Averting an antibiotic apocalypse? Time for global restaurants chains to take action

Amanda Long, Director General at Consumers International, reacts to McDonald's recent announcement that it has finished implementing its commitments on chicken in the USA.

Consumers International and its Members are calling on KFC, McDonald’s and Subway to take meat raised on antibiotics important for human medicine off their menus globally.

At the beginning of this month McDonald’s USA announced that it had achieved its goal, of serving only chicken raised without antibiotics important to human medicine, eight months ahead of schedule.  The announcement came in the run up to a UN High Level meeting on anti-microbial resistance, taking place in New York on 21^st September.

Because of overuse, resistance to existing antibiotics is rising at alarming levels, and there is a dearth of new drugs being brought to market. Without antibiotics that work, infections, small cuts and minor surgeries could once again become killers.

Left unchecked, antimicrobial resistance (the collective term for resistance to all kinds of antimicrobial drugs, of which bacterial resistance to antibiotics is the most pressing) will kill 10 million a year by 2050 – more than cancer. It is already killing 700,000 a year. We are on the brink of what Professor Dame Sally Davies, UK Chief Medical Officer has called an antibiotic apocalypse. 

Despite these dire warnings, animals destined to end up in our burgers, sausages and nuggets are being pumped full of antibiotics.  In many cases, rather than being used to treat sick animals, antibiotics are being used to make them grow faster or to prevent the cramped unsanitary conditions they are kept in from making them sick.  The more we use antibiotics, the more bacteria develop resistance to them.

There is strong consensus that measures to limit the use of antibiotics in farming should be a first port of call for the world’s decision makers. The use of antibiotics in farm animals exceeds use in humans in many countries and globally is believed to be more than 50% of use.  In the USA, more than 70% of antibiotics use is agricultural.  Furthermore the use of antibiotics in farming is set to increase by two thirds from by 2030: from 63,200 tons in 2010, to 105,600 tons in 2030.  The rise is driven by our monumental and growing global meat consumption.

So what has McDonalds actually done and will it make any difference?  McDonald’s has ended the use of antibiotics listed as critically important for human medicine by the World Health Organization in its poultry supply in the USA and has pledged to do the same in Canada. 

In taking this action, McDonald’s has gone further than some other chains in the USA.   KFC, which has a larger number of restaurants in the USA than any other chicken chain and is the second highest in sales has not gone as far.  It has said it will stop using just a handful of highest priority critically important antibiotics from the WHO list.   KFC is under increasing pressure to go further.  Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, (also subsidiaries of the Yum! Brands) have recently committed to serving chicken to its US customers raised without any of the antibiotics from the full WHO list. On 9 August, Yum! investors filed a shareholder resolution calling for KFC to follow suit.

On the other hand, there are chains in the USA that have gone further than McDonald’s.  Whereas McDonalds has only taken this action for the chicken it serves, Subway has committed to using chicken, turkey, beef, and pork raised without any antibiotics.  In a report from a coalition of consumer and environmental groups last year Chipotle, Panera and Chick-Fil-A, were given A and B grades for their antibiotic policies whereas McDonald’s was given a C.

The fact remains however, that these global chains are failing to make the same commitments outside of the USA. Whilst it is commendable that McDonald’s has acted in the USA and Canada, where around 43% of its branches are located, it has not committed to act on pork or beef and has not made the same commitment on chicken in other parts of the world.  McDonald’s in Europe has said that it will stop the use of some important antibiotics in the chicken it serves, but fails to go as far as McDonald in the USA and McDonald in Canada.   KFC and Subway have yet to make announcements anywhere outside of North America.

Of course we welcome any progress in this area and we don’t suggest that the sole power to prevent an antibiotic apocalypse rests entirely with a few fast food chains – but these are significant players and can lead the way.  When world leaders meet at the UN in September we will need strong, concerted, action on all fronts; including reducing use of antibiotics in human health and animal health and tackling the development of new drugs.

Given the scale of the global public health crisis the world is facing now due to antibiotic resistance, making partial commitments is simply not an option.  There is no plan B.

KFC, McDonald’s and Subway can and must go further. As awareness of the threat we are facing grows among consumers and politicians, they will be left with little choice. Far better to commit now, to work to set the standard for their industry globally, than be forced to catch up later.

Join us now in the call to take Antibiotics off the Menu. 

Birth choice: CI's UK Member delivers website to help expectant parents

Using public data, Which? has created a website to help parents easily understand crucial information that can help them make the best decisions ahead of their child's birth, says Sonia Sodha, the organisation's Head of Public Services and Consumer Rights Policy. 

Which? Birth Choice is a free-to-use website that brings together everything expectant parents need to know to decide where to have their baby.

