Seeking a path — ABFI’s Kathryn D’Arcy
The Alcohol Beverage Federation of Ireland has a new Director in Kathryn D’Arcy, a food scientist by degree and a seasoned veteran of corporate challenge. Pat Nolan spoke to her.
Print25 October 2013
“Banning an ad or event sponsorship is going to do very little other than damage the product’s ability to market itself,” says Kathryn D’Arcy, “It certainly isn’t going to stop a 14 year-old from consuming it".
ABFI’s new Director is a pioneer.
No, not that kind of pioneer, she’s a pioneer in that she can lay claim to having produced the first Irish sheep’s cheese through her early work as a food scientist with the Cratlow Cheese Company “… And then I’d the wonderful experience of demonstrating, promoting and selling it in supermarkets throughout the country,” she recalls.
Having gone on to gain overseas experience with Bord Bia in Germany and London, she returned to a job with the Food & Drink Federation as a food legislation executive, providing support to the food industry on legislation: hygiene, food additives, that sort of thing.
Eventually she left, only returning this time to ABFI to provide maternity cover for Rosemary Garth, the former ABFI director, who went on to work for Pernod Ricard.
Kathryn then successfully applied for her job.
What’s ABFI?
For those who’re unclear about just what ABFI does, Kathryn is happy to explain. ABFI represents the manufacturers and suppliers of alcohol.
Drinks Manufacturers Ireland was formed in the early 2000s with a brief to represent drinks manufacturers primarily. But in late 2007, the Irish alcohol industry decided to establish a federation that would enable members to collectively tackle pan-industry issues in the form of the Alcohol Beverage Federation of Ireland. At that point the DMI ceased to exist.
ABFI was set up under four categories: beer, cider, wine and spirits.
It’s remit was to ensure that alcohol policy was based on strong evidence-based policies when it came to alcohol regulations and codes.
National Substance Misuse Strategy
Kathryn began work with the IBEC subsidiary in December 2010 at a time when the National Substance Misuse Strategy was about half-way through its work.
Its report was presented to the Government in February 2012.
“Since then we’ve been waiting to see what the Public Health Alcohol Bill will look like, so the challenges relate very much to working with the Government to ensure that our views are fairly represented, evidence-based and emphasise the importance of the economic contribution of the sector” she explains, “a sector which ensures that its products are marketed and promoted in a responsible manner.
“We have the strictest marketing regulations in the world for alcohol to the extent that global companies will often develop an ad and if it’s passed by the Irish regime they feel it can probably go into any international market as the bar here is so high.”
ABFI also communicates its existence to stakeholders such as the Government and to individuals who’ve made claims about alcohol advertising appealing to children.
Alcohol Bill
“There are 144 recommendations in The National Substance Misuse Strategy; 12 which relate to supply and four or five that we have a real problem with,” she explains, “Those four or five don’t seem to be evidence-based.
“Take marketing and sponsorship: for every piece of research that states that this has an influence on underage drinking, you’ll also find an equal amount of evidence that there’s no evidence of this.
“What’s clear is that peer and parents have the greatest influence in terms of how much and how early they’ll drink and this affects consumption.
“Our teens are drinking less according to a number of reports from the Department of Children and Youth Affairs; a UNICEF report and the ESRI’s Growing up in Ireland report shows that this is a nice foundation on which to build,” she says, “Other countries are seeing an increase in teen drinking.
“At times we binge-drink. A lot of other European countries wouldn’t,” she says, “France drinks the same amount but in a more reasonable manner.”
Sentiments – agreed, solutions – not so
Put simply ABFI would agree with the sentiments expressed over alcohol but not on the paths to a solution.
“Banning an ad or event sponsorship is going to do very little other than damage the product’s ability to market itself,” she says, “It certainly isn’t going to stop a 14 year-old from consuming it.”
It just feels wrong to ban 48-sheet posters: “… Do we really believe that by banning ads that have been through one of the most vigorous approval processes in the world in order to ensure that they do not influence underage drinking, it’ll make one jot of a difference?”.
If an advertising and sponsorship ban were to go ahead, we’d see our market becoming dark where we could no longer promote the products that the international buyers, media and tourists have come to expect from Ireland and can see in their own local markets.
“It’s nonsensical,” believes Kathryn, “We’re a small trading nation that very much depends on the external world.”
Culture change
The harder thing to do is to change the culture and the psyche around alcohol, she says.
“You want it to be ‘uncool’ to be drunk, to make it socially unacceptable to come in on a Monday morning boasting about alcohol consumption — and that’s not an easy culture to change.
“It requires a fundamental change in our attitudes.”
To Kathryn, the only way to address this issue is by everybody sitting down and working this out.
“I really believe that the only way we can address this is by getting everybody involved” she adds, “but the Department of Health refused to engage.
“All those involved in this have been very much wrapped around the proposed Alcohol Bill and when we get a chance to breathe once we’ve seen what the proposals look like, we won’t walk away or shirk our responsibilities but we’ll have to get everybody in the industry – suppliers, retailers, restaurants, hotels and off-licences – to be well-placed to be part of the solution.”
At present ABFI is working to engage with the Government on proposals – and there are many good ones – such as the proposed labelling changes in relation to pregnancy and unit labeling.
She’d like to have a closer working relationship with Government.
“I wish we’d a better relationship with parts of the Government” she states, “or I don’t think we’d be looking at a two-year delay in the introduction of this Bill.”
If teen-drinking and binge-drinking were eradicated, she’d be very happy.
“It’s certainly not in any drinks manufacturer’s interest to invest in this,” she says, “Our brand reputation is very important to us and we do not want to see it damaged.”
But the industry is nothing if not resilient.
“We’re drinking 20% less than we were but has the drinks industry collapsed? The industry has changed and people are drinking in a different way.”
She can only hope that “sense prevails, that the proposals are clearly evidence-based and will make a difference to our drinking culture in the long run” she says, “and that we’ll look back in 10 or 20 years and say that this was a turning point when the Government brought in a set of proposals to address misuse while recognising at the same time the importance of marketing freedoms for legitimate internationally and domestically-focused companies.”
Being Director of ABFI has toughened her up, made her more determined.
“Before taking on the job I wouldn’t have recognised all the difficulties that the drinks companies had,” she explains.
Now she’s even more determined to secure changes and improve the industry’s reputation and relationship with the Government.
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