Different types of networks and links were found among actors and include: (1) individuals playing double roles in two or more organisations (Annex 4), (2) members of advisory panels from different sectors being involved in policy design or advocating for policy changes, (3) financial links between groups, and (4) partnerships being entered into for a particular purpose, such as advocacy activities or policy implementation or evaluation. An overview of the actors’ links are shown in Figure 5.6. The author developed this figure. The distances between boxes are not representative of the closeness of relationships between actors. The direction of the arrows show in which direction a relationship between actors was identified.
Each colour represents the type of relationship identified and included: advocacy or
lobbying, supporting arguments, technical support, personal double roles, technical collaboration, advisory boards, financial support, or actors as part of the federal government. Additionally, annex 5 presents a table with examples of relationships identified based on a general categorization using types of networks (issue networks or community networks defined in chapter 3 p. 61) the resources interchanged and elements of governance that might be at stake.
Constituency building with academics and the civil society
Constituency building has been part of the ‘playbook’ of private sector businesses such as tobacco and alcohol companies (Brownell & Warner, 2009). Establishing relationships with key leaders and policymakers is one way to influence policy (Brownell & Warner, 2009; Mialon, Swinburn, Wate, Tukana, & Sacks, 2016). The analysis presented in this chapter shows how key actors from the main F&BI companies in the country were somehow related to the ENPCSOD. Chapter 7 describes in detail the formal participation of these actors in the soda tax policy design, and some existing relationships that are relevant to the structure and process of the soda tax policy are discussed below.
Multiple roles of individual actors
Multiple roles of individual actors, particularly the ‘revolving door’ concept of individuals changing job roles between public and private sectors, is a well-known practice among representatives of private sector organisations including the F&BI.
Two think tanks and policy advocacy organisations, AI and IMCO, were among the organisations in Mexico whose directors or consultants held influential roles elsewhere. Both organisations were invited to participate in the soda tax evaluation.
For instance AI’s board included the former head of Coca-Cola Mexico, the Dean of the well-known private university ITAM (Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México) and the Vice-President of Walmart. The consultants included Jaime Zabludovsky, the former head of CONMEXICO (The Aspen Institute). IMCO had among its board members the Chief Executive of Grupo Bimbo, the largest packaged food producer in Mexico with 11.4% of the market share (Euromonitor, 2016), and Jaime Zabludovsky, the former head of CONMEXICO, Director of CONACYT, and head of the CEE (Consejo Coordinador Empresarial [Business Coordinating Council]) (IMCO, 2016).
Financial links between the food and beverage industry, academia and government agencies
Financial links were found among organisations involved in the soda tax. Some of these relationships included government organisations as a third party, as shown in Annex 5. One example, is a funding program to improve water and sanitation in poor communities, part funded by PepsiCo and part by international development agencies, as stated in a PepsiCo company report. This can be seen as a collaboration (exchange of information, resource sharing) or the formation of an issue network:
Funded with a loan of $450 million dollars from the Inter-American Development Bank, which eventually benefited 600,000 people with access to drinking water, and about 390 thousand people with access to sewerage and sanitation in rural areas in 31 states. Funding estimated at $1 million will come from AquaFund, a program funded by the IDB, PepsiCo Foundation, Swiss Cooperation, and the Austrian government. (PepsiCo, 2011)
PepsiCo Foundation and Coca-Cola Foundation are clear examples of F&BI funding their own non-profit organisations, as ‘front organisations’ that aim to change public perceptions about the companies or the F&BI in general through corporate social responsibility actions. These actions improve their reputation, as a representative of the media phrased it:
It is trendy (for these corporations) to clean their actions, and to promote their good will with consumers […] by including actions such as sponsoring documentaries or social responsibility actions (MIM).
Some links and partnerships between F&BI and CSO were not disclosed to the public during the soda tax debate. CSO’s did not make public any conflicts of interests, for example at COFEPRIS workshops for the PND as described in Chapter 7. These included links between the FMD and Coca-Cola, BID and PepsiCo, Coca-Cola and CONACYT, Coca-Cola and the AMD and the INNSZ and F&BI (Annex 4 and Annex 5).
For this research, some CSOs known to be in partnership with the F&BI refused to
be interviewed; these included Mexicanos Activos and Mexico se Mueve, as mentioned in Chapter 3 who were two “front organisations” or BINGOS focusing investments and policy emphasis on physical activity measures.