Information on different birth environments and personalised statistics are drawn together and presented in a way which recognises the importance of personal considerations alongside medical factors so that women can make an informed birth choice. 

Which? Birth Choice stemmed from the desire of Which? to use available data to empower consumers in public services.

The Birthplace study (BMJ 2011) revealed that where women plan to have their baby has a significant impact on birth outcomes.

However Which? research found that at the beginning of their pregnancy a third (34%) of mothers said they knew nothing or not much about the amount of choice they had about where to give birth and half (49%) said the same about the different types of maternity units available to them.

Furthermore, as health data is often put into the public domain in a form that is useful to clinicians, Which? identified a real need for a site that could not only use evidence to help women make a birth place decision but to do so in an accessible and interactive way, enabling women and their partners to easily understand the information.

And so in January 2014, Which? Birth Choice was launched. Our unique and interactive ‘Find and Compare’ tool asks questions about an individual’s preferences and circumstances to present the options that may be best for them.

Women answer questions such as “Do you think you will want to use a birthing pool during labour?” on a sliding scale and provide their age and postcode.

Responses are combined with evidence on place of birth, NICE guidance and a database of maternity unit locations to propose which local maternity services are the “best fit” and a “good fit” for the woman.

All of the maternity units in the UK have their own unit page on which information about facilities and women’s experiences of care is displayed.

The data which is presented in easy-to-read bar charts is manipulated according to the answers a woman provides in the ‘Find and Compare’ tool to display stats for women who are statistically similar to them.

This makes the information relevant and ultimately more useful. Women and their partners can also view units side by side to make direct comparisons and understand the differences between them. Where a home birth is suggested as a suitable option there is plenty of evidence-based information provided to help inform their choice.

The site is currently receiving over 11,000 visits a month and our average visit time of 17 minutes indicates excellent levels of engagement.

Visitors to the site are exploring the advice articles and using the ‘Find and Compare’ tool. It has been well received by the midwifery community and the the Royal College of Midwives officially support us.

By providing both general information about labour wards, birth centres and home births as well as an interactive decision making tool the site empowers women and their partners to understand the potential benefits and risks of different maternity choices.

Understanding that they have a decision and what the impacts of that decision may be enables women and their partners to make an evidence-based choice that is best for them and their baby.

A tool for better relations between consumers and banks launched by CI

CI consumer protection expert Antonino Serra Cambaceres explains how a new project is aiming to improve banking for consumers.

On February 6, Buenos Aires provided the backdrop for the official launch of the Self Assessment Guide for Banks.

CI’s Latin American Office and Fundación Avina Argentina developed the guide - a tool for banks to evaluate themselves from a consumer perspective and assess how they are implementing their internal policies.

It is designed to help banks identify both policies that are working well and those that need changing, updating or a different approach.

During the launch at the headquarters of the Argentine Institute for Normalisation and Certification (IRAM), Juan Trímboli, CI Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, addressed the audience of consumer associations, banks, regulators and experts.

He highlighted the importance of financial services in CI’s work, and, in particular, in the Latin American Region since 2007.

Pablo Vagliente, National Representative of Avina Argentina, spoke about the work they are doing on ethical and responsible finances and the strong relationship that they have with CI in this field.

The launch marked the culmination of an 18-month partnership with Fundación Avina Argentina to develop the guide.

The next step will be to use it to influence financial institutions so that their policies meet consumers' needs, ensuring a respect for their rights and putting in place practices that are aligned with ethics and transparency in business conduct and financial education for consumers.

As we take forward our work on the guide, we will focus on promoting the tool with banks so that they can apply it and develop better relationships with consumers and the market.

The guide was developed with excellent support from an expert group including CI Members ADELCO and Unión de Consumidores de Argentina, IRAM and  Profaess - an NGO that works on ethical finances.

They helped us to develop a high-quality product with their knowledge and expertise. The development phase included interviews with: banks, banks’ associations, academics and financial experts; global research on benchmarking and best practice in banking and other related areas; and standards in management and policy.

The most important phase of the Banking Self Assessment Guide has begun - to have banks take the self assessment.

We hope that in a short time we will be able to report the first results of this interesting experience that will facilitate a better relationship between banks and consumers.

The guide is available on CI’s Spanish website. 

Six ways to help fight for consumer rights using YouTube

CI's Nina Lanzon examines how the consumer movement is using video to help expose consumer abuses and improve consumer protection. 

How far are you influenced by what you see in an image or video?

With people engaging more with images and videos than any other medium, YouTube and Pinterest are quickly becoming powerful tools that could allow CI Members to communicate with consumers in the digital world.

From cartoon scripts to quirky role play, CI Members are using a range of different techniques to draw our attention to diverse consumer issues and inevitably reinforce the importance of our consumer rights.

