Today's health fascism starts with the international not the local

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Two things strike me about this report - the first is that it was entirely predictable once some idiot decided plain packs for cigarettes was a good idea:

Food packaging should include pictures of the damage obesity can cause health, similar to those on cigarette packets, campaigners said today.

Experts have urged governments across the world to tackle the obesity epidemic by regulating the food industry along the same lines as the tobacco industry.

Despite there being precious little evidence showing this works, the health fascists are all over the idea of getting stuck into the food business - advertising bans, sugar taxes, regulating salt content, banning trans fats and mandating scary images on packaging.

However, my second observation is rather more significant - the groups promoting health fascism no longer target national governments. Instead they focus on less publicised, more malleable international agencies and especially the World Health Organisation.

The CI and WOF will officially launch their recommendations for a Global Convention to protect and promote healthy diets at the World Health Assembly in Geneva this week.

They will call on governments to commit to a raft of policy measures designed to help people make healthier lifestyle choices.

The aim of this programme is to get changes through the back door - they want, through the auspices of the WHO, to have a 'framework convention' that is similar to those on tobacco products. This allows them, and their allies, to begin the process of browbeating national governments into implementing the raft of regulations proposed in their reports. Just as with tobacco, we'll be told there's a 'treaty obligation' (there is nothing of the sort) which means we have to move towards tighter regulation. And, of course, thise will reduce obesity (it won't, of course).

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