Response to Vojtech Hainer, President of the EASO Executive Board, and Alain Golay, ECO Congress Chair

Geneva 1st July 2008

Dear Vojtech Hainer and Alain Golay,

Thank you very much for your response dated May 11th to our letter regarding the sponsorship of 16th European Congress on Obesity (ECO2008) sent May 9th and your offer to IBFAN to provide further input for
the development of the EASO guidelines for industry participation.

We have now had chance to study the EASO current guidelines and have to say that we are baffled as to
how the EASO Board was able to interpret them in such a way as to permit sponsorship of the ECO Congress by Nestlé. They already explicitly state that funding will not be accepted "from organisations which engage in unethical practices, for example, Violations of the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes or
other unethical marketing practices".

As we explained in our first letter, IBFAN and other NGOs working on food policy, carry out regular monitoring which shows that Nestlé consistently and systematically violates the International Code and other internationally accepted benchmarks for ethical behaviour. The EASO decision undermines the credibility of
this research and sends a damaging message to the public and to the scientific community which can only
lead Nestle to believe that there is no need for it to change its harmful marketing practices : the scientific community does not really care what a company does as long as it provides sponsorship for conferences.

The rationale given that there is a need to engage in order to understand ‘the thinking of industry and to potentially influence their actions” does not seem credible and ignores the unwarranted endorsement to the company that the sponsorship deal conveys.

Like EASO, IBFAN is an active member of the EU Platform on Diet, Physical Activity and Health and on this Platform, and through many other means, interacts with industry on a regular basis. However, in order to protect our integrity and independence IBFAN has clear rules which prohibit sponsorship by the food industry for all its activities, including its many conferences and we go to great lengths to ensure that these are followed.

We note that you say that ECO was not a public event or a policy making forum and that it was considered
that the industry participation in the congress in no way influenced the scientific content of the main Congress programme. While we trust that this is true, it does not address the real problem of conflict of interest with EASO’s aims and objectives, the image transfering the fact that Nestle will use its association with EASO as a means to promote an undeserved good image to the scientific community and the general public.

Given the complexity of these issues, we really would be happy to accept your offer to meet to discuss this further.

Yours sincerely,

Daphne Lachavanne and Rebecca Norton, for IBFAN GIFA

Copied to the following persons, co-signatories of the initial Open letter sent to Vojtech Hainer and Alain Golay by IBFAN GIFA on May 9th 2008: