacco ever did.