French Advertising Ban – Food For Thought

06 August 2004 By db staff writer

d=”standfirst”>When is wine not wine? When it’s French, then it’s food. Jon Rees ponders the industry’s desperate attempts to outflank France’s ban on drinks advertising

It is, perhaps, a typically French solution – the French wine industry is in trouble, but is hampered in its attempts to boost its fortunes by the law which bans the advertising of alcoholic drinks, so what to do? Why not pretend wine is not wine at all, but food?

 Far-fetched? Not at all; after all, France has a track record of treating rules with a degree of latitude when it suits. Not so many years ago, France was determined to protect its domestic electronic goods industry from foreign imports, contrary to agreements it had signed on free trade, but the courts determined that the law must be obeyed. So, foreign imports of video recorders were, indeed, allowed into the country, but only if every single one came through the same small village in northern France, each checked by an assiduous customs officer.

Still, as president Chirac says, “The world needs the grandeur of France,” and quite right, too. So now France is looking at another broad interpretation of fact to get round an inconvenient rule, this time one which it imposed on itself and which the French wine lobby, in particular, thinks is a bad idea.

The rule is the famous loi evin, the law introduced  in 1991 preventing the advertising of alcoholic drinks in France on television, in sports stadia and in magazines aimed at young people. When it was introduced the French drinks industry was thriving and jealous overseas drinks companies reckoned the law had little to do with moderating the nation’s alcoholic intake and more to do with preventing foreign drinks firms getting a foothold in the French market. 

It was a law which was rigorously enforced. During the football World Cup in France in 1998, the giant US brewer Anheuser-Busch paid £12.5 million for the right to advertise in French stadia only to discover that it had been sold a pup; it might have paid for the right to advertise but it was not allowed to exercise it. Despite its best efforts, including trying to have the stadia declared special “duty free” zones, it could do nothing but sell its option on  at a loss. 

Times change, though, and the French wine industry is in trouble. High-quality exports have been hit by the success of wines from “newer” producers from Australia to South America and by the strong euro. And now the French domestic wine market is in the doldrums amid health fears over excessive intake and changing tastes. 

Those changes in taste are quite astonishing. In the past 40 years wine consumption in France has dropped from 105 quarts a year per person to 68 quarts a year. In 1980, one meal out of two consumed by the French was taken with wine; last year, it was one in four, while the under 20s increasingly prefer soft drinks or spirits. Fewer French  people than ever could tell  the difference between a Beaujolais or a Bordeaux, and the myriad labels have come to seem increasingly arcane and irrelevant, even to France’s own countrymen.

At the same time there is a glut of French wine available, with record harvests following extra hot summers. This year’s harvest is expected to be nearly 20% bigger than even last year’s, which was itself a record. So drastic action is required and, under pressure from France’s powerful wine lobby, the government is considering reclassifying wine as “nourishment” (the Spanish government did just that last year). 

In a strategy report submitted by 105 of France’s senators and deputies to the Ministry of Agriculture, the lobby argued that only drastic action like this would save an industry which employs 200,000 people and, more than that, is integral to France’s sense of itself.

“Wine is a product to be consumed that is different from anything else, it’s entirely part of our history, our identity, our civilisation,” said the 130 page report, entitled The White Book of French Wine Growing: the role and place of wine in society. The report states that most French people already considered wine to be a food, if it is defined as a “substance with nutrititive components absorbed by the digestive tract”. The “nutrient” bit is crucial, since it is that definition which makes it a food not a drink. It is this which will free it from the requirement that all printed advertising for wine includes the warning: “The abuse of alcohol is dangerous for your health; consume it in moderation.” The changes, think wine producers, would remove the stigma of excess from those who believe that the government’s general recommendation, that two glasses of wine a day is enough, is too severe. If wine becomes a food, then government funds, too, will become available to promote it through advertising. An education programme is also planned to inform consumers about French wine and remove some of the prejudices which wine producers think exist about it. 

Wine growers have already taken a step in this direction by agreeing in July to end centuries of tradition by allowing growers to label Bordeaux and Burgundy wines according to grape variety, which is considered more consumer friendly.

The report was commissioned by prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, who will recommend whether wine be legally redefined.

He is in something of a bind, however, since, while the wine lobby is powerful, so is the anti-drink driving lobby and doctors’ groups, both of which have been successful in changing French drinking habits in recent years.

They can present impressive figures to back up their case that to weaken the laws governing the advertising and promotion of alcohol would be a mistake. For instance, doctors argue that about 20,000 deaths a year are attributable to alcohol, and mainly wine at that. Road safety groups point out that since stringent breath tests were introduced to French roads the number of deaths from car accidents has dropped from 7,242 in 2002 to 5,732 last year. French roads now commonly have notices citing the number of recent fatalities on a particular stretch, and even feature cutout figures of people in black at the point where they died. The French government is serious about road safety.

Some wine growers have decided to act now, before Raffarin gives his verdict. Winegrowers near Toulouse, have started what they call “a crusade of common sense”. The aim is to offer an alternative to the official government view that two glasses of wine is sufficient. They want the limit raised to three glasses and with a great deal of intended irony, they’ve launched a campaign entitled, Three glasses, hello damage. That French sense of humour always triumphs – non?