Patti interviewed on a news report on Nestlé’s Maggi Noodles Aljazeera 5th June 2015
Criminal Complaint Accuses Nestlé India of High Lead Levels in Maggi Noodles Food inspectors say they found seven-times the permissible level of lead in a routine test By PREETIKA RANA Wall Street Journal, May 31, 2015 CLICK HERE
Nestle Must Not Escape Liability After Poisoning a Whole Generation CLICK HERE
Five Nestle Controversies You Never Knew About, Indian Express, Shruti Suresh | 6th June 2015 CLICK HERE
Conflict of interest in public health: should there be a law to prevent it?
Arun Gupta, Radha Holla, Shoba Suri
Published online: June 4, 2015
http://www.wsj.com/articles/criminal-complaint-accuses-nestle-india-of-high-lead-levels-in-maggi-noodles-1433082268
2 WHO’s Framework for Engagement with Non – State Actors (FENSA) was not finalised at the Assembly. CLICK HERE for the version as it was left at the end of the Assembly – and just posted on WHO’s website The resolution calls for an open-ended intergovernmental meeting to continue the work no later than October. Given the fact there was no final decision and the whole Conflicts of Interest Section is still in brackets – can someone explain why this was a Resolution and not a simple Decision? We have always been told that too many Resolutions are passed. CLICK HERE for press coverage etc and CLICK HERE for the NGO statements on the WHO website (they don’t stay there for very long unfortunately)
3 NGO Letter to the European Commission: NGOs resign from Alcohol and Health Forum as Commission ignores Member State and European Parliament Calls for Alcohol Strategy 03/06/2015
A few excerpts: “The Forum was established as a tool to support the implementation of the EU Alcohol Strategy, which expired in 2012. Given the absence of plans to develop a new Alcohol Strategy, our participation in the EU Alcohol and Health Forum can no longer be justified… since its inception have raised concerns about its efficacy. Concerns have been raised about the lack of evidence to indicate that voluntary commitments from the alcohol industry lead to reductions in alcohol harm… to date, there have been no evaluation studies of Forum commitments which demonstrate any impact on public health……Moving forward, we will focus our efforts on working together to pursue public health goals, free from conflicts of interests, and would welcome your suggestions on how this might be achieved.”
CLICK here for a good explanation of a new Coalition of NGOs and Unions called The Better Regulation Watchdog by UNI Europa’s Head of EU Affairs Christina Colclough
4 An article in yesterday’s Guardian about corporate grooming of graduates: How a corporate cult captures and destroys our best graduates George Monbiot 3rd June 2015 CLICK HERE
A few excerpts: “…John Sheil and I sent questions to eight of the universities with the highest average graduate salaries….We asked whether they seek to counter these lavish recruitment drives and defend students from the love blitz….Most offered no evidence of any prior interest in these questions. Where we expected deep deliberation to have taken place, we found instead an intellectual vacuum…..They cited their duty of impartiality….But they appear to have confused impartiality with passivity. Passivity in the face of unequal forces is anything but impartial.”
5: CLICK HERE for the newsletter of the Alliance Against Conflict of Interest (AACI) of India Update 5, May 2015. http://www.aaci-india.org/
6 More trouble for Nestle: Larvae found in milk powder in Tamil Nadu, Hindustan Times, New Delhi Jun 02, 2015 CLICK HERE
7 A call to join the movement to support the elaboration of a UN Treaty on Business and Human Rights and sign the new Treaty Alliance Joint Statement as an organization and/or as an individual.
Read the Statement: treatymovement.com/statement/ Sign the Statement: treatymovement.com/sign-on/ More Treaty Alliance News & Activities: treatymovement.com/news/ Join the Movement & Take Action: treatymovement.com/get-more
8 UN experts voice concern over adverse impact of free trade and investment agreements on human rights
http://www.ohchr.org/FR/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=16031&LangID=E#sthash.2HReiKHL.dpuf
9 Conflict of interest in public health: should there be a law to prevent it?
Arun Gupta, Radha Holla, Shoba Suri CLICK HERE
Lastly: See the consultations page of my Policy Blog for comments on current consultations.
1 Global Strategy for Women’s Children’s and Adolescent Health This important strategy pushes PPPs and Multistakeholder strategies and shockingly doesn’t include protection of breastfeeding CLICK HERE for our comments CLICK HERE and CLICK HERE
2 Interim Report of the Commission on Ending Childhood Obesity: This is now closed: CLICK HERE for IBFAN comments and HERE for old comments