The UN system’s shift towards multistakeholder governance, now embedded in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), invites a broad range of actors, including the private sector, to the policymaking table. Although the tobacco industry is formally excluded from engagement, this approach provides opportunities for other unhealthy commodity industries to influence the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) non-communicable disease (NCD) agenda. Focusing on the food industry, this research maps which actors engaged with WHO consultations, and critically examines actors’ policy and governance preferences as well as the framing they employ to promote these preferences in the global context. All written responses from food industry actors to publicly available NCD-relevant WHO consultations held between September 2015 and September 2018 were identified, totalling forty-five responses across five consultations. A qualitative frame analysis was conducted to identify policy positions expressed by respondents, as well as arguments and frames used to do so. Though no individual companies responded to the consultations, the majority of participating business associations had some of the largest multinational food corporations as members. Respondents overarchingly promoted non-statutory approaches and opposed statutory regulation and conflict of interest safeguards. To this purpose, they framed the food industry as a legitimate and necessary partner in policymaking, differentiating themselves from the tobacco industry and referencing a history of successful collaboration, while also invoking multistakeholder norms and good governance principles to portray collaboration as required. Respondents contrasted this with the limits of WHO’s mandate, portraying it as out of step with the SDGs and framing NCD decision-making as a matter of national sovereignty. We observed that the UN’s call for partnerships to support the SDGs is invoked to defend corporate access to NCD policy. This highlights the need for more cautious approaches which are mindful of the commercial determinants of health. Systematic opposition to regulation and to governance approaches which may compromise commercial actors’ insider role in global health by food industry actors shown here, and the strategic use of the Sustainable Development agenda to this purpose, raises questions about the value of collaboration from the perspective of international health agencies such as WHO.

中文翻译：

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可持续发展目标时代的非传染性疾病治理：世卫组织磋商中食品行业框架的定性分析。


联合国系统向多利益相关方治理的转变现已纳入可持续发展目标（SDG），邀请包括私营部门在内的广泛参与者参与决策。尽管烟草业被正式排除在参与之外，但这种方法为其他不健康商品行业提供了影响世界卫生组织 (WHO) 非传染性疾病 (NCD) 议程的机会。这项研究以食品行业为重点，绘制了参与世卫组织磋商的参与者的地图，并严格审查了参与者的政策和治理偏好以及他们在全球背景下促进这些偏好所采用的框架。食品行业参与者对 2015 年 9 月至 2018 年 9 月期间举行的公开非传染性疾病相关世卫组织磋商的所有书面答复均已确定，五次磋商中总共有 45 份答复。进行了定性框架分析，以确定受访者表达的政策立场以及用于这样做的论据和框架。尽管没有个别公司对咨询做出回应，但大多数参与的商业协会都有一些最大的跨国食品公司作为成员。受访者普遍提倡非法定方法，反对法定监管和利益冲突保障措施。为此，他们将食品行业视为政策制定中合法且必要的合作伙伴，将其与烟草行业区分开来，并参考了成功合作的历史，同时还援引多利益相关者规范和良好治理原则来描绘所需的合作。 受访者将这一点与世卫组织职责的局限性进行了对比，称其与可持续发展目标不一致，并将非传染性疾病决策视为国家主权问题。我们注意到，联合国呼吁建立伙伴关系以支持可持续发展目标，以捍卫企业获得非传染性疾病政策。这突出表明需要采取更加谨慎的方法，注意健康的商业决定因素。这里显示的食品行业参与者对监管和治理方法的系统性反对可能会损害商业参与者在全球健康中的内部作用，以及为此目的战略性地利用可持续发展议程，从以下角度提出了关于合作价值的问题：国际卫生机构，例如世界卫生组织。