Unione Italiana Food – Responsible advertising

During EXPO 2015 in Milan, AIDEPI (now ‘UNIONE ITALIANA FOOD’) signed the voluntary Code of the Ministry of Health “Guidelines for the commercial communication relating to food and drink for  the  protection  of  children  and  proper  nutrition”. 

This  Code  defines  basic  rules  on  the  correct advertising of food to children taken from the Advertising Self-Regulatory Code applied by the National Institute of Self-regulation of Advertisement (Istituto di Autodisciplina Pubblicitaria -IAP), without any kind of threshold-based system that could lead to an unjustified classification between bad and good foods. 

In 2017, an overview of case law regarding  self-disciplinary action in Italy  showed that advertisements for food products are rarely in breach of Article 11 of the “Children and Adolescents” code and even recently, guidelines have been amply implemented.