'Water dripping on stone'? Industry lobbying and UK alcohol policy

Despite a growing literature on corporations as political actors, relatively little is known about how alcohol industry actors attempt to influence public policy. In the context of contemporary debates about the minimum pricing of alcoholic beverages, and drawing on semi-structured interviews with a range of key informants, this article investigates the means by which alcohol industry actors gain access to policy makers and the strategies used to influence policy. It finds that the strategies of alcohol industry actors are focused on long-term relationship building with policy makers, involving the provision and interpretation of information and the promotion of various forms of self-regulation.</jats:p

Industry use of evidence to influence alcohol policy: a case study of submissions to the 2008 Scottish government consultation.

Jim McCambridge and colleagues analyze industry submissions to a Scottish Government consultation on whole-population approaches to alcohol policy

Press Freedom and Coverage in the U.S. and Kosovo: A Series of Comparisons and Recommendations

The Republic of Kosovo was created from the southernmost section of the former Yugoslavia by American military intervention and subsequent worldwide humanitarian guidance between 1999 and 2008. The resulting nation (which Russia, China, and others do not recognize) was born with one of the most pro-speech and press-friendly constitutions in the world. This Article compares and contrasts four press freedoms in the U.S. and Kosovo: (1) censorship and liability for publication of “truthful” speech; (2) liability for media errors; (3) shield laws; and (4) transparency in courts and records. Where the law and social mores of Kosovo are silent, recommendations are made to adopt the actual or a modified version of the U.S. rule

Law, Market Building and Public Health in the European Union

European Union (EU) law is based upon a liberalising imperative, the goal of which is to construct a single market between member states. Yet the EU is no ordinary trade pact, incorporating as it does a range of supranational political institutions and common policies in a range of areas beyond simple market building. Scholars have nevertheless noted a distinction between ‘positive’ integration (the formulation of common policies applying to all member states) and ‘negative’ integration (the removal of national-level regulations acting as barriers to market integration). In the context of debates about the implications of trade law and corporate activity for health, this article poses three related questions. First, to what extent does EU law afford corporations opportunities to challenge national-level health regulations? Second, to what extent do EU legal and political processes provide opportunities for positive pro-health supranational regulation, including that which might offset the effects of negative liberalising integration? Third, how do EU market-building processes differ from those of more narrowly-drawn trade agreements and organisations in their implications for health? We analyse and compare two recent sets of health-related legal proceedings under EU law, the first of which challenges legislation passed by the Scottish Government to introduce minimum unit pricing for alcohol, and the second of which addresses the legality of specific aspects of the EU’s 2014 Tobacco Products Directive. We find, first, that EU law offers ample opportunities for corporations to challenge national health regulations; second, that there is significant scope for pro-health supranational regulations, but that these must be couched in the language of facilitating the single market, and are dependent on the political commitment of key policy actors; and, third, that this (limited) scope for pro-health supranational regulation distinguishes EU legal and political processes from those of other trade agreements and organisations

Not quite cooking on gas: Understanding biogas plant failure and abandonment in Northern Tanzania

The potential for biogas to fulfil an integral role in promoting sustainable energy solutions, particularly in the Global South, is evident, and especially pertinent in the Sustainable Development Goal era. Internationally, multiple initiatives driven by private, public and third sectors have resulted in a significant growth in the numbers of biogas plants constructed. These processes are highly visible in Tanzania which has witnessed considerable investment across the sector in recent decades leading to a proliferation of biogas systems. However, research suggests that many of these plants experience failures which can lead to the ultimate abandonment of the systems, eroding the potential benefits of widespread biogas adoption. This research explores some of the main drivers of biogas plant failure and abandonment in the northern Tanzania through a rapid review of the literature identifying current sector best practice and a series of semi-structed interviews with key stakeholders including biogas plant owners, operators, constructors, government officials and private enterprises. Our analysis reveals a range of clear and, at points, interrelated themes associated with biogas failure which can be largely grouped under the following banners; poor construction and installation, sub-optimal feeding practices, operation and maintenance issues, and training provision and knowledge erosion. By illuminating the subtleties surrounding each challenge, this paper is designed to stimulate a re-evaluation of how long-term, sustained and successful use of biogas plants can be fostered through a reduction in failure and/or abandonment. This is particularly important given that the biogas sector continues to evolve and expand across the globe. Response to Reviewers: We thank all the editors and reviewers for their comments, please see the "detailed response to reviewers" for our specific and individual responses. Thanks you for helping significantly increase the quality of this paper

The Role of Alternative Testing Strategies in Environmental Risk Assessment of Engineered Nanomaterials

Within toxicology there is a pressure to find new test systems to replace, reduce and refine animal testing. In nanoecotoxicology this raises a number of questions

Vested interests in addiction research and policy. The challenge corporate lobbying poses to reducing society's alcohol problems : insights from UK evidence on minimum unit pricing

