HEALTH Minister Dr Christopher Tufton yesterday made a special appeal to food manufacturers to start voluntarily making their products healthier and enhancing labelling which is appropriate in the Jamaican context, even before these requirements become mandatory.

Tufton, speaking at the fifth group stakeholder consultation hosted by the National Food Industry Task Force at the Bureau of Standards Jamaica, said there have been 14 other consultations with food industry stakeholders as the Government seeks to come to a consensus with the movers and shakers of food manufacturing and production in the island.

The task force was set in March to support the health ministry’s response to lifestyle diseases, which is said to have accounted for 70 per cent of adult deaths in Jamaica in 2010.

The stakeholders meeting involved key industry players in the food manufacturing and producing sector.

The health minister said manufacturers must change the content of the food it puts on shelves, as unhealthy lifestyles and poor food choices are killing Jamaicans.

“This is not a Jamaica initiative. This is an emerging global movement and we are either going to be left behind or we are going to read the trends and adjust to those trends. Already the umbrella organisations that we subscribe to are discussing conventions that will include measures to be taken by member countries to put in place certain rules (and) policy positions, which will steer global behaviour as a response to what their data is indicating in terms of the disease burden of the global population — and NCDs (non-communicable diseases) is now the clear and present danger and dominating global discussion,” he outlined.

According to national data, in 2010 some 70 per cent of youth said they drink at least one sugar-sweetened beverage daily. A major thrust of the task force is to encourage manufacturers to willingly reduce the amount of salt, sugar, saturated and trans-fat in their products.

Dr Tufton reiterated that the food policy is being developed to combat these distressing statistics and that a major public education campaign on nutrition and labeling will, therefore, be rolled out to help consumers with making better choices.

“It could take us a generation to get to our ideal scenario and we have accepted that, but the reality is we have to start somewhere because we are in a crisis based on these lifestyle ailments. We fully accept that it is going to represent a change in the way businesses is operate over time, especially if legislation is applied, guided by policy, to redirect how products are formulated, where and how they are distributed, branding, labelling and that sort of thing,” he said.

He stressed that the Government was not taking a hostile approach to getting companies to make the necessary shift, but wants to work with these entities for the benefit of the consumers.

Chief executive officer of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica Dennis Chung acknowledged the health dangers posed by consistent consumption of ingredients which promote disease and, at the same time, pointed out that more important than imposing a tax on certain products, is educating the Jamaican public to make better choices. “What we have to be careful about as we move forward is that we don’t have knee-jerk reactions to try to resolve the issues,” he said.

Chung said his research had found that in some jurisdictions the authorities were able to influence a gradual shift in consumer food choices through education and constant discussions on eating healthy and making lifestyle changes. “The transition is important because a lot of the things that we are trying to ban today do provide a lot of economic benefits, and there are costs associated with it and we want to ensure that it’s a win-win situation for everyone,” he said.

The Government wants to implement the recommendations of the task force by 2018 and the consultations are aimed at meeting that deadline, with input from stakeholders, including the general public.

Manufacturers have two to three years to comply with the final food industry requirements.

The recommendations are for improved labelling (updating serving size requirements and clearer nutritional facts); the inclusion of micronutrients that are necessary for the nutritional needs of the Jamaican population; and changing footnotes to better explain the percentage daily values. Other areas being worked on by the task force include nutrition/health education and promotion; tackling inappropriate food marketing; fiscal policies in promoting health; and child nutrition.