Solution or Smokescreen? Evaluating Industry Self-Regulation of Televised Food Marketing to Children

It is well established that children's exposure to television advertising for unhealthy food products contributes to the epidemic of childhood obesity. Given this finding, public health officials recommended that the government restrict unhealthy food marketing to children if the industry does not accomplish that goal voluntarily. Food marketers responded by adopting industry self-regulation several years ago, but this study finds that it has produced only marginal improvements in the overall nutritional quality of foods advertised to youth. Unless federal policy-makers intervene, it appears that unhealthy food marketing to children will continue to contribute to childhood obesity in the future.     

UNCROC and the prevention of childhood obesity: the right not to have food advertisements on television

This article discusses how legal rights-based discourse could inform the response of Australian State and federal governments to the increasing prevalence of childhood obesity. The authors contend that the principles in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (a treaty which has been ratified but not implemented) are capable of providing a basis for a legislative program to prevent childhood obesity. It is argued that an approach to legislation which is grounded on the basis of children's rights would require that there be restrictions on advertising food to children. The authors set out specific proposals for legislative reforms which the federal Parliament could enact to implement the Convention so as to restrict advertising to children. The scope of the discussion is then expanded to consider the implications of rights-based discourse in broader public health contexts.     

From Tastes Great to Cool: Children''s Food Marketing and the Rise of the Symbolic

Children's exposure to food marketing has exploded in recent years, along with rates of obesity and overweight. Children of color and low-income children are disproportionately at risk for both marketing exposure and becoming overweight. Comprehensive reviews of the literature show that advertising is effective in changing children's food preferences and diets.This paper surveys the scope and scale of current marketing practices, and focuses on the growing use of symbolic appeals that are central in food brands to themes such as finding an identity and feeling powerful and in control.These themes are so potent because they are central to children in their development and constitution of self. The paper concludes that reduction of exposure to marketing will be a central part of any successful anti-obesity strategy.     

Fat and the law: who should take the blame?

The incidence of obesity in both adults and children is rising at a rapid rate in most developed countries, including in Australia. Some obese people are seeking to place the blame for their condition on the fast-food industry, as demonstrated by the recent litigation in the United States brought by two obese plaintiffs against McDonald's. This litigation was unsuccessful, and on existing Australian negligence principles any similar litigation commenced here is likely to suffer the same fate. Principles of personal responsibility, autonomy and free will should prevail to deny a negligence claim. The risk of obesity and concomitant health problems from eating fast food to excess is an obvious risk which the plaintiff should not have ignored and which he or she has voluntarily assumed. It is for the Australian Government, not the courts, to regulate the behaviour of the fast-food industry. The government should take action by requiring all major fast-food chains to label their products with nutritional information, and by imposing restrictions on the advertising of food to children.     

The regulatory pyramid meets the food pyramid: can regulatory theory improve controls on television food advertising to Australian children?

This article examines whether responsive regulation has potential to improve the regulatory framework which controls free-to-air television advertising to children, so that the regulatory scheme can be used more effectively as a tool for obesity prevention. It presents two apparently conflicting arguments, the first being that responsive regulation, particularly monitoring and enforcement measures, can be used to refine the regulation of children's food advertising. The second argument is that there are limits to the improvements that responsive regulation can achieve, since it is trying to achieve the wrong goal, namely placing controls on misleading or deceptive advertising techniques rather than diminishing the sheer volume of advertisements to which children are exposed. These two positions reflect a conflict between public health experts and governments regarding the role of industry in chronic disease prevention, as well as a broader debate about how best to regulate industry.     

What Does the Epidemic of Childhood Obesity Mean for Children with Special Health Care Needs?

Bringing the 12.8% of children with special healthcare needs into the national response to the childhood obesity epidemic will require new information, a view of health promotion beyond that which occurs within healthcare systems, and services and supports in addition to the multi-sectoral strategies presently designed for children overall. These efforts are necessary to protect the health of the nation's 9.4 million children with special health care needs now and long-term.     

