IBFAN comment:  We’ve been concerned about the Access to Nutrition Index (ATNI) since its inception in 2013, so we welcome this detailed analysis.  The index was designed to encourage investments and was used by Nestlé and Danone repeatedly in their claims of Code compliance . It was also favoured by advocates of  ‘race to the top’ and Multi-stakeholder ‘ approaches.   ATNI claimed to be ‘independent from the companies it assesses’ yet it worked closely with them on the methodology and presentation of its results as they described in June 2020: “Like with all ATNI’s work, extensive stakeholder consultations were carried out to help guide our methodology. This was done to ensure the perspectives and expertise of companies, CSOs, investors and ATNI’s expert group were integrated into this rigorous and comprehensive methodology.”  We believe that such collaboration is in direct conflict with WHA Resolution 49.15 that calls for monitoring to be “…carried out in a transparent, independent manner, free from commercial influence.”

ATNI’s monitoring inevitably revealed a high level of violations over the years – none of the companies are Code compliant and all score poorly – but its criteria failed to expose the serious weaknesses in company policies,  and the implication was that if company policies were rolled out globally, all would be well.  ATNI monitoring was not, for example, able to quickly expose the exploitation of Covid-19    ATNI’s Model Breast Milk Substitute Policy in March 2022,  appeared stronger in many areas,  but opened new loopholes for company donations.   Model-policy-on-BMS-marketing-ATNI