By Feizal Samath
COLOMBO, Mar 17 2004 (IPS)

The Sri Lankan government is clamping down on advertisers’ wild claims about the benefits of certain food products, starting with new restrictions on nutritional and protein claims to take effect on Apr. 1.

Already, health ministry officials have asked one company to substantiate its claim to have produced an herbal alternative to heart surgery.

In letters to local newspapers in recent months, consumers have clamoured for such measures. The targets of their ire have included advertisements promoting sausages as health food.

Thushara de Silva, a consumer from Wattala town north of the capital, welcomes the proposed food laws and says it should have come a long time ago. "Often we find advertisements promoting sausages as a healthy food but is that true? Unfortunately, there is no forum where we can complain or seek advise on whether these claims are true or not," he told IPS.

The new Food (Labeling and Advertising) Regulations, scheduled to take effect in April, would cover food labels and packaging as well as advertising in newspapers and on radio and television. It would bar producers and advertisers from claiming that dietary fats offer protection against heart disease or benefit people suffering from heart disease, for example.

"Truthful labeling is now considered a consumer rights issue by law," said Athula Kahandaliyanage, director-general of health and the government’s Chief Food Authority.

Officials have briefed local and multinational firms on the new regulations, described as one of the most significant laws in recent times to protect consumers from food products with false or dubious claims. Foreign firms involved in the briefings included food giant Nestle, hygiene products maker Unilever, and pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline.

"False and questionable advertising of so-called health food and medicines is a serious problem in Sri Lanka," said Kithsiri Gunawardene, director-general of the government’s Consumer Affairs Authority (CAA).

Valerie Perera, a mother of two young children living outside Colombo, says advertisers should be mindful of the fact that children get carried away by television commercials even though some ads put more emphasis on creativity than fact.

"For example, there is an TV advertisement showing a boy of about 12 years lifting a heavy pair of dumbbells which has fallen off the stage of a muscle-building contest he was watching. He then returns to his chair in the audience to roar of the crowd and starts eating a brand of cheese, implying his unusual strength came from cheese," she told IPS, adding that this claim could be dangerous in the minds of young people.

Gunawardene said he had recently asked the Sri Lanka Medical Council (SLMC) and the health ministry for advice regarding claims by an Ayurvedic medicine company that advertised a low-cost cure for blockages or plaque in arteries, eliminating the need for expensive surgery.

The same company had offered similar cures for AIDS-related ailments, Alzheimer’s-type diseases, and mental retardation.

SLMC vice president Ananda Samarasekara said that the council had authority only over Western medical practices and that he believed major heart ailments needed to be closely studied by a cardiologist before any course of treatment was prescribed.

CAA’s Gunawardene said he spoke to the company and explained the need to substantiate its claims. The firm has since stopped running the ads in question, he added.

Under the new food advertising rules, labels must appear in at least two of the country’s three main languages: Sinhalese, Tamil, and English. This is aimed at ensuring that consumers can understand labels on imported food products, officials said.

Additionally, the rules would prohibit labels and advertisements of food products from carrying endorsements by a medical practitioner or association unless approved by the Chief Food Authority.

Food industry sources said this could apply to health products and products like toothpaste from Unilever that carry an accepted certification from the Sri Lanka Dental Association.

Lucian Jayasuriya, a veteran public health specialist and consultant to GlaxoSmithKline, welcomed the regulations but said they should be implemented swiftly, and with stiffer penalties for violators.

The health ministry said it awaited government approval to raise fees for violations to around 500 dollars, up from about 50 dollars currently.

Under the new rules, firms would have to substantiate claims that their products are free of cholesterol or fat and would have to drop claims that food products have restorative or medicinal properties that cure, alleviate, or prevent illness.

T Kandasamy, a senior member of the health ministry’s food advisory committee, said the committee also has written new consumer protection rules covering tea and coffee.

He said the new standards would help bring Sri Lanka’s food regulations in line with those of more developed countries.

The new measures also would help maintain quality standards and clamp down on the domestic marketing of inferior products as Ceylon Tea, the name given Sri Lanka’s most famous export. Ninety percent of the country’s tea crop is sold overseas, but only after meeting more stringent quality standards than those enforced at home.

"Standards are welcome for tea sold for local consumption because even if we have doubts about the tea we drink, nothing can be done about it now," noted Muttusamy Mannikam, a 45-year old labourer sipping black tea from a dirty cup at a wayside tea kiosk near a newspaper office in Colombo.

In February, authorities sealed several warehouses in Colombo where adulterated tea was being stored. The spurious tea was being prepared for export and local consumption.

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