Euro Coop welcomes the Vienna Declaration on Nutrition and Noncommunicable diseases
Brussels, 5 July 2013
Euro Coop welcomes the political commitment expressed by the Ministers of Health of the WHO European Region to tackle the obesity and noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) emergency. Ministers and Health Delegations meeting in Vienna on 4 and 5 July for the WHO Ministerial Conference on Nutrition and NCDs in the context of Health 2020 agreed on a common Declaration, which should be followed by an Action Plan.
We believe that the Declaration is comprehensive of the many policy options which should be adopted by governments to intervene in curbing the obesity epidemic. We are glad to see that the role of local communities is duly underlined, as well as the respect of the national cultural dimension of nutrition.
We consider also very important that Ministers committed to ensure that healthy options are affordable and attractive, and that the healthy choice should be the easy choice.
We call on Member States and WHO to act rapidly and effectively on the engagement they showed today in Vienna, and to take into consideration those best practices (in terms of product reformulation, involvement of local communities, consumer education campaign and labelling) which consumer cooperatives are already offering.
The national organisations of consumer co-operatives in 18 European countries make up Euro Coop. Founded in 1957, Euro Coop today represents the interests of over 4,500 local and regional co-operatives owned by a total of 30 million consumers across Europe, employing more than 450,000 people and accounting for € 74 billion in annual turnover.
Euro Coop ID number in the European Commission register of interest representatives: 3819438251-87
For more information, please contact:
Chiara Tomalino, Food Policy Adviser
Email: ctomalino@eurocoop.coop
Tel: +32-2-285-00-74
Fax: +32-2-231-07-57