The battle for alcohol pregnancy warnings
Scientists knew for decades that alcohol can cause lifelong harm to unborn children, but it took more than 25 years of effort to get effective warning labels on alcohol products in New Zealand and Australia. A new study by Australian researchers recounts the long struggle.
‘‘Policy change is slow and difficult in most contexts, but alcohol policy is particularly challenging,’’ wrote the four researchers led by Maddie Heenan of the University of New South Wales. They were advocates for mandatory labels.
‘‘The alcohol industry spent many years using tactics to delay or prevent comprehensive regulation – including building relationships with political decision makers, lobbying against increased regulation for labelling, developing their own self-regulatory scheme and discrediting scientific evidence,’’ the researchers wrote.
However, those tactics eventually failed and new alcohol pregnancy warning labels become mandatory in both countries in July next year after a three-year phase in period ends. Some New Zealand alcohol companies already use the new mandatory label.
The saga started in 1996, when the first application for pregnancy warning labels was lodged with Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ), the agency that develops legal standards for food and alcohol in both countries.
FSANZ is independent, but directed by the Forum on Food Regulation, which is made up of health and agriculture ministers from the central governments of Australia and New Zealand and the eight Australian states and territories.
The 1996 application was withdrawn and another was made in 2006. Studies were commissioned, written and considered. Health studies in this period found alcohol consumption during pregnancy increases the risk of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder as well as miscarriage and stillbirth.
Health guidelines stated, ‘‘to prevent harm from alcohol to their unborn child, women who are pregnant or planning a pregnancy should not drink alcohol’’. There is no known safe limit.
But women were told, ‘‘it is safest not to drink while pregnant’’. While evidence based, the messages were not strong enough, researchers believed.
According to a 2018 study, 32% of New Zealand women continued to drink during the first trimester and 19% continued throughout pregnancy.
In 2011, the alcohol industry adopted a voluntary standard and FSANZ and the ministerial forum gave them years to implement it. By 2017, implementation of the voluntary standard was less than 50%.
In 2018, FSANZ developed a policy option paper including an evidence review and cost benefit analysis. Ministers approved, and a proposed label standard was published in October 2019.
For many years, the Australian alcohol industry, in particular, regarded labels as their property and ‘‘valuable real estate’’. They mobilised companies to lobby ministers, complaining about the proposed language and colours and claiming the costs were unjustified, the new study recounts.
In February 2020, after consultations, FSANZ submitted its 2019 proposal to ministers unchanged, as well as a literature review, cost-benefit analysis and consumer survey report.
Nonetheless, in March, ministers voted to review the proposed standard because of unnecessary costs to industry and objections about language and colours.
Further reviews and consultations followed, and slight concessions proposed.
Finally, in July 2020, ministers voted in favour of the mandatory standard, but it was close: 6-4.
The yes voters were: New Zealand, Northern Territory, Western Australia, Victoria, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory. The No voters were the Australian Commonwealth, New South Wales, South Australia and Queensland.
New Zealand got one vote in this structure.
‘‘Very few countries have been able to implement health warnings on alcohol labels,’’ wrote the researchers.