Check out our list below to see how CI Member’s are using YouTube to explain consumer issues in more exciting, creative and engaging ways.

1) Which? - May 2013 

Which? present an interesting debate on the ‘future of food’ by using footage from their workshops and interview responses from consumers across the UK. The video highlights some common consumer concerns relating to: the cost of food, food quality, the need to shop locally, knowing what is in our food and how it gets to our stores.

2)   CHOICE Australia - September 2013

Madison Cartwright, Campaigns Co-ordinator at CHOICE uses YouTube as a platform to outline why Australia’s outdated copyright laws are a cause for consumer concern. Set out in a simple ‘question-answer’ format, we can easily engage with the questions asked and the focused follow up answers to learn details of their consumer focused campaign.

3)  Hong Kong Consumer Council - August 2013

This quirky video by the Hong Kong Consumer Council is a great example of how you can use role play in a fun, yet informative way to outline consumer issues and relate it to the ordinary consumer experience. The video acts as a warning for consumers against misleading advertising and false trade descriptions by acting out a transaction exchange between consumer and sales assistant.

4) Altroconsumo - April 2013 (Italian version)

CI’s Italian Member, Altroconsumo uses hidden camera footage in this video to reveal the outcomes of their investigation into banking services offered to Italian consumers. By using this footage, consumers are directly presented with the reality of the consumer issue, without edit or exaggeration. We see it exactly as it is experienced firsthand; in this case banking staff in Milan and Rome offering high bank account costs to ensure their own profitability.

5)    VZBV: Federation of German Consumer Organisations - May 2013 (German version)

VZBV present a clear case for consumer protection in this unique graphic style video. By using cartoon characters to place emphasis on the particularly important points of their message, we remember the exaggerated actions of the cartoon characters to present the consumer story. The script is based on disingenuous customer service, with banking staff selling incorrect assets to consumers for commission.

6)   The Swedish Consumers’ Association – July 2012 (Swedish version)

This ‘how to’ video provides tips and advice on taking steps to protect your online privacy. As well as acting as a warning against how companies use the internet to obtain information about you; the clear, simple presentation style encourages audiences to become conscious and active consumers themselves by following tips to enforce consumer protection in their own digital lives.


Which video message stays in your memory the most? Which video is your favourite?

Empower consumers by completing CI's e-learning course

CI Director General Helen McCallum outlines our new e-learning course on standards – a great way to help consumer advocates campaign for better protection. 

Our aim to develop a stronger consumer movement will be taking a major new step over the next couple of months with the launch of our first e-learning course.

Free to staff of CI Members (US$100/EUR75 to CI Supporters, US$300/EUR220 to non-members), our first course looks at how consumer groups can use, understand and influence international standards.

You can receive updates on how to register by simply emailing your contact details to e-learning@consint.org .

The course is made up of five one-hour sessions, taken over a five week period starting in early November 2013.

The seminars are conducted online via our Adobe Connect service, with an offline alternative for those with unreliable internet. This e-learning experience will give consumer advocates the knowledge and confidence to:

•    Understand what standards are and what they can do
•    Explain to others the need for consumer participation
•    Show how good standards can improve consumer goods and services
•    Find tools and resources needed to participate in standardisation use    
•    Know how to use standards to improve consumer protection.

Building on the ISO free-to-use training module ‘Consumers and Standards: Partnership for a Better World’, this course is specifically designed for those who know about national standards work, but now wish to take their knowledge to the next level. Each seminar will include a tutorial, an expert guest speaker and a QandA session.

Participants who complete the course can expect to earn a certificate, signed by CI, giving them the confidence and credibility to engage their national standard body on consumer issues within the international context.

Why is CI doing this? Well, when all else is said and done, Consumers International exists for two reasons: to campaign for consumer rights at the international level, and help develop consumer rights protection where it’s needed most.

On the first issue we are working tirelessly with our Members and Supporters in every region of the world – and with international decision-making bodies such as ISO – to stand up and demand a better deal for consumers.

On the second issue (what we at CI call Organisational Empowerment) we are putting tremendous efforts into improving consumer protection in countries and communities where it is poor or non-existent.

Together with this new e-learning initiative, we recently launched the online CI Resource Zone, a webinar programme and conducted a sustainable business model assessment of over 130 CI Member organisations.

We hope that our Standards e-learning course (together with others we have planned on campaigning, business development and communications) will help our Members and Supporters effectively serve and protect consumers.

Don’t forget to email e-learning@consint.org if you want find out how you can join the course.

A lift for consumer protection in China

CI’s Luke Upchurch on how our newest Supporter organisation is a step in the right direction for consumer protection in China.

Apparently, there are 1.6 million elevators in the China. It’s one of those statistics that brings home the enormity of this nation and the mind-boggling size of its growth.