Funding research and establishing front groups
As noted in Chapter 3, one of the strategies used by the F&BI is to sponsor or fund research (Marks & Thompson, 2011; Newton et al., 2016). This was also found in the case of the soda tax. Some academic institutions, both private and public, were found to have been funded by the F&BI (Annex 5). First, the Coca-Cola Foundation sponsored research through CONACYT, the governmental agency that supports research in the country. In 2015 they launched a prize for any scientific project that will improve ‘science and technology’ and contributed to capacity building in the country (CONACYT, 2015). CONACYT also partnered with the Institute of Beverages for Health and Wellbeing (Instituto de Bebidas para la Salud y el Bienestar), a research group fully funded by Coca-Cola (Annex 4). This partnership was in the public domain as it was made clear in the announcement of the award:
CONACYT in coordination with the Coca-Cola Foundation sponsored the First Prize in Biomedicine Research ‘Dr. Rubén Lisker’ to Dr. […]
for his project ‘[…] the Elimination of Leukemic Cells’ (Coca-Cola Mexico, 2015b).
In 2015, the Coca-Cola Company partnered with the Mexican Diabetes Association, whose branch in Monterrey on 8 July 2015 hosted a scientific event called ‘Physical activity for people living with diabetes’. The event was hosted by the Mexican branch of an organisation called ‘Exercise is Medicine (Movimiento es Salud) which is funded by Coca-Cola. According to Exercise’s annual report, ‘Coca-Cola also provided logistical support for the event’ (Nestle & Rosenberg, 2015, p. 816).
Additionally, several networks and coalitions were created during the public discussion about the soda tax, before it was approved in the Fiscal Reform. The F&BI did not publicly disclose that they partnered with health organisations and the Mexican Federation of Diabetes (FMD, 2016; Ramirez, 2014), nor did they publicly announce their support for certain BINGOS (Business Interests non-government
organisation). For example, one group called Sweeten your Life (Endulza tu Vida) was sponsored by the sugar industry (CNIAA) (Ramirez, 2014); it tried to legitimise itself by including registered nutritionists in its leading team to give recommendations about sugar consumption (Hablemos de azúcar, 2016).
Furthermore, the F&BI participated in sponsoring organisations such as Mexico is Moving (Mexico se Mueve), Active Mexicans (Mexicanos Activos A.C.) and The Centre for Consumer Freedom (Centro para la Libertad del Consumo) (CLC, 2013;
Mexicanos Activos, 2016). The first two were organisations who were set up to promote physical activity, and the third one was a front group advocating for the right to free choice.
Additionally, after the soda tax was implemented the academic institution UNAL’s role as an agency of the obesity policy was compromised. This university was appointed to design the indicators for evaluating the obesity policy, and during this period received money from the National Association of Soda and Soda Water Producers (Asociacion Nacional de Productores de Refresco y Agua Carbonatada -ANPRAC) to publish a report on the impact of the soda tax just one year after the tax implementation. This is discussed in detail in Chapters 6 and 8. Also, the F&BI sponsored academic work on the impact the soda tax had on obesity after one year of implementation. It was published by a group of economists at ITAM, and it framed the levy’s effect as minimal:
The study that CONMEXICO and ANPRAC contracted with ITAM concluded under strict academic independence that the soda tax in 2014 (the first year of the levy) did not significantly reduce caloric consumption […] it only caused a reduction of 6 of the 3,200 daily calories consumed by an average Mexican. (Ramirez, 2016)
The report mentioned that the sponsors had no influence, regardless of the obvious bias the narratives used against the soda tax:
Kantar World Panel México. The current paper sprang from a collaboration with CONMEXICO in which they helped us get the data from KWP. CONMEXICO did not have any veto power nor influence
over the results. Any remaining errors are ours only. (Aguilar, Gutierrez, & Seira, 2015)
Other financial support given by F&BI to actors involved in the policy process is described in Chapter 6 while analysing the process of framing the impact of the soda tax. Some of them include: the link between CONMEXICO and ITAM, ANPRAC and UNAL; and Nestlé and FUNSALUD, as explained in the previous section (refer to acronyms index).
Food and beverage industry constituency building with government
Three types of formal links were identified between the F&BI and the government.
First, multiple roles of individuals across government and industry. Second, memberships of advisory boards; and third, partnerships with government agencies for implementing, monitoring or evaluating policies related to food and water provision.
