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Food “responsibility deal” has cost 6000 lives, professor tells meeting

BMJ 2015; 350 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h676 (Published 05 February 2015) Cite this as: BMJ 2015;350:h676
  1. Nigel Hawkes
  1. 1London

A “responsibility deal,” under which food manufacturers and retailers agree to sell healthier products if the government refrains from legislation, has achieved gains “worth celebrating,” a meeting in London heard on 3 February.

The deal has been criticised as being soft on the food industry and easily manipulated, but Susan Jebb, of the University of Oxford, who chairs the deal’s food network, put up a stout defence of its record at a Westminster Food and Nutrition Forum held at the Royal Aeronautical Society. “It’s a judgement call, but I personally don’t buy the case that it would have been better done by legislation,” she said. “That’s very difficult when you’re talking about product composition.”

Parliament …

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