It was also the subject of a memorable anecdote at the launch of China’s first Research Centre for Policy and Law on Global Consumer Protection. The Centre is the latest organisation to take advantage of our new CI Supporter category of association.

Established by Wuhan University, one of China’s oldest academic institutions, the Centre is one of only a handful in the world dedicated to the study and development of global consumer protection and law. CI was at the inaugural event to present our latest findings on the state of consumer protection and welcome the Centre into the global consumer movement.

The ‘elevator pitch’, put forward by an eminent law professor at the event, began by pointing to the safety regulations for lifts in China: the frequency of effective inspections, the need for certification, the liability of the building’s owners and the statutory rights of anyone injured whilst using the elevator.

Consumer protection in China, the professor argued, needed to adopt a similar framework. It was a thought-provoking example; one of many during this two day event.

For instance Connie Lau, until recently head of the Hong Kong Consumer Council and now adviser to UNCTAD, spoke of the conflict between prudential regulation of financial services and consumer protection – a point picked up by Wuhan’s Professor Zhou who raised the failures of the Chinese regulators to stamp out malpractices.

In the same vain, Ying Yu of the Wuhan Centre pointed to the fact that China had as yet no bank deposit guarantee for consumers in operation, despite being under consideration for many years.

Both of these issues have been recently highlighted in CI’s work on the UN Guidelines for Consumer Protection (the focus of the Wuhan conference).   

Other interventions focused on the remarkable level of internet use in China. Wuhan University’s Professor Qisheng HE pointed out that there are 538 million web users in China – 210 million of which shop online, 187 million are online bank users.

These are staggering figures for a country that – like many others – has few viable avenues for consumers to seek redress in online commerce disputes. There were also revealing presentations on counterfeit consumption, sustainability, data security, as well as much on the UN Guidelines.

From the degree of understanding and analysis on display at the event, it’s clear that some in China have woken up to the need for higher standards of consumer protection – not just to reassure global markets about the quality of its exports, but also as a harbinger of growth in its own domestic consumer economy.

A point further emphasised by recent indications that the authorities are considering allowing China’s consumers to pursue class actions for the first time.

The Wuhan Centre is a milestone on a journey, not only as a means for China to explore international standards in consumer protection, but also for the rest of the world to understand the impact of consumer rights development in a country that boasts one-sixth of the world’s population. What happens here will, and does, affect us all.

Those clever minds in China looking at consumer protection already know the pressing issues at hand. As do most Chinese consumers: product safety, fake goods, sustainability, financial services, digital consumer rights and, above all, effective legislation and enforcement.

The Wuhan Centre, and, by acquiescence, China’s authorities know the benefits an international perspective can bring to this challenge: it is why both the state and China’s consumer rights experts are so keen to get involved in the revision of the UN Guidelines on Consumer Protection – something CI is uniquely placed to offer the Wuhan Centre, along with our other Members, Supporters, and partners in China and across the world.

By becoming a CI Supporter organisation we hope the rest of the global consumer rights movement can help the Wuhan Centre navigate a path of best practice as it seeks to elevate consumer justice and protection for China's 1.35 billion people.  

If you would like to find out more about becoming a Member or Supporter of CI, please visit the Join us section on the CI website.

Right to education and information still a distant dream for consumers in India

CI’s members in the Asia Pacific and Middle East region are gathering for their regional meeting in Delhi this week. George Cheriyan, director and head of CI member CUTS International, looks at the state of consumer rights in India which reflect wider trends for the region.

Even 27 years after the United Nations Guidelines on Consumer Protection (UNGCP) was formulated, only 42 percent of people in India are aware of consumer rights, and 26 years after the enactment of the Consumer Protection Law in India, only 20 percent of people in India have heard about the law.

These are some of the key findings from the ‘State of the Indian Consumer 2012’ published by CUTS International.

Educated and informed consumers are essential for the emergence and sustenance of an efficient market.

An educated consumer can make rational choices about goods and services and protect their own rights and interests from the exploitation of fraudulent businessmen or service providers.

Where the literacy rate is high and social awareness is greater, consumers are less likely to be subjected to such exploitation. Thus, consumer education becomes a priority concern.

In a country like India, where many consumers live in rural areas and are illiterate, they are susceptible to being exploited by unscrupulous businessmen.

An intensive, broad-based multimedia campaign is slowly yielding fruit, as the percentage of consumers who are aware of their rights and interests is slowly increasing.

To a consumer, the right to be informed means the right to be given the facts needed to make an informed choice or decision. There are enough rules and regulations in place which make it mandatory for manufacturers to provide essential information to consumers.

What is lacking is strict enforcement and monitoring. Also, there is a need for a massive awareness campaign and information dissemination among consumers about the existing legal remedies available to an aggrieved consumer.