‘The revolving door’
Dr. Mercedes Juan was the Executive President of the CSO FUNSALUD until December 2012 and was appointed the Secretary of Health in 2013. The strategy against obesity, ENPCSOD, came into effect under her leadership. She did not have a strong position on the soda tax when it was first proposed by the Senate and the MoF, as discussed in detail in Chapter 7. However, in 2014 she maintained that it was an effective measure in reducing soda consumption. After the first discussions on the impact of the soda tax became public in 2015 and important discussions on conflicts of interest in the Ministry of Health (MoH) were raised by civil society, she was replaced by Dr. José Narro, the former head of National Autonomous University of Mexico (Universidad Autónoma de México - UNAM).
Additionally, a few members of the FUNSALUD board have been part of the federal government, and the organisation’s general advisors include e.g. Jaime Zabludowsky, ex-General Director of CONMEXICO and a key dealer in the NAFTA treaty who also served as an advisor in other think tanks’ evaluation programs, as with Aspen and IMCO (as explained in Annex 4) (Funsalud, 2016). Major transnational corporations and political leaders argued that it was time for all those
concerned with the development to move forward, away from a ‘confrontation’ with each other and toward a ‘cooperation’ and ‘dialogue’ to tackle the urgent issues of the day (CONCAMIN, 2015).
Funding and technical support
The F&BI provided both financial support and technical support to the government.
The F&BI partnered with government with various government organisations, mainly for the implementation of parallel policy actions such as the provision of drinking water in schools (e.g. CONAGUA and INIFED, p. 181 & p. 246), or technical support, for example, for the establishment and evaluation of the obesity policy of OMENT (as described in Chapter 7 section IV, p 162). The types of support are part of strategies provided by the industry were either as public-private partnerships (PPP) or corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions. PPP are agreements between the private sector and the government to meet government or social needs, and rewarding the private sector based on possible outputs (Sharma & Bindal, 2014)..
CSR has been defined as ‘the ethical principle that an organization should be responsible for how its behaviour might affect society and the environment’ (Jobber
& Ellis-Chadwick, 2012, p.134).
Other relevant example found to be relevant to the policy process was the partnership between, CONAGUA, the World Bank and Coca-Cola FEMSA to provide water to selected poor Mexican communities:
In 2012 the World Bank gave a loan of 250 million dollars to the National Water for the program called PROMAGUA […] Also, Coca-Cola obtained seven government concessions to provide water with them to the poorest communities, and they would not have to pay any more the water service charges to the government. (Agua Org, 2016)
A number of educational programs and partnerships to promote science and technology were also funded by companies such as PepsiCo. In 2015 the PepsiCo Foundation signed an agreement to support the International Youth Foundation (IYF) with a training program called ‘Key to the Future’ aimed to prepare young students from the 39 campuses of the National College of Professional Technical
Education (Colegio Nacional de Educación Professional Técnica - CONALEP) in the State of Mexico for integration into the labour market (CONALEP, 2016).
As discussed in Chapter 8, corporations frame actions as a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) while governments frame some of these actions as public-private partnerships (PPP). Although actions framed as CSR and those framed as PPP may effectively have the same results, there are contradictions as the public may perceive CSR as separate from government. The government and F&BI links and collaborations should be a matter of public concern, as results show policymaking is embedded in a conflicted environment where the F&BI has a role of influence and power over policymaking. This is shown in Figure 5.2, where the green and blue arrows representing links between the MoH and the F&BI actors identified, outnumber the links the MoH has with independent academic institutions or international agencies, supporters of the soda tax and other health policies. As discussed in Chapter 6, this close relationship endangers the primary aim of the soda tax, namely, of protecting health. The identified links highlight the normalisation of connections among actors that go beyond common interests and instead have competing fundamental aims and goals toward health and other objectives, thereby jeopardising any attempt toward public health solutions for obesity, as other case studies have found (Collin, 2018.).
International agencies’ support to civil society organisations and academics International organisations have been recognized in the literature as actors influencing public health agendas at the country or regional level (Lee & Goodman, 2002, p. 97; Tantivess & Walt, 2008). At least three of them, PAHO as an agency, and BP and WOF as civil society organisations, have been active during the discussion of the soda tax, and they have repeatedly disclosed their position on the soda tax during the policy discussion (Annex 4) (BP; PAHO, 2015). Other organisations such as WPHNA and CSIP have provided support by issuing a number of press releases as part of the network of certain national civil societies (see Chapter 8).
