Ten Years of Insights on Monitoring the Corporate Political Activity of the Food and Beverage Industry: A Snowballing-Based Literature Review

Middel, Cédric N.H.; Laville, Lorien; Mackenbach, Joreintje D.; Mialon, Mélissa

Ten Years of Insights on Monitoring the Corporate Political Activity of the Food and Beverage Industry: A Snowballing-Based Literature Review

Articles in Press

Document Type : Review Article

Authors

Cédric N.H. Middel ¹^{, 2}^{, 3}^{, 4}

Lorien Laville ²^{, 5}

Joreintje D. Mackenbach ²^{, 3}^{, 4}

Mélissa Mialon ⁶

¹ Athena Institute, Faculty of Science, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

² Epidemiology & Data Science, Amsterdam UMC Location Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

³ Amsterdam Public Health Research Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

⁴ Upstream Team, Amsterdam University Medical Centers, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

⁵ Institut Polytechnique UniLaSalle, Beauvais, France

⁶ Inserm, Université Paris Cité, Paris, France

Abstract

Background
The commercial practices of the food and beverage industry contribute to ill-health. The industry actively opposes efforts to address this threat to public health through “corporate political activity” (CPA). In 2015, a tool for monitoring CPA through publicly available information was published, and has since then been applied in various countries. This study explores (1) what CPA have been identified, for which contexts and corporate actors, by this tool, and (2) what challenges were encountered for using the tool and how these were addressed.

Methods
A snowballing-based systematic literature review was performed on articles applying the tool to monitor food or beverage industry CPA. The results and discussion sections of included articles were coded qualitatively. Furthermore, original data on specific corporate actors were retrieved from included articles and qualitatively coded.

Results
Twenty articles were included, primarily covering Latin America (n = 11) and the processed foods industry (n = 13), including baby foods and sugar-sweetened drinks. The main challenges for the tool were (1) its labourintensiveness in time and resources, and (2) the limitations and biases of publicly available information. The most
widespread CPA were: spreading favourable evidence (n = 20), accessing policy-making (n = 19), and securing support beyond business (n = 19). Rarest were framing the (actions of) the industry as “legal,” dismissing health harms (n = 1), managing policy venues (n = 0), and coordinating industry strategies (n = 0).

Conclusion
We provide an overview of the reported CPA across the included articles and zoom in on specific corporate actors and actor groups. We provide recommendations on how to strengthen the tool. These include using supplemental interviews to address the limitations of publicly available information and leveraging citizen science and technological solutions to enhance the efficiency of data gathering or analysis, although this carries feasibility, ethics, and bias risks.

Keywords

Food Industry

Industry Influence

Lobbying

Public Policy

Health Policy

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