The UNGCP give great emphasis on consumer education. The Guidelines impose an obligation on governments to formulate or encourage the development of general consumer education and information programmes, bearing in mind the cultural traditions of the people concerned.

The Guidelines also call upon governments to develop, strengthen or maintain a strong consumer policy, and provide for enhanced protection of consumers by enunciating various steps and measures.

In order for these Guidelines to continue to provide an important policy framework, there is a need for further improvement, since there has not been any form of revision since 1999 and the content does not reflect the most contemporary consumer protection issues.

With this backdrop, the global conference on ‘Review of United Nations Guidelines on Consumer Protection’, organised in New Delhi by CI in partnership with CUTS International to gather input from consumer organisations across the world, is extremely important.

This event is an excellent opportunity for consumer organisations in India to work with the government for stronger enforcement of consumer rights and to make consumer education and protection law and redress mechanisms in the country workable for both urban and rural consumers.

What’s the value of your personal data?

Liz Coll, senior policy advocate with CI member Consumer Focus, explains that consumers, despite being the originators of their own digital data, are in the dark about its value.

In the digital economy personal data is a growth business. The volume of personal data gathered by smart devices, searches, site visits, purchases, recommendations, likes, tweets and status updates is on the rise.

Growing too is the value of this data to companies who capture, store, analyse and sell it on.

They use the data to predict consumer behaviour, target advertising and increase profits. While trading personal data may not have been the original core mission of digital giants such as Google and Facebook, they now get significant revenue from the personal data trails left by service users.

The services are free to use but, as the social media phrase goes, ‘if the service is free, then you’re the product.’

The major commodity of the age

Such is the potential for personal data to transform business models and underpin new services that some people now talk about personal data as the ‘new oil’ in the connected digital economy.

Commentators claim it is set to become the major commodity of the age, a critical resource from which new innovations and value will flow.

Markets such as banking are rapidly rethinking how to better mine the data they hold, or obtain additional information in order to increase the value they can derive from customers.

Yet consumer understanding of what happens to this valuable data does not appear to be growing at the same pace, even though the commodity originates with them.

We are far from naïve – our intuition tells us that a lot is being collected but we are somewhat vague about why and what the long term implications of this might be.

Despite our concerns, we still don’t engage with the existing opportunities to take control over our information. We sign our data over by agreeing to (but rarely comprehending) terms and conditions of sometimes epic length.

Open to exploitation

There’s a big contrast here between the importance that external agencies now attach to consumer data, and the significance consumers themselves assign.

The response from consumers is mixed; they are concerned and aware but are not making moves to protect themselves. This suggests a scenario where consumers, by not exerting control over their digital footprint, could be left open to exploitation.

Consumer understanding

Consumer Focus wanted to develop a better appreciation of the extent to which consumers know their data is being collected and controlled, and understand the ways in which it is being exploited.

We also wanted to find out what controls consumers put in place to protect themselves, and what value they put on the data that they impart, knowingly or unknowingly, about themselves.

We commissioned ICM to survey 2,002 adults aged over 18, with results weighted to provide a representative sample. Respondents included online service users and loyalty card holders. Full details of the research findings (PDF 582KB) are available.

Headline research findings

The findings show a conflict and contrast in consumer behaviour and sentiment regarding personal data:

Suprisingly high levels of trust

Some consumers are pretty trusting of online providers’ data collection motives, despite a general impression that they were not to be trusted: one in 10 consumers had not realised any data was collected on them via online services.

And a further fifth thought that the provider only collected the minimum amount required to make the service work better.

That means almost two fifths of respondents (39 per cent) have a benign interpretation of online organisations’ intentions.

This is surprisingly high given that online providers were ranked lower in trust terms than any other type of organisation, including banks (for managing current accounts), the police and supermarkets.

Similarly, four out of five loyalty card holders acknowledge that the card provider gathers data about them, but just under a third recognise that the card provider then packages this up and sells it on as anonymised data, or uses it to segment its customer base and target offers, etc.

Tick, click and hope for the best

Despite concerns about the implications of terms and conditions, people generally tend to tick, click and hope for the best: attitudes and behaviour around terms and conditions and license agreements throw up some interesting insights.

We were surprised to find that almost a third of consumers claim they always read terms and conditions online.

Over half told us they rarely do and one in seven never do so. For this group, the length of terms and conditions are off putting, and the desire to access the product or service would appear to override any concerns about data exchange.

A few also believed that nothing bad could come from not reading them.

Having said that, three out of five consumers who do not read the small print still have concerns about assenting without reading the details.

Unknown financial implications were the top concern for a third of people, with just over half (52 per cent) mentioning personal data concerns as a top issue.

