Big Food’s Legal War Against Public Health -By Fransiscus Nanga Roka

So in court, a corporation can lose but still win years worth of sales. That is the grotesque arithmetic governments must contend with as food companies routinely battle laws intended to protect public health.

As the evidence presented here demonstrates, WHO has not filed a lawsuit as many stories suggest. Its Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has cruelly criticized industry in litigation to impede healthy protections. In that regard, the difference is crucial: This is not a WHO prosecution of corporate law-breakers.

An investigation by Lighthouse Reports recorded 239 cases across six countries over the course of 2010-2025, with findings released in July 2026. The range of its was including nutrition policy and, in India, lawsuits challenging products by influencers. These targets were warning labels, advertisement restrictions and taxes on food or beverages. The combined proceedings totalled an impressive 595 years of litigation.

The central danger is delay. An updated warning is one that cannot help with today’s sale. Busting a suspended advertising ban does not save today’s child. A government fixated on defending one number has less bandwidth to develop the next.

And this is how what begins as judicial coercion turns into a commercial strategy: companies pocket the revenue, while public institutions are left picking up the bill for defending their own power. A final regulatory win will likely come years too late to avoid unnecessary exposure.

It is also perfectly legitimate for companies to contest rules that are illegal, discriminatory or poorly designed. Just because a lawsuit is filed does not mean that bad faith has been established. However, access to justice should not turn into an economic leverage where wealthy litigants wear down the institutions that protect the rest of us.

By exaggerating the science, Governments also undermine their position. Ultra-processing, nutrient composition and specific disease mechanisms are associated concepts not interchangeable findings. Britain’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition has highlighted associations with poor health outcomes and stressed the role of confounding along with limitations in other evidence. Good regulation rests upon crisp definitions and defensible proof.

San Francisco is showing the opposite tend with legal pressure. The lawsuit accuses major manufacturers of unfair competition and public nuisance based on harmful design and marketing decisions. These are still allegations that need to be proven—none of which would make the firm actually liable as a corporation (the complaint is unhelpfully vague here). Accountability must endure scrutiny of the evidence rather than be merely a press release.

What should governments do?

It starts with regulations designed to withstand a legal challenge; clear statutory authority, transparent nutrient criteria, objective evidence review and a documented balancing test. Imprecise drafting provides a gap for corporate lawyers to exploit

Second, create a co-operative legal defence fund for international cases. If governments shared pleadings, expert evidence and litigation experience, less would be lost to the unfair advantage that companies can hold from operating across jurisdictions.

Third, declare financial and non-financial support – that includes funding from industry to promote research, lobbying, and regulatory submissions. Where procedural rules allow for disclosure, courts should require a persuasive justification for corporate anonymity.

Fourth, advocate for timely resolution of population health disputes. The governing law should require balancing potential public-health harm with prior commercial injury, when deciding on interim suspension.

Lastly, have fiscal measures with action within affordable nutrition food supply, availability safe drinking water & periodical health camps in school premises. We should not be relying on purchasing power for prevention.

Reformulation does work, but voluntary commitments cannot replace enforceable standards.

The key question is whether governments can shield public health now and not wait for years of litigation that delivers too late. An eventual victory after years of avoidable harm, a rule on paper protected by a legal system that has failed the very people it was written to protect.

Fransiscus Nanga Roka

Faculty of Law University 17 August 1945 Surabaya and Managing Partner Law Firm Victorious Indonesia