食品安全责任保险二元结构论

关于食品安全责任保险,应当结合食品科学的研究以及食品安全事故发生的概率、危险程度等因素,将转基因食品、儿童食品等纳入强制责任保险,不能笼统地将所有食品安全责任纳入强制责任保险。对食品安全责任保险实行强制保险和自愿保险二元结构。就食品安全责任强制保险而言,强制投保的对象应仅限于生产者,在认定保险人的除外责任时,应正确认定被保险人的“故意”。在食品安全责任自愿保险领域,针对投保率低的现状,应当在税收、食品营销等方面采取相应措施,来推动食品安全责任保险的发展。保险人的保险金给付义务仅限于损害补偿部分,惩罚性赔偿金的目的在于惩罚生产者、销售者,因此不能通过责任保险来分散风险。     

累积投票制的引入与实践——以上市公司为例的经验性观察

在学界和社会各界的呼吁下,2005年公司法修订时引入了任意性累积投票制。累积投票制作为公司董事、监事的选举制度,目的是为了保护少数股东的权利。虽然立法上采取了任意性累积投票制,但实践中绝大多数样本上市公司实施了累积投票制,这与监管机构和证券交易所对累积投票制倾向于采取强制主义的态度是分不开的。实证数据显示,一方面在目前的股权结构下累积投票制的实施有很强的现实意义,另一方面累积投票制在上市公司中未能得以有效实施。存在诸多有待解决的影响累积投票制有效实施的问题,包括等额选举、股东大会会议出席率低以及表决权的不当行使等实践层面的问题,也包括提名资格限制、当选原则、选举方法以及独立董事、非独立董事和监事分别选举等制度层面的问题。从数学的角度分析,累积投票制在我国上市公司中存在实施的空间和价值。     

论食品安全规制中的企业主体责任——以日韩食品安全监督员为例

为了应对食品安全风险,进一步发挥企业主体责任,在企业内部设置食品安全监督员,是一种有效的措施。虽然我国2009年制定的《食品安全法》引入了食品安全员制度,但规定得过于原则。目前,我国《食品安全法》修订在即,最近的《食品安全法(修订草案送审稿)》规定了食品安全员资格,但是,我国在食品安全监督员的任职资格、责任等领域仍然需要进一步规定。日本、韩国的食品安全监督员制度比较成熟,可资借鉴;通过对比分析两种不同的制度背景和运作模式,有助于完善我国《食品安全法》中的食品安全员制度。     

The development of empathy and prosocial behavior through humane education,restorative justice,and animal-assisted programs

Literature suggests that developing empathy for animals will result in caring toward other living things. Empathy is often seen as a key building block of prosocial behavior and can be defined as sharing of another person’s emotions and feelings. In older childhood and adolescence, a lack of empathy may have deleterious consequences, leading to antisocial behaviors. However, children and adolescents who exhibit human and non-human animal aggression have often been witness to animal cruelty in the home. When empathy and prosocial behaviors are not learned in the home, there are alternatives to facilitate that process. This study discusses the development of empathy and prosocial behavior by working with animals through the modalities of humane education, restorative justice, and animal-assisted programs. Each modality focuses on building compassion, caring, responsibility, and kindness with the help of animals. Through these violence prevention programs, children and adolescents can develop empathy, which will decrease the likelihood of future aggression.     

Robots in the cloud with privacy: A new threat to data protection?

The focus of this paper is on the class of robots for personal or domestic use, which are connected to a networked repository on the internet that allows such machines to share the information required for object recognition, navigation and task completion in the real world. The aim is to shed light on how these robots will challenge current rules on data protection and privacy. On one hand, a new generation of network-centric applications could in fact collect data incessantly and in ways that are “out of control,” because such machines are increasingly “autonomous.” On the other hand, it is likely that individual interaction with personal machines, domestic robots, and so forth, will also affect what U.S. common lawyers sum up with the Katz's test as a reasonable “expectation of privacy.” Whilst lawyers continue to liken people's responsibility for the behaviour of robots to the traditional liability for harm provoked by animals, children, or employees, attention should be drawn to the different ways in which humans will treat, train, or manage their robots-in-the-cloud, and how the human–robot interaction may affect the multiple types of information that are appropriate to reveal, share, or transfer, in a given context.     

