CHOICE Voice

CHOICE Sustainable Consumption Project Officer Kate Norris reports on one of the interesting fringe meetings held prior to the Congress:
Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals are chemicals that can mimic or block the human endocrine functions of metabolism, growth and development, and tissue function.
According to research presented by Dr Michael Hansen from Consumers Union (USA), EDCs [...]

Posted in Congress fringe event Comments(2)

You can view speaker presentations, video interviews with delegates and speakers and congress photos online at the following places. We will be uploading speaker papers where there was no presentation as soon as we can get copies. We hope to upload audio files of all sessions in the near future. In the next few days [...]

Posted in Bad product awards, CHOICE, CI in the media, Congress fringe event, Credit and debt, Energy, Intellectual Property, Obesity and food marketing, Pharmaceutical marketing, Sustainable consumption Comments(0)

Catherine Raffaele reports that a number of presentations are now available from speakers at Monday’s fringe meeting Increasing Consumers Voice in Intellectual Property Policy.
Intellectual property policies are increasingly affecting consumers’ lives. Access to knowledge in many developing countries is limited by over-restrictive copyright policies.Patent protection policies can restrict access to medicines which mean the [...]

Posted in Congress fringe event, Intellectual Property Comments(0)

With the permission of the speakers, we’ll be uploading some of the presentations from this year’s Congress on Slideshare. Just go to www.slideshare.net/CI.World.Congress.2007 to view the available presentations, such as Dr. Jiraporn Limpananont’s presentation on access to medicines in Thailand, from yesterday’s Intellectual Property side event.

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Posted in Congress fringe event, Congress participation, Consumers International, Intellectual Property Comments(0)

Richard Lloyd raised the question of where to hold the next CI World Congress.
We’ve got reports on some of Monday’s fringe events. Georgina has given us the first of two accounts of the day-long campaigning event on advocacy for consumers’ intellectual property rights and Candice has given her impressions of the food marketing fringe event. [...]

Posted in CHOICE, CI in the media, Congress fringe event, Congress participation, Pharmaceutical marketing Comments(1)

The term “epidemic” is often used to describe the growing problem of childhood obesity. But did you know that nearly 22 million children are overweight or obese? If that’s not alarming enough, experts say the figure is tipped to be rising.
While corporations continue to profit, and the fast food industry continues to expand, what [...]

Posted in Congress fringe event, Obesity and food marketing Comments(0)

As an Australian consumer, I’m not able to copy a DVD I own and watch it on my laptop. It’s not that I can’t do it, or even that I’m not allowed to do so, but under Australian law, it’s illegal to overcome the anti-copying software included on my DVDs.
This was just one of the [...]

Posted in Congress fringe event, Intellectual Property Comments(0)

How can government consumer protection agencies and NGO consumer advocacy organisations cooperate to advance consumer interests?
This is the question to be explored at a Congress fringe event hosted by Australia’s principal national consumer protection regulator, the Australian Consumer and Competition Commsision. Government agencies with a consumer protection role, and consumer NGOs that work [...]

Posted in Congress fringe event, Consumers International Comments(0)

Energy is not just another commodity to be bought and sold without regard to social, environmental or economic consequence. Energy is an essential service, the absence of which robs consumers of the means for the satisfaction of basic needs for a decent standard of living.
At the opposite extreme, energy, or its profligate consumption is a [...]

Posted in Congress fringe event, Energy, Sustainable consumption Comments(0)

One of the fringe events on Monday 29 October will be about food marketing to children. There’ll be presentations by a number of consumer advocates from India, the UK and the USA, as well as Clare Hughes, CHOICE’s own Senior Food Policy Officer.
With the rising concern over childhood obesity in many parts of the world, [...]

Posted in CHOICE, Congress fringe event, Obesity and food marketing Comments(1)