Of the third that do claim to read terms and conditions, only one in five feel they fully understand the implications when they tick the ‘I agree’ box. That makes a mere 16th of the total sample who claim to fully comprehend the implications of terms and conditions.

Declining services

When it comes to using online services, only 18 per cent of those who always read terms and conditions mentioned how information is gathered and used as the main reason for checking on provider’s terms and conditions.

Of those who end up declining online services and products, it is a small number – 13 per cent – who pull out because of privacy concerns, and 7 per cent say that it was because too much personal information was demanded.

Low understanding of value

In an age where our personal data is conceived of as the commodity which will drive the digital economy, we as originators of the data are in the dark about its value.

When asked to guess the value of the personal data collected about them via their most frequently used service, 61 per cent of people did not attempt to volunteer a figure.

Of those who did try to value it, 15 per cent thought it had no value at all – the largest proportion of the respondents who attempted to give an estimate of the value.

For consumers that suggested a value above zero, there was no consensus, with some suggesting it is worth only up to £50 or £100 a year and others opting for many hundreds of pounds. It’s not only consumers who can’t agree – many digital and business experts differ greatly on what the value of data actually is.

Nevertheless, when asked to rate whether their data has a commercial value that organisations should pay a fee to use – three-fifths of consumers agree and only one in six disagree.

Consumers do not yet have a well-developed sense of what a fair exchange between a service provider and consumer looks like: when asked what they would be prepared to pay to use their favourite, free-to-use online service, fewer than one in 10 suggested a figure, and two-thirds said they were not prepared to pay at all.

What does it all mean?

The research results show some conflicting attitudes and behaviours that can be explained in part by differences of opinion between people – with age being a major factor.

The Demos Data Dialogue survey puts the public into five categories, of which 27 per cent recognise the value of sharing data, see key benefits and are comfortable with sharing. That’s just under a third of people who are not overly concerned about the risks of sharing personal info and who see the benefits of the value exchange.

Attitudes towards terms and conditions suggest an acceptance of exchanges weighted heavily towards the provider which consumers feel compelled to go along with in order to access services.

But surely if more consumers knew the value of their personal data they wouldn’t be so happy to stick to the status quo?

The dark side of digital

Lucy Hopkins from Consumer Focus asks us to consider the potential pitfalls for consumers in the internet era, and how regulators can pre-empt the dangers.

Imagine a world where a company can refuse you a loan because one of your friends on Facebook has a bad credit rating.

Imagine you get worse deals than others when buying online because a company has tracked your search patterns and knows that you’re not much of a bargain hunter.

Imagine you leave negative comments for a company on a review site and someone starts posting malicious information about you online which spreads like wildfire, leading to you losing your job.

These are just some of the problems that an increasing number of people could be facing in the digital age.

This is not to say that digital advances are a bad thing. Widespread access to the internet and the tools and applications that have been built on it has brought many benefits—such as increased access to information, transparency, convenience and new means of communication—to millions of people.

But there has been less focus on what potential risks and challenges will emerge from how providers will deploy these technologies. Consumer Focus’ review of digital downsides 'All that's digital isn't gold: The challenges and risks of the digital age,' (pdf) aims to do just that.

It covers issues from new web monopolies and online reputation management to unfair terms of data sharing and biased search engine results.

The aim of highlighting these and other detriments is to prompt debate and persuade those who are in a position to pre-empt and prevent these (regulators, enforcers, consumer groups and companies that operate in this area) to understand and respond to these consumer  issues now before they become widespread problems.

Reviewing these downsides, it becomes clear that there is not one, single way of addressing or mitigating their effects. The rapid pace of change in the digital world moves faster than traditional regulatory approaches are typically able to, meaning classic responses might not always be suitable for the problems that are emerging.

This fast pace and unpredictable nature of change also makes it difficult to anticipate problems and plan responses.

So regulators, and other bodies working in the consumer interest, will need to start to consider how they can be more agile in order to respond to the challenges these detriments will present to our traditional regulatory frameworks.

Building support and leading advocacy for CI in Asia

Indrani Thuraisingham, Head of CI Office for Asia Pacific and the Middle East, reports on the activities of the region

It’s been a busy time in the Asia Pacific and Middle East region and I’m happy to be able to announce the completion of some important projects as well as the addition of two new members to the CI family.

First, welcome to our newest members:

• Consumer Rights and Services Organisation (CRSO), Afghanistan; and
• Yogyakarta Consumer Institute of Indonesia.

Second, I am excited to announce the upcoming release of our EU-funded video on the challenges faced by consumers in relation to sustainable consumption and production.

This six-minute video is a collaboration between CI and SWITCH-Asia, an EU-funded programme to promote sustainable consumption and production.

The video features stories from many typical households throughout Asia and their consumer habits as collected by SWITCH-Asia partners in China, India and Vietnam and the following CI members:  

• UBINIG, Bangladesh;
• Consumers Association of India;
• Foundation for Consumers, Thailand; and
• FOMCA, Malaysia.

