“Unhealthy” commodity companies like those engaged in alcohol, tobacco, junk foods, gambling, infant milk formula, and fossil fuels to name a few around the world are using the covid-19 pandemic for commercial gain in ways that could fuel future disease epidemics in a big way, a report has said.
Taking exception to this “corporate capture of covid 19”, the researchers from the NCD Alliance and a multi-university and multi-agency consortium of researchers known as SPECTRUM, based at Edinburgh University, has called for a tough government actions and warned that firms were trying to weaken regulations and shape tax policies to their advantages.
The study also slammed such firms for “leveraging” the coronavirus crisis to burnish their brands, build influence, and advance their strategic interests, often to the detriment of wider public health and sustainability goals.
Lucy Westerman, the NCD Alliance’s policy and campaigns manager, said, “There is an irony that companies whose products increase the risk of non-communicable diseases, putting people at higher risk of suffering through the pandemic, have positioned themselves as heroes and partners in the response but have interfered in public policies that seek to protect population health.”
Linda Bauld, a professor of public health at Edinburgh University and head of SPECTRUM, said that companies were constantly adapting their engagement with covid-19 and that the findings should be seen as the “tip of the iceberg.”
Jeff Collin, co-investigator and professor of global health policy at Edinburgh University, said, “Alcohol and ultraprocessed food companies in particular are desperate to present themselves as partners in global health and development rather than as key drivers of NCD [non-communicable disease] epidemics. And they’re extensively working to exploit opportunities arising from the pandemic to promote that framing-one that has worrying potential to shape policy agendas across national and international levels.”
In the crowdsourced project the researchers analysed companies’ activity over 10 weeks, from early May to mid-July this year, in 94 countries. They amassed 786 submissions, in which the most frequently cited countries were the UK and the US (119 submissions each), followed by Australia, India, Mexico, Brazil, and Jamaica
Westerman said, “Companies rapidly adapted their marketing efforts to reference the health and social concerns associated with the pandemic.