RELEASE: Health professionals, parents bring national campaign to retire Ronald McDonald to New England

Group asks Peter Napoli, owner of more than 100 McDonald’s stores in New England, to take concerns to executives

For Immediate Release:
October 17, 2011

Contact:
Christine Chester, 857-413-6097
Sriram Madhusoodanan, 857-413-6428

Boston, MA – Today, in conjunction with the annual American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) conference, health professionals, joined by local parents, took concerns about increasing rates of childhood diet-related diseases and junk food marketing directly to Peter Napoli, owner of more than 100 McDonald’s franchise locations in New England.

Delegates delivered an open letter addressed to McDonald’s CEO Jim Skinner, signed by more than 1600 health professionals and institutions, urging the corporation to retire Ronald McDonald and to cease marketing to children altogether.

“For nearly 50 years, McDonald’s has pumped billions into marketing campaigns targeting our kids – with devastating effects on children’s health,” said Juliana Shulman, national campaign organizer for Corporate Accountability International’s Value [the] Meal campaign. “Franchise owners like Peter Napoli have a critical role to play in compelling the burger giant to stop the predatory marketing of junk food to our kids.”

The delegation builds on a recent campaign launch where leading health institutions from the Upham’s Corner Health Center to the Massachusetts Public Health Association announced that they were endorsing the open letter. The letter, which launched with over 550 signers in May, has grown to more than 1600 signers from all 50 states and from around the world.

The letter has been signed by authorities in their field like Dr. Marie McDonnell, Director of the Inpatient Diabetes Program at Boston Medical Center and Dr. Walter Willett, Chair of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health, as well as luminaries in the national public health community, including Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, renowned local pediatrician and author and Hollywood-immortalized medical doctor and clown, Patch Adams.

“There is no debate about whether the aggressive marketing of McDonald’s style fast food to children should be stopped,” said Dr. Alan Meyers, pediatrician and Co-Chair of the Massachusetts Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ obesity committee. “It is not in dispute that younger children do not understand the difference between reality and marketing. So targeting them with marketing is inherently unethical. And health professionals like myself deal with the consequences of this marketing every day. Children are getting sick with diet-related conditions like diabetes at younger and younger ages. It breaks your heart and it’s time for the industry leader to do its part."

As the letter notes, a growing number of studies from the Institutes of Medicine to the National Bureau of Economic Research demonstrate that reducing junk food marketing to kids could spare the health of millions of children.

Most recently, the AAP urged a ban on junk food advertising to children as part of a new research review published in June in the Pediatrics journal, directly addressing the link between marketing and childhood obesity. Specifically, the AAP established a policy recommending a total ban on junk food ads to children, restrictions on interactive food advertising and more dedicated research into the health impacts of heavy media use by children.

And though McDonald’s and its competitors have acknowledged the damaging role of its marketing in today’s public health crisis by pledging to voluntarily reduce it, a Yale-Rudd Center study recently found that kids’ exposure to fast food marketing has increased, in particular ads by McDonald’s. In 2009, children were exposed to up to 26 percent more of the industry leader’s television ads then they were in 2007.

Corporate Accountability International (formerly Infact) is a membership organization that has, for the last 35 years, successfully advanced campaigns protecting health, the environment and human rights. Value [the] Meal is Corporate Accountability International’s campaign dedicated to reversing the global epidemic of diet-related disease by challenging the fast food industry to curb a range of its practices.

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