Examination of Witnesses (Questions 737-739)
THURSDAY 27 NOVEMBER
MR ANDREW
COSSLETT, MR
JULIAN HILTON-JOHNSON,
MR MARTIN
GLENN AND
MR TIM
MOBSBY
Q737 Chairman: Colleagues, can I welcome
you to this session of the Committee and particularly our witnesses,
we are very pleased to see you here and thank you for your very
helpful written evidence. Perhaps you would each like to introduce
yourselves to the Committee.
Mr Cosslett: Thank you, Chairman.
My name is Andy Cosslett. I am responsible for Cadbury Schweppes'
business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa and that includes
the 6,000 people we have in the UK where obviously the business
was started in 1824. The products we sell are well known, Cadbury
Dairy Milk, Crunchie and other sweets nowadays such as Halls Mentholyptus
and Jelly Babies and Wine Gums, a wide variety.
Mr Hilton-Johnson: Good morning.
I am Julian Hilton-Johnson. I am Vice President of McDonald's
in the UK. We are very pleased to be here. We feel that a sensible
debate is long overdue. We are keen to tell you about some of
the initiatives that we have and to learn what more we can do.
Mr Glenn: Martin Glenn. I represent
a newly formed business called PepsiCo UK which comprises Walkers,
snack foods, so Quaker foods, Tropicana and Pepsi Cola. We employ
about five and a half thousand people in the UK. We work in markets
that are responsible for about seven per cent of the total calories
consumed. We are relatively modest advertisers, as we said in
our submission. I would echo the points that Julian just made,
we are keen today to try and make a contribution to this important
debate.
Mr Mobsby: Tim Mobsby of the Kellogg's
company. I am 25 years in the food industry, of which 20 years
have been with Kellogg's. Kellogg's, which is probably well known
to everybody in this room, I would be surprised if it was not,
has been in the UK for some 80 plus years and is synonymous with
the breakfast occasion; if you think of us you think of the breakfast
table. We are very pleased to be here and to contribute. It is
a huge issue for society, we agree with that, we think the food
industry has a role to play and as a company we are keen to, and
believe we can, play a role.
Q738 Chairman: The acoustics in this
room are not good and obviously we have got a fairly large audience,
so if the witnesses could speak up I would be very grateful. You
have all said both in your written evidence and in your opening
remarks that you welcome the opportunity to give evidence to this
inquiry. Do you feel it is appropriate for an inquiry into obesity
to focus specifically on your products?
Mr Glenn: We think with obesity
one has to look at two sides to a very simple equation, calories
in and out, you cannot look at calories out on its own. It may
be the perception of some members of this Committee that that
is what the food industry is doing. We also understand that calories
in are an important part of it, but we represent the broad gamut
of food types, from breakfast cereals to savoury snacks, to confectionery,
to takeaway food. I guess all of us would say that you have to
look at diets in total and not the individual food types in a
similar way to understand the total issue.
Mr Mobsby: I think this is a complex
issue. In many respects it is a social issue and as such there
are lots of constituencies who need to participate and be involved
and help formulate solutions. I think the food industry is one
of those but it is by no means the only one, there are lots of
others and I think we have got an area here where some leadership
is probably required and I think we would look to Government to
help with providing some of that leadership.
Mr Hilton-Johnson: I would agree
with both those comments.
Mr Cosslett: The big brands tend
to get it in the eye, but the food industry is an enormous industry
and we account for a reasonably small percentage of it in total
as a group. What we have tried to do in the last six months is
to understand a lot more about the issue and what people are doing
and hopefully during the next couple of hours we will have a chance
to talk about that. I have lived overseas, I have lived in Australia,
I have lived in the Far East and the fact that this is a global
issue I think is very interesting and in looking at the common
trends in those different markets, some of which actually have
fairly low consumption of products like ours, I think is an interesting
point that we have tried to understand a bit better and again
maybe we can touch on a couple of those as we go through.
Q739 Chairman: The energy in, energy
out issue has been raised with us on many occasions. Am I being
unfair, having read your evidence, stressing as strongly as I
did the need to increase activity levels but not saying a great
deal about the need to reduce consumption of energy against food
and drinks because you do not seem to say a great deal about that?
Mr Glenn: I believe in our submission
we have given due weight to that. It is important that when you
look at the calories in you look at the total diet and I think
there is a preconception that it is taken as read, that somehow
snacks are not "proper food", they are not part of the
diet, whereas the fact of the matter is for most people in today's
busy society they are. I think what we tried to show in our submission
is that for the last two years Pepsi Cola has taken some pretty
important steps to compact the obesity issue because it is in
our interest to do so. It is not in our interest to have unhealthy
people in society and as individuals we do not want it either.
What we tried to stress in our submission was how we are looking
at reformulating our core products, we are talking about how to
reduce the saturated fats in our Walkers crisp brand for example.
The fact is that the majority of the Pepsi that is sold today
is in diet form as in no calorie and there is a big corporate
programme for PepsiCo in our submission and the first appendix.
A large part of the annual report this year from our chairman
stated that it is the global goal of PepsiCo to offer more choice
in terms of energy dense foods and the like.
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