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By engaging with parents, educators, nutrition experts, and public health authorities, we helped lead the development of industry guidelines that voluntarily restricted beverage sales in schools. In the United States, we have nearly met our goal to achieve 100-percent compliance with these guidelines by the 2009–2010 school year. Our compliance rate is currently 98.5 percent. The remainder (constituting fewer than 300 schools) are non-compliant for contractual reasons. The guidelines are all founded on the same premise: that we respect the right of parents and other caregivers to decide what beverages and serving sizes their children should consume during the extended school day. Throughout the U.S. and Canada, we restrict serving sizes depending on type of drink and the age of the children concerned, limit the calories, and provide more nutritional and functional options. At least 50 percent of the beverages we offer in North American high schools must be water and low- or no-calorie options. Since their implementation in May 2006, these guidelines have removed 88 percent of beverage calories from U.S. schools. Implementing these guidelines was a huge task. In the United States, we removed full-calorie, non-compliant products and changed our vending machine fronts in each of the 31,000 schools. To monitor our compliance, we developed new tracking mechanisms and held bi-weekly management reviews over the three-year period. We have now fully integrated the guidelines into our ordering systems so that non-compliant products cannot be purchased by schools. We continue to track against our commitments.
In Europe, our activities differ slightly by country, depending on local concerns and legislation. In France, for example, we do not provide any drinks to schools; in the Netherlands and Great Britain, we provide drinks only to secondary schools, either indirectly through catering operations in the Netherlands or as controlled by law in Great Britain. We provide only waters and juices to primary schools in Belgium and a wider range of products in Belgian secondary schools. Independent monitoring has verified high levels of industry compliance with similar guidelines in previous years. Although we now largely meet these commitments, we continue to engage in dialogue. In Great Britain, for example, The Coca-Cola Company published a Responsible Marketing Charter. This in-depth document not only guides our approach to marketing, but it also serves as a discussion of dilemmas and challenges. Media Advertising The Coca-Cola Company’s global marketing policy prohibits marketing to children under the age of 12. This policy covers all of its products and all marketing techniques. This commitment was reinforced by the introduction in 2008 of global industry guidelines on marketing to children by the International Council of Beverages Associations. During 2009, the first independent assessment of compliance was conducted in 12 countries, including the U.S. and Canada. In these two countries, our industry was 99.8-percent and 98.7-percent compliant, respectively, with regard to television advertising. No violations were found in print or online media. Similarly, the European food and beverage industry published the first report of its compliance with the EU Pledge, a voluntary commitment to the European Commission on advertising to children. Independent monitoring found that there was a 99.8-percent compliance rate for TV advertising and virtually 100-percent compliance for both online and print advertising. France was the only CCE country of the six surveyed. |