The video will be shown at the Rio+20 Earth Summit in Brazil this month. It will be available for all to see on the CI website, and you can ‘like’ us on Facebook to keep up to date with this and all our activities for Rio+20..

Third, we successfully completed our seven-month programme of work in Nepal which looked at ways to develop the country’s consumer movement.

We found that getting more information into circulation through consumer education and awareness programmes and setting up clear and effective systems for redress are the best ways to boost consumer confidence and grow the country’s movement.

As part of the project, our office carried out training sessions, mapping of consumer organisations, exposure visits, and printing of IEC materials on consumer protection as well as organised the policy conference for government officials from the Department of Commerce and representatives of all of the consumer organisations in Nepal.

The programme was run under the auspices of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization through the EC-Nepal WTO Assistance Programme towards "making the consumer movement a viable market force" from September 2011 until March 2012.

Finally, I am pleased to announce that our office is currently leading CI’s work in two of the five global priority programmes as part of our new Strategy 2015. These are ‘Consumers in the Digital Age’ and ‘Consumer Justice and Protection’.

These two global programmes have a common agenda of engaging UNCTAD to revise the UN Guidelines on Consumer Protection to include access to knowledge, competition, financial services and e-commerce.

CI’s Dr Jeremy Malcolm attended the recent UNCTAD XIII conference in Doha, Qatar, to advocate for the inclusion of both consumer protection and access to knowledge issues in the outcome documents of the conference.

There were heated debates with governments from some developed countries about their desire to remove important references to the global financial crisis and climate change from the outcome text. It was due to the persistence of civil society organisations such as CI that most of those references were reinstated.

In the end, the outcome documents made a strong statement for the consumer movement, in particular the civil society statement which reiterated the eight consumer rights, and called for the revision of the UN Guidelines for Consumer Protection.

How group action is reinventing consumer activism

Richard Bates, from CI member Consumer Focus, explains how social technologies are revolutionising consumer action—an important lesson for consumer groups around the world

Here’s a theory I’m sure you’re familiar with: foster competition within a market and its benefits – prices held down, service driven up and thriving innovation – will follow, as engaged consumers work to maximise their own interest and seek out better deals.

It’s a notion that underpins our energy, telecoms and financial services markets here in Britain. 

And here’s a reality that I suspect won’t be unique to Britain: mass inertia is the norm across these sectors. It’s a predictable and understandable consumer response in markets where engagement is not a high priority and which suffer from being archetypal ‘confusopolies’.

The result is an impasse. Consumers stay put and competition gives way to complacency on the provider side. The benefits that competition should deliver for consumers are then in short supply. The fabled invisible hand is, well, all too invisible.

But, what if we created an alternative, much simpler, more powerful way of making these markets work for consumers? One where an intermediary works on behalf of consumers to:

• Provide a focal point around which consumers who want better value, but reject the conventional ‘go it alone’ route to market can cluster
• Convert mass inertia into a competitive impetus by grouping participating consumers’ aggregate demand into a winnable block of market share
• Leverage that aggregate demand to secure a better deal
• Manage the mass switch of participating consumers to the provider who makes the best offer to the group

In a new report for Consumer Focus, I’ve argued the possibility of doing just that. The report expands on a trend I termed ‘Get it, together’ in a previous CI blog. At the core of this trend are the opportunities for new forms of group action enabled by social technologies.

Of course, coming together as a group in order to pursue a shared objective is nothing new. 

History is rich with examples of people organising in groups and using the consequent power of numbers to advance collective interests and press for change – whether social, political, or economic.

But the costs associated with large-scale group formation and, subsequently, the co-ordination and management of group action meant that only large organisations with hierarchies and management structures could act in this way. And only then if the benefits achieved outweighed the costs incurred.

Instances of people collaborating as a group outside the bounds of an organisation were mostly limited to small scale, local initiatives.

But social technologies have eroded those costs, meaning it’s not only easy for people to form groups now, it’s also easy for the group to achieve critical mass and to co-ordinate and synchronise its actions to achieve a shared goal.

As a result, we are seeing a proliferation of new kinds of groups, including consumers working together or through intermediaries to achieve a shared objective in the marketplace. The Bank Transfer Day campaigns in the USA harness precisely these dynamics, as do local Carrotmob initiatives.

What’s more, in the past effective group effort often depended on a division of labour that assigned all members a task to undertake in pursuit of the group’s aims. Not anymore.

An active intermediary can now work on behalf of the group and harness the power of its numbers - rather than the efforts of its members - to achieve the shared goal. Other than aligning with the group and signalling assent to an action being undertaken on their behalf, individual members can now be effective in aggregate while remaining largely passive in practice.

