The working group that assessed the impact of the law that restricted food advertising aimed at children and young people wants to regulate the marketing strategies of digital influencers and increase the scope of the legislation to 18 years.
Experts show concern about the digital environment, remembering that around 80% of the infractions detected were online, and suggest improving “the Portuguese legal framework in order to allow regulating the marketing strategies of digital content creators (“influencers”)”.
“It’s one of the challenges that Portugal has, and that other countries also have, at the moment, because, in fact, the digital environment is difficult to control and monitor and we probably don’t have the appropriate tools to effect”, the director of the National Program for the Promotion of Healthy Eating at the Directorate-General for Health (DGS), Maria João Gregório, admitted to Lusa.
He says that a tool that uses artificial intelligence has already been tested to identify which advertisements children are exposed to when they browse different social media platforms, but only as a pilot study, and recalls that these applications ions “have a set of challenges, particularly related to data protection issues”.
To try to find solutions, the person responsible explains that Portugal has been working in conjunction with the World Health Organization (WHO), which has been developing new tools and applications over the last few years. ctions to help Member States carry out this monitoring.
Maria João Gregório also recalls that “digital marketing has no borders” and recognizes that “it is difficult, on platforms that are not based in our country, to be able to enforce national legislation “.
As for ‘influencers’, he says that a manual of good practices is being drawn up, in conjunction with the General Directorate of Consumer Affairs (DGC).
The working group, coordinated by the DGS and which includes representatives from the DGC, Directorate-General for Education and Directorate-General for Veterinary Medicine, was responsible for evaluating the impact of the law of 2019 that restricted advertising aimed at children under 16 years of age of foods and drinks with high energy value, salt, sugar and fats.
In the first evaluation report, which will be released this Friday, experts suggest changing the age limit of the law’s coverage to 18 years, to achieve “greater alignment with the remaining restrictions on minors provided for in the Advertising Code”, as well as better compliance with WHO recommendations on this matter.
They also recommend that more investment be made in research projects to develop “technological solutions that are capable of more effectively monitoring digital marketing”, one of the difficulties encountered.
The experts also call for “more agile monitoring mechanisms” of food advertising in the areas surrounding schools and playgrounds, namely defining “a reporting system for communication campaigns available on billboards of these areas”, in coordination with the municipalities.
They also suggest the regular carrying out, every five years, of the national food survey, as well as access to other food consumption indicators, namely data referring to the volume of food sales, to “enable quality data to assess the impact of this and other public health measures”.
Regarding the impact of the law, they consider that it “does not yet appear to be sufficient to ensure that children live, move around and navigate in environments free from marketing unhealthy foods”.
In view of the WHO’s recommendations in this regard, the report highlights weaknesses in Portuguese law: “it does not protect all minors and does not cover all marketing techniques (such as sponsorship, offers, brand marketing ‘, product packaging, points of sale), as well as programs with mixed audiences”.