BACKGROUND: There has been insufficient research attention to alcohol industry methods of influencing public policies. With the exception of the tobacco industry, there have been few studies of the impact of corporate lobbying on public health policymaking more broadly. METHODS: We summarize here findings from documentary analyses and interview studies in an integrative review of corporate efforts to influence UK policy on minimum unit pricing (MUP) of alcohol 2007-10. RESULTS: Alcohol producers and retailers adopted a long-term, relationship-building approach to policy influence, in which personal contacts with key policymakers were established and nurtured, including when they were not in government. The alcohol industry was successful in achieving access to UK policymakers at the highest levels of government and at all stages of the policy process. Within the United Kingdom, political devolution and the formation for the first time of a Scottish National Party (SNP) government disrupted the existing long-term strategy of alcohol industry actors and created the conditions for evidence-based policy innovations such as MUP. CONCLUSIONS: Comparisons between policy communities within the United Kingdom and elsewhere are useful to the understanding of how different policy environments are amenable to influence through lobbying. Greater transparency in how policy is made is likely to lead to more effective alcohol and other public policies globally by constraining the influence of vested interests

A Multi-Level, Multi-Jurisdictional Strategy : Transnational Tobacco Companies’ Attempts to Obstruct Tobacco Packaging Restrictions

Despite the extensive literature on the tobacco industry, there has been little attempt to study how transnational tobacco companies (TTCs) coordinate their political activities globally, or to theorise TTC strategies within the context of global governance structures and policy processes. This article draws on three concepts from political science – policy transfer, multi-level governance and venue shifting – to analyse TTCs’ integrated, global strategies to oppose augmented packaging requirements across multiple jurisdictions. Following Uruguay’s introduction of extended labelling requirements, Australia became the first country in the world to require tobacco products to be sold in standardised (‘plain’) packaging in 2012. Governments in the European Union (EU), including in the United Kingdom (UK) and Ireland, adopted similar laws, with other member states due to follow. TTCs vehemently opposed these measures and developed coordinated, global strategies to oppose their implementation, exploiting the complexity of contemporary global governance arrangements. These included a series of legal challenges in various jurisdictions, alongside political lobbying and public relations campaigns. This article draws on analysis of public documents and 32 semi-structured interviews with key policy actors. It finds that TTCs developed coordinated and highly integrated strategies to oppose packaging restrictions across multiple jurisdictions and levels of governance

A Low Lyman Continuum Escape Fraction of <10%<10\% for Extreme [OIII] Emitters in an Overdensity at z∼3.5\sim3.5

Recent work has suggested extreme [OIII] emitting star-forming galaxies are important to reionization. Relatedly, [OIII]/[OII] has been put forward as an indirect estimator of the Lyman Continuum (LyC) escape fraction ($f_{esc}$) at $z\gtrsim4.5$ when the opaque IGM renders LyC photons unobservable. Using deep archival U-band (VLT/VIMOS) imaging of a recently confirmed overdensity at $z\sim3.5$ we calculate tight constraints on $f_{esc}$ for a sample (N=73) dominated by extreme [OIII] emitters. We find no Lyman Continuum signal ($f_{esc}^{rel} < 6.3^{+0.7}_{-0.7} \%$ at $1\sigma$) in a deep U-band stack of our sample (31.98 mag at 1$\sigma$). This constraint is in agreement with recent studies of star-forming galaxies spanning $z\sim1-4$ that have found very low average $f_{esc}$. Despite the galaxies in our study having an estimated average rest-frame EW([OIII]$\lambda5007$)$\sim400\AA$ and [OIII]/[OII]$\sim 4$ from composite SED-fitting, we find no LyC detection, which brings into question the potential of [OIII]/[OII] as an effective probe of the LyC--a majority of LyC emitters have [OIII]/[OII]$>3$, but we establish here that [OIII]/[OII]$>3$ does not guarantee significant LyC leakage for a population. Since even extreme star-forming galaxies are unable to produce the $f_{esc}\sim10-15\%$ required by most theoretical calculations for star-forming galaxies to drive reionization, there must either be a rapid evolution of $f_{esc}$ between $z\sim3.5$ and the Epoch of Reionization, or hitherto observationally unstudied sources (e.g. ultra-faint low-mass galaxies with $\log(M/M_\odot)\sim7-8.5$) must make an outsized contribution to reionization.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures (key result in Figures 7, 8). Accepted for publication in MNRAS. Comments welcom

Harmonization guidelines for HLA-peptide multimer assays derived from results of a large scale international proficiency panel of the Cancer Vaccine Consortium

Purpose: The Cancer Vaccine Consortium of the Cancer Research Institute (CVC-CRI) conducted a multicenter HLA-peptide multimer proficiency panel (MPP) with a group of 27 laboratories to assess the performance of the assay. Experimental design: Participants used commercially available HLA-peptide multimers and a well characterized common source of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC). The frequency of CD8+ T cells specific for two HLA-A2-restricted model antigens was measured by flow cytometry. The panel design allowed for participants to use their preferred staining reagents and locally established protocols for both cell labeling, data acquisition and analysis. Results: We observed significant differences in both the performance characteristics of the assay and the reported frequencies of specific T cells across laboratories. These results emphasize the need to identify the critical variables important for the observed variability to allow for harmonization of the technique across institutions. Conclusions: Three key recommendations emerged that would likely reduce assay variability and thus move toward harmonizing of this assay. (1) Use of more than two colors for the staining (2) collect at least 100,000 CD8 T cells, and (3) use of a background control sample to appropriately set the analytical gates. We also provide more insight into the limitations of the assay and identified additional protocol steps that potentially impact the quality of data generated and therefore should serve as primary targets for systematic analysis in future panels. Finally, we propose initial guidelines for harmonizing assay performance which include the introduction of standard operating protocols to allow for adequate training of technical staff and auditing of test analysis procedure