In a consumer context, this solves the problem of inertia and minimises the costs of market participation for consumers, offering them the attractive proposition of better outcomes for less effort.

Today, we’re seeing the first wave of initiatives that look to put these ideas into practice and disrupt the markets to which they’re applied. Within the next three to five years collective switching could well turn the status quo on its head and create a situation where providers will have to work much harder to win and retain the custom of large groups of consumers.

Already, collective switching pioneer – iChoosr – has secured significant savings on energy bills for hundreds of thousands of consumers in Belgium and the Netherlands. Consumentenbond has also applied the approach successfully in the Dutch energy market. Which? has just overseen the first instance of collective switching in the British energy market, resulting in a straightforward route to an average saving of £123  for up to 200,000 participating consumers. Choice provided a much needed jolt to the Australian mortgage market by applying a variation of the approach there. 

As you may have noticed, three of those four initiatives have been offered by consumer bodies. The success of the exception, iChoosr, has been built on working in partnership with community organisations that consumers know and trust.

This suggests that integrity – a quality with which consumer and community bodies are strongly associated – will be key for consumer adoption of this approach. That’s hardly a surprise given that having the confidence to engage with an intermediary platform on a novel approach to markets that can represent a major financial commitment, will be a key issue for consumers.

Collective switching and wider initiatives harnessing the group dynamic have the potential to disrupt and rebalance how power and information flows in markets. Therefore, existing players who have most to lose are likely to resist the sea change rather than make the running in developing this kind of service.

Bodies working in the consumer interest therefore have vital roles to play as catalysts for collective switching. This could take the form of supporting pioneering intermediary services that work on behalf of consumers in markets; or, wherever necessary, involve the direct development and deployment of the platforms that can open this alternative approach up for consumers.

Richard Bates leads the Consumer Empowerment Programme at Consumer Focus @rchrdbts

Seychelles: blue waters and consumer rights

Antonino Serra, Buenos Aires-based Senior Policy Officer at CI, visits Seychelles, a group of islands east of Africa, and finds the beautiful surroundings are home to a strong consumer organisation presence.

If you stroll with Jules Hoareau, the Executive Director of the National Consumers Forum (NATCOF) of Seychelles, through the streets of tiny Victoria, you’ll surely spend much of your time waiting for Jules to greet and talk with people. Jules is very well known in Seychelles, as he is not only an officer at NATCOF but is a journalist that conducts TV and radio programmes that are very popular in this archipelago immersed in the bluest waters of the Indian Ocean.

The popularity of Jules is also the popularity of NATCOF. The name and advice of the Forum are widely spread all around the city – stuck on the sides of public buses (or the Tata Bus as Sechelloises call it), on banners hung in-between trees. From giving warnings to businesses to write contracts that are written clearly, to encouraging consumers to eat ‘bread fruit’ – a local version of fried potatoes – consumers know their rights and have a name to remember if they need help with problems with goods or services.

My own experience in Seychelles was one of the most interesting in my twenty years working in consumer issues. I found an organisation that is not only powerful but very professional, with truly dedicated people committed to pursuing consumer welfare. They are a handful of people that work to ensure that the 87,000 inhabitants of the country have their rights respected, and are reminded of their duties.

Consumer education workshops

I went there to be a facilitator in a workshop on consumer education for teachers and professors of elementary and secondary schools. The workshop was organised in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and the support of the Anne Fransen Fund.

Bernard Shamlaye, the Minister of Education, was present at both the opening and closing ceremonies, and delivered a speech in which he stressed that consumer education is an essential asset for developing wiser citizens and a better marketplace. He promised the continuation of the efforts in order to ensure permanent training for teachers and professors on consumer issues.

But it was Raymonde Course, NATCOF’s Chairperson and true leader that set the tone of the workshop. She said that consumer education is for life, and this ‘mantra’ covered all our activities. She understood that consumer education deals with activities essential for everyday life, to help us to be better people, better citizens and more aware consumers.

Hands-on exercises

The workshop was designed to trigger debate and discussion. It included a market survey, which involved participants walking though the streets of Victoria in search of the prices, labels and languages of food and cosmetics. This exercise was a great companion to other classes: Madame Course led a delicious session on the basics and importance of following a budget at home; Jules led a hilarious presentation on what the free trade and market economy is – or should be! – using an approach concluding with Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s soup can pictures and Pop Art.

Throughout the workshops there was the kind and merry intervention of Jacques Koui, the ‘entertainer’ and well-versed consumer specialist from the Ministry of Education.

Entangled in the beauty of the landscape, entwined in the friendliness of their people – the experience of sharing a time with colleagues of Seychelles was unique. To all of them – now friends and fellow consumer activists – a big thanks.