The Chamber of Agricultural and Food Enterprises, operating within the framework of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce, presented the results of the campaign titled Commitment to responsibility in practice, through which the majority of food-processing companies in Slovenia strove to offer a healthy lifestyle food, containing less sugar and salt. At the same time, they wanted to market their products in a responsible way and inform consumers about their products’ ingredients.

The campaign started three years ago, when soft drink producers signed an agreement, which was later also signed by dairy companies. Soft drink companies agreed that, starting with 2016, they would not advertise their products to children under 12 and would do everything to prevent their advertisements to be published in printed media, cinemas and webpages, where there is no data on the demographic composition of viewers. They also agreed that their advertisements would not be present at events where more than 35% of viewers were children.

By 2020, at least 60% of their products will have information on the product’s energy value on the front side of the packaging and the product’s energy content will be highlighted.

The head of the campaign Petra Medved Djurašinović explained that, according to a survey, advertising soft beverages to children has disappeared from cinemas and printed media. Advertising on the Internet and in TV programmes where children and youth could present more than a third of viewers has also dropped.

Sales of soft drinks are on the rise
The sales of non-alcoholic soft beverages have increased compared to the year 2016. However, soft beverages now have lower energy values.

Dairy companies have reduced sugar content in their products in a similar way. Soft beverage and dairy companies will now be joined by the baking industry. It plans to reduce salt levels in bakery products and offer more wholegrain flours, with which they want to improve the offer on the Slovene market.