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• Scholars express concerns about undue influence of the food industry when drawing up voluntary agreements for public health. • I analyze food industry influence in negotiating the the 2018 Dutch prevention agreement on overweight. • Process tracing reveals a combination of front- and backstage lobbying aimed at weakening and blocking measures. • The study confirms the weakness of collaborative governance and recommends public regulation as a more effective alternative. Food policies to foster a healthy lifestyle are to an increasing extent developed through processes of collaborative governance in which public and private stakeholders negotiate voluntary agreements (VAs). The effectiveness of these VAs has been questioned repeatedly, because of the involvement of the food industry in drawing up these agreements. In this article I further develop insights into food industry influence in collaborative governance through an in-depth analysis of negotiations on the Dutch prevention agreement on overweight which was concluded in 2018. Using documents obtained through a Freedom of Information request I show how the food industry succeeded in shifting the regulatory arena towards a collaborative governance set up that allowed them to co-design and propose appropriate measures. Secondly, in this arena the industry managed to weaken and modify most of the measures for which it would be responsible. Finally, the industry used backstage lobbying outside of the official arena to block a plan to introduce a sugar levy. The case study confirms the weakness of voluntary agreements as an alternative to public regulation. This weakness results from the food industry's ability to capture collaborative governance processes and combine these with behind the scenes lobbying tactics. Policy-makers should therefore seriously reconsider the use of VAs for public health policies and governments should empower themselves to make a better use of public regulation both at national and EU level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we challenge Kurzer and Cooper's claim that the industry was able to get its way in the Food Information to Consumers Regulation by successfully lobbying the European Parliament and benefiting from an industry-friendly rapporteur. We scrutinize their findings through a comprehensive analysis of all amendments tabled in the environmental committee at first reading and a process tracing of the 12 most salient issues. Our results indicate a rather balanced rapporteur and show that both the ENVI committee and the plenary EP changed the regulation in favour of consumer interests on a significant number of points, with key victories for the industry being the result of pressure from the Council, not from the European Parliament. We explain these results on the basis of earlier work examining the role-behaviour of rapporteurs and the functioning of Parliament committees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The future of food is one of the major world-wide challenges. In this perspective paper, we set-up a framework for a multi-disciplinary future food systems approach, building on the UN Sustainable Development Goals. We hereby combine a truly sustainable approach including social science aspects combined with the One Health approach. Scientists from a large number of backgrounds have addressed four key areas that are discussed in more detail in this paper: (i) nature inspired food production, (ii) sustainable immune resilience, (iii) social and cultural change of food behavior, and (iv) food fairness. We believe that transformations to integrated future food system approaches should move beyond single solutions and can only be solved by working in transdisciplinary settings of science, society, and industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]