No message on the bottle

It was a predictable result and the Government that should have known better. Australian and New Zealand Food and Health Ministers mistakenly thought that the alcohol industry could be trusted to implement an effective alcohol warning label regime.

Why, they reasoned, should government take the rein of such an important public health measure? Why not simply give the job to the alcohol industry – those masters of messaging, those titans of the turps? With their trophy cabinets sagging under the weight of their Golden Lions and their all-pervasive, multi- media advertising and marketing campaigns spilling into every corner of the country and touching every man woman and child – surely the alcohol industry can get the job done.

Turns out they can’t.

Let me take you back eight months. In December last year Australian and New Zealand Food and Health Ministers recommended that the alcohol industry would be given two years to voluntarily implement alcohol warning labels after which time the government would move to mandate pregnancy alcohol warning labels.

You might expect that in that time Government might have set industry some targets and evaluated its progress.

But you’d be wrong. It seems this Commonwealth Government prefers a hands-off approach that borders on negligence.

In the absence of any formal assessment, the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education stepped into the government policy vacuum, commissioning IPSOS Social Research Institute to conduct an independent evaluation of the alcohol industry’s DrinkWise warning labels.

So what did IPSOS find?

A full year after the alcohol industry led DrinkWise voluntary initiative was launched, fewer than one in six alcohol products carry the consumer information messages. Compounding matters, most DrinkWise messages are largely hidden, with 98 per cent of the messages taking up less than 5 per cent of the label or face of the packaging.

THE IPSOS audit brings into sharp relief the fundamental weaknesses of industry’s voluntary scheme.

What we need are evidence-based warning labels applied consistently across all alcohol products. What we get instead are Drinkwise messages that for the most part have simply not been adopted. In the case of the small number of products (16 per cent) that do, the messages are so inconspicuous as to be worthless.

It’s impossible to see the audit results as anything but a complete failure on industry’s part.

The audit also highlighted a total lack of uniformity and consistency on labelling. When used, Drinkwise messages were used selectively. Confusing matters further, many products were found to have consumer messages from overseas jurisdictions such as the alcohol industry’s United Kingdom Drinkaware campaign.

The audit also identified that many alcohol products carried messages such as ‘enjoy responsibly’ that do nothing to educate and inform consumers about responsible drinking. In fact, some messages such as the vodka brand that suggests ’Enjoy with Absolut Responsibility’ amount to little more than glib advertising tag lines.

Of course industry will have excuses at the ready. ‘The voluntary initiative only encompasses Australian producers’, ‘it’s a voluntary scheme and will never have 100 per cent participation’, ‘some stock is slow to turnover’ and my favourite  – ‘changing labelling is a complex logistical exercise’ – this from an industry that launches dozens if not hundreds of new brands, vintages and products into the market each and every week.

Fact is, I welcome all of these excuses, but it’s crucial that we recognise them for what they are. Not as reasons to cut industry any more slack, but as further proof that a voluntary initiative won’t work. Simply put, a half-baked approach to warning labels will never be effective.

Industry might wish to set the bar low, fail to clear it and still award itself a passing grade but the IPSOS audit puts paid to that industry spin.

It should be clear to all that delaying the introduction of mandatory labels for two years was a mistake. Yet the Government is showing no signs of correcting its course. The Department of Health and Ageing is now set to give the alcohol industry a tax-payer funded handout to promote what we now know to be a largely non-existent labelling initiative.

One year on and DrinkWise’s failure aside; the alcohol industry has delivered one clear message.

The alcohol industry can’t be trusted with labelling.

We can only hope that the government gets it.

Its current lack of commitment to public health is simply not good enough. The Government must stand by its commitment to introduce a robust, government mandated alcohol health warning regime that places the health of all Australians ahead of industry self-interest.

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