Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) led a group of Congressional Democrats on Wednesday urging the Obama administration to strengthen its oversight of food and beverage companies in hopes of reducing unhealthy food marketing to children.
Harkin and DeLauro joined Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), along with Reps. Jim Moran (D-Va.), Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Mark Takano (D-Calif.) and Eleanor Holmes-Norton (D-District of Columbia), in sending a letter to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairwoman Edith Ramirez.
“We were greatly disappointed to hear that … the [FTC] is not actively working on projects focused on food marketing to children,” the legislators stated in the letter. “This is unacceptable. We strongly urge FTC to rethink its priorities and put the health of our children, our nation’s next generation, first. It is the FTC’s responsibility to ensure food and media companies make progress on reducing unhealthy food marketing to children and monitor how well their self-regulatory efforts are working.”
The FTC issued a report in 2012 that found around $2 billion a year is spent on marketing food and beverages to children. The majority of those products are of poor nutritional value.