Statement: Corporate Accountability International marks Food Day with ads, events challenging McDonald's predatory marketing

By Sriram Madhusoodanan, National Campaign Organizer for Value [the] Meal, Corporate Accountability International

For Immediate Release:
October 20, 2011

Contact:
Christine Chester, 617-695-2525
Sriram Madhusoodanan, 857-413-6428

Good morning. My name is Sriram Madhusoodanan. I’m one of the national campaign organizers for Value [the] Meal – a public education and action campaign challenging McDonald’s and the fast food industry to stop junk food marketing to kids. Value [the] Meal is a campaign of Corporate Accountability International, a membership organization with a 35-year track record of protecting public health by challenging corporate abuse.

Today we are here at the pediatrics clinic of Drs. Hagan, Rinehart and Connolly to stand with a growing number of health professionals and institutions here in New England and across the country, who are urging Peter Napoli,  the owner of more than 100 McDonald’s franchises, and McDonald’s top executives to stop marketing junk food to children. 

With us here, we have an exclusive preview of a full page ad in the Burlington Free Press, that Corporate Accountability International with its partners in the health community will take out publish on Food Day Monday, October 24th. These ads feature an open letter which was launched in May with over 550 health professionals signers from all 50 states. Now, the letter is signed by more than 1600 health professionals and institutions calling on McDonald’s to change course. Among these 1600 names, there are more than 300 health professionals and institutions from the New England area who are concerned about the New England community’s health and McDonald’s marketing to kids. The ads encourage other health professionals to sign their name at LetterToMcDonalds.org, a webpage featuring the full letter and the signatories, and allowing the public to support the placement of the ad in still more publications nationwide.

Nationally, signatories range from child psychologists to cardiologists…luminaries like Dr. Patch Adams, Oprah-regular Dr. Andrew Weil, and President Obama’s family physician of 20 years Dr. David Scheiner to Dr. William C. Roberts, editor-in-chief of The American Journal of Cardiology and Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, notable author, pediatrician and professor at Harvard Medical School. 

Institutional signers include the American Medical Students Association and Doctors for America. 

The signatories from New England alone represent a who’s who of our region’s health leaders. Today, you will hear briefly from two of these leaders: Jennifer Laurent, a nurse practitioner and President of the Vermont Nurse Practitioner’s Association, and Sarah Hanzas, a Vermont state representative, vice-chair of the legislature’s Healthcare committee and a mother of three. 

They are both speaking today in alliance with the over 300health professionals who have signed onto the letter here in New England, including: the Vermont Public Health Association; the Vermont Nurse Practitioner’s Association; Donna Hunt, rD, CDe, Director of the Diabetes and Endocrinology Center at Rutland Regional Medical Center; and Dorothy Malone-Rising, Ms, aPrn, anPBC, President of the Diabetes Center of the Lamoille Valley at Johnson Health Clinic.

McDonald’s fast food and its marketing are exacting a crippling human toll, which the corporation has been resistant to quantifying publicly. Nevertheless, the corporation’s health impacts are becoming better understood and high profile groups like the World Health Organization, the White House Task Force on Obesity and the U.S. Surgeon General have recognized the links between fast food marketing and our children’s health, leading them to take action.

Most recently, the American Academy of Pediatrics urged an end to junk food advertising to children as part of a new research review published in June in the Pediatrics journal, which directly addressed 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.

Across the country, franchise owners play a key role in compelling McDonald’s CEO Jim Skinner to act in the interest of children’s health. Where McDonald’s executives are ultimately accountable to a small group of shareholders, franchise owners are ultimately accountable to the communities they do business in.

McDonald’s franchise owners, including Peter Napoli, spend a percentage of their profits on local marketing. Peter Napoli is the owner of more than 100 McDonald’s stores (more than 90 of which are between Boston and Burlington).  Were an owner like Peter Napoli to commit to not directing his local ad dollars at children, it would send a powerful message to other franchise owners and the corporation at large. Peter Napoli’s business succeeds when his/her franchises are seen as good neighbors. To this end, Peter Napoli can be the voice, and even advocate, for community concerns to an otherwise dismissive CEO.

Needless to say, this common sense appeal from our nation’s health community should be a wake-up call to McDonald’s to change course…to move beyond empty promises to decrease its burden on kids and their caretakers…and to actually commit to stop bombarding children with marketing.

I’d be happy to answer questions on this and more, as will our esteemed panel, after they offer brief statements.

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