A new publication highlights the extensive impact of unhealthy commodity industries (UCIs) on communities and public health.
Dr. Elizabeth Bennett, an alumna of James Cook University's Masters of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, led the study.
She said UCIs include a broad range of industries, including alcohol and tobacco manufacturers and the ultra-processed food and beverage industry – which produces sugary drinks, snacks high in salt, sugar and unhealthy fats and heavily processed meals.
"These industries are central to the rise of non-communicable diseases, which now account for more than two-thirds of the global burden of disease," said Dr Bennett.
She said as corporate power is increasingly concentrated, governments must step up to fully understand the harms these industries cause and strengthen protections for population wellbeing.
"Systematic monitoring of unhealthy corporate influence on health is largely absent at a national government level in Australia or elsewhere," said Dr Bennett.
"Corporate UCIs exert undue influence on governments and communities through a wide range of practices. These include lobbying, where the information lobbyists share with government is often passed off as expert knowledge, even though it may be biased, incomplete or erroneous, while political donations are enabling favourable decision-making and agenda-setting."
She said in 2019, of the 100 governments and corporations with the highest annual revenues, 75 were corporations.
"While civil society and academia have been pivotal in holding industries to account, the scale of concentrated corporate power now demands decisive government action to safeguard health," said Dr Bennett.
She said a new approach is needed to monitor UCIs, one which uses the resources and authority of government but avoids the pitfalls of undue influence by UCIs on lawmakers.
"Models that enable governments to support and fund accountability mechanisms and independent surveillance are a pragmatic path forward," said Dr Bennett.
She said precedents exist in anti-corruption commissions, securities commissions and environmental protection agencies, where state-sponsored bodies operate with legal authority, independence and public reporting mandates.
"Civil society and academia have led this work for too long in the absence of meaningful government engagement. With corporate power increasingly concentrated, governments must now step up to build lasting systems that protect health and hold UCIs to account."