Three main ways of involvement of international agencies were identified included:
taking part of advisory committees, such as the case of PAHO with the Senate
(Annex 4 and Annex 5); provision of financial support for research; and advocacy groups and support in framing the debate (Annex 4, Annex 5 and Chapter 8).
Funding research and advocacy strategies
In Mexico, BP provided technical and financial support for ‘an obesity prevention program’
(BP, 2016). In 2012, BP financed a $10 million three-year program that was indepented of the soda industry. They money was used to supported a think tank, an academic institution and a civil scoieyt (Donaldson, 2015), calling them ‘partners’. The funding sources were stated on the agencies’ websites, where they mentioned that:
For the first time, the financial power of Mexico’s soda industry faced a serious challenge. (BP)
BP influenced the wider policy debate by providing resources for academics to publish evidence supporting the soda tax (Colchero et al., 2015). BP’s support to national CSOs was one of the main strategic links which supported the soda tax implementation by shifting the power of actors involved in the obesity ‘network’.
The influence of financial support for civil society groups advocating for the tax was a key factor in this case study that allowed these pro-sugar tax groups to gain support of other civil society organisations (Nestle & Rosenberg, 2015), well-known international scholars and some well-known journalists (Chapter 8) (Donaldson, 2015).
BP paid for media campaigns designed and promoted by the ‘partner’ civil society groups and with support of academics, so that they could gain wider credibility for their arguments supporting the soda tax. For example, Dr. Lustig, a well-known international expert in obesity, was invited to talk to the media paid for by BP. In May 2013, he participated in a forum called ‘The Sugar Pandemic: Policy vs. Politics’
and spoke about the harm caused by sugar and soda consumption to people and how the F&BI uses its influence to block effective public health policy. The overall paid-for efpaid-forts resulted in nearly 800 media stories on obesity (Donaldson, 2014). This meant that for the first time, the coalition of actors supporting the soda tax was well funded and had wide support of strategic groups and public-interest lobbying firms, as a member of the TT mentioned:
Mexico’s left party, the PRD, did support the tax. And the industry had never before faced an opposition with Bloomberg money. ‘That levelled the playing field’ said Ricky Arango, who heads Polithink, a public-interest lobbying firm Bloomberg hired to persuade legislators.
(Nestle & Rosenberg, 2015)
Academics were subsequently able to make their positions clearly heard in newspapers and blogs. A BP report explained how the success of the soda tax was achieved through their strategy which centred on two activities in particular: paid and earned media campaigns and formal lobbying, both of which leveraged scientific evidence and a rigorous understanding of the political context (Donaldson, 2014).
International organisations’ support for the soda tax policy was also related to other aims, including: positioning themselves for the future, building relationships to further influence national polices; and supporting corporate social responsibility and PPP. The first is illustrated by the framing the BP page used to promote its own founder, Michael Bloomberg. He was portrayed as a person who helps his country and other countries to safeguard public health (BP, 2016) indicating that BP’s action might also serve personal purposes of its founder. The second aims to improve the representation of groups with the same interests who are a minority at the policy discussion table; this includes support such as resources, tools and expertise given by BP and PAHO to national CSOs as ‘policy entrepreneurs’ (Donaldson, 2015; PAHO, 2015). The third relates to binding international organisations like BID with the private sector and with policymakers during policy implementation or during the policy design (e.g. PAHO with MoH).
Academic collaborations to build evidence
Two main collaborations were identified as key aspects in the policy process for the soda tax. The first was the collaboration between the ANM and the INSP.
Researchers from several prestigious institutions published a book titled ‘Obesidad en México: Recomendaciones para una política de Estado’ (Obesity in Mexico:
Recommendations for a State Policy) on 30January 2013. The book content covers various topics related to obesity, including recommendations for a policy plan to
address the obesity epidemic, the aetiology of obesity and the main causes of this problem. The content was used repeatedly in forums and discussions on the soda tax and other policies. It presented Mexico’s situation in relation to obesity and provided some suggestions on the regulations needed to improve public polices for obesity and diabetes (Rivera-Dommarco, Hernández-Ávila, Aguilar-Salinas, Vadillo-Ortega, & Murayama-Rendón, 2013; Rivera, 2013).
The second was the collaboration between the INSP and the think tank IMCO to publish a report that mapped policies selected in the strategy and compared them
The second was the collaboration between the INSP and the think tank IMCO to publish a report that mapped policies selected in the strategy and compared them