Advertising, Estonia, Foodstuff, Legislation, Markets and Companies

The working draft compiled by a work group at the Ministry of Social Affairs names setting out food marketing criteria enabling to curb the marketing of high-fat, high-salt and high-sugar foods to children as a key objective for the coming few years. It says this must be done on the basis of relevant international recommendations and considering the best practices of other countries.

"Many EU member states have taken significant steps to regulate food marketing directed towards children. In addition self-regulatory measures have been imposed that can be seen as an alternative or complementary measure in addition to legal regulation," the work group said.

According to the work group, the purpose of the regulations is to limit the television advertising of food for children that is shown during the air time of children's broadcasts or at a time when children may make up a large portion of viewers.

Additionally the ministry intends to set up a work group in Estonia to draw up criteria adapted to Estonian conditions for restricting the marketing of food and non-alcoholic beverages to children. The ministry also wishes to conclude a voluntary agreement on responsible marketing with representatives of the sector.

Estonian Minister of Health and Labor Jevgeni Ossinovski said at the end of last month that, speaking of advertising, the first step would be to try and convince advertisers to reach some sort of self-regulation agreement to better protect children from unhealthy food.

"We have tried doing it in other fields but haven't gotten very good results with alcohol advertising," Ossinovski said.

According to Ossinovski the issues are to be discussed very thoroughly soon. "Unlike alcohol, tobacco and some other product groups, consuming sugar and salt is not harmful in itself if it is done in moderate amounts, so it wouldn't be reasonable to ban advertising all products that contain sugar," he added.