The correlation of childhood physical abuse history and later abuse in a group of Turkish population

Domestic violence is passed from one generation to the next, and it affects not only the victim but also the psychological states of the witnesses, and especially the psychosocial development of children. Studies have reported that those who have been the victim of or witnessing violence during their childhood will use violence to a greater extent as adults in their own families. This research examines the relationships between a history of childhood physical abuse, likelihood of psychiatric diagnoses, and potential for being a perpetrator of childhood physical abuse in adulthood among women who received psychiatric treatment and in the healthy population from Turkey. Estimates of the prevalence of childhood physical abuse vary depending on definition and setting. The frequency of witnessing and undergoing physical abuse within the family during childhood is much higher in the psychiatrically disordered group than the healthy controls. Childhood physical abuse history is one of the major risk factors for being an abuser in adulthood. The best indicator of physically abusing one's own children was found to be as physical abuse during the childhood period rather than psychiatric diagnosis. There is a large body of research indicating that adults who have been abused as children are more likely to abuse their own children than adults without this history. This is an important study from the point of view that consequences of violence can span generations. Further studies with different risk factor and populations will help to identify different dimensions of the problem.     

Corporate Social Responsibility European Style

Abstract: The concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) emerged in the official discourse of the EU in 2000. This article explains how, while CSR may have been initially an idea about the scope of the responsibility of companies towards their environment, it has now become a process in which the representatives of the business community have come to occupy the main role, and whose purpose is to promote learning among business organisations, rather than to identify the components of a regulatory framework for CSR. The central question now, therefore, is whether the so‐called ‘business case’ for CSR is strong enough, so that we may hope that the forces of market will suffice to encourage companies to behave responsibly, over and above their obligation to comply with their legal obligations. The article shows, however, that this case rests on certain presuppositions about markets and the business environment, which cannot be simply assumed, but should be affirmatively created by a regulatory framework for CSR. Following the introduction, it proceeds in four stages. First, it examines the development of CSR in the EU. Second, it offers a critical examination of the so‐called ‘business case’ for CSR, taking into account the growing diversity within the enlarged EU. It then discusses, as an alternative, what a regulatory framework for CSR could resemble, highlighting a number of initiatives which have been taken in this regard by the EU. The article finally concludes that, since the failure of the European Multi‐Stakeholder Forum on CSR in 2004, the debate has made a turn in the wrong direction, both because of the mistaken view that the establishment of a regulatory framework for CSR would threaten the competitiveness of European companies, and because of the naive (and contradictory) view that reliance on market mechanisms will suffice to ensure that corporations will seek to minimise the negative social and environmental impacts of their activities, even in circumstances where they are not legally obliged to do so.     

农地入股中设置优先股的法律透析

优先股的设置直接影响合作社的利益分配和治理机制。基于学界将农民专业合作社或非社区型土地股份合作社的土地承包经营权股、集体股和外来资本股设置为优先股的理论观点,通过梳理优先股的特征和类型、考察农地入股实践中的利益分配和股权设置,可以发现:若将土地承包经营权股设置为优先股,会在利益分配、表决权行使、出资比例限制等方面引发诸多理想与现实的矛盾;目前土地承包经营权股还不宜设置为优先股,但是却可以授权合作社章程自主决定是否将集体股和外来资本股设置为优先股,并从优先股类型、表决权行使以及累计未支付优先股股息与社员责任的协调等方面进行相应的制度构建。     

General administrative rulings and decisions; amendment to the examination and investigation sample requirements; companion document to direct final rule--FDA. Proposed rule

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is proposing to amend its regulations regarding the collection of twice the quantity of food, drug, or cosmetic estimated to be sufficient for analysis. This action increases the dollar amount that FDA will consider to determine whether to routinely collect a reserve sample of a food, drug, or cosmetic product in addition to the quantity sufficient for analysis. Experience has demonstrated that the current dollar amount does not adequately cover the cost of most quantities sufficient for analysis plus reserve samples. This proposed rule is a companion to the direct final rule published elsewhere in this issue of the Federal Register. This action is part of FDA's continuing effort to achieve the objectives of the President's "Reinventing Government" initiative, and it is intended to reduce the burden of unnecessary regulations on food, drugs, and cosmetics without diminishing the protection of the public health.     

日本食品药品公害的国家责任论析

日本出现的一系列大规模的食品药品公害诉讼中，在判处制造者承担侵权责任的同时，一些裁判例也明确了国家应承担相应责任，这有助于督促国家更好行使食品药品的监管职能，更好保护受害者的利益。本文通过分析食品药品公害民事裁判例中明确的国家责任，探讨日本国家责任的相关理论，论述日本国家在食品药品监管领域应承担的相关法律责任。     

Actions Necessary to Prevent Childhood Obesity: Creating the Climate for Change

Childhood obesity has become a public health epidemic, and currently a battle exists over how to frame and address this problem. This paper explores how public policy approaches can be employed to address obesity. We present the argument that obesity should be viewed as the consequence of a "toxic environment" rather than the result of the population failing to take enough "personal responsibility." In order to make progress in decreasing the prevalence of obesity, we must shift our view of obesity away from the medical model (which focuses on the individual) to a public health model (which focuses on the population). At the same time, we must be sensitive to the problem of weight bias. Potential obstacles to taking a public policy approach are identified, as well as suggestions on how to overcome them.     

传统德育理念的新审视

从冲突与和谐的关系出发,对传统德育理念进行反思,是很有启发意义的.文明社会应该提倡"见义智为",从"见义勇为"到"见义智为"是社会文明的必然产物."学会分梨"更加符合当代儿童的道德心理特点与社会现实对儿童成长的要求.消极因素面前一味躲避退让是无济于事的,只有用积极的态度对待消极影响才更加有益.忠孝教育应以坚持真理为前提.     

经济法责任理论之拓补

完善的经济法理论应当有自己的“责任理论”。基于经济法责任理论研究较为薄弱的现状 ,本文提出了经济法“责任的客观性”问题 ,强调应当超越传统的部门法理论和责任理论 ,通过运用矛盾分析、关联性分析、典型性分析等方法 ,去发现经济法责任理论的独特性、与传统责任理论的相关性 ,以及经济法责任形态的特殊性 ,从而实现对经济法责任理论的拓补。     

Cost allocation plans for public assistance programs--Health and Human Services Department. Interim final rule with comment period

This rule revises existing regulations concerning the preparation, submission and approval of State agency cost allocation plans used in computing claims for Federal Financial Participation under public assistance programs. It also reflects the transfer of responsibility for review and approval of the plans to the Division of Cost Allocation (DCA) in the Department's regional offices. This responsibility was previously assigned to the Social and Rehabilitation Service which was abolished by Secretarial Order published on March 9, 1977 (42 FR 13262). The current rule has been rewritten so that it is clearer, easier to understand and more specific. The Department's Informal Grant Appeals regulation relative to cost allocation plans and indirect cost rates (45 CFR Part 75) is also being updated and revised to make it consistent with Supart E, Cost allocation plans, of 45 CFR Part 95, General administration--grant programs (public assistance and medical assistance). Although these regulations are final, the Department has decided to invite public comments for the reasons described in the Supplementary Information below. Comments may be submitted in the manner described below. If changes are needed as a result of the comments received, those changes will be published in the Federal Register along with the comments received and the Department's responses to those comments.