In contrast to the more than $15 billion in direct marketing spent in the U.S. to exhort children to buy food and non-food products, children often don’t get very far with the companies when they start asking questions. Olympia, Washington teacher Michi Thacker assigned her elementary students to write food manufacturers to raise questions, such as where the macaroni comes from. Most larger companies like Kraft suddenly had little to say. Kraft told one student via email that “the information you are seeking is considered confidential.” Gatorade, Frito Lay, Campbell’s and Post had similar nonanswers. Nancy from Nancy’s Yogurt of Eugene, Oregon, on the other hand, responded personally to students with the names of the producing farms and the origins of ingredients. Rethinking Schools contains 13 articles about how children learn about food, including the costs of local and imported food, corporate food distribution networks, connecting food and heritage, and what an earthworm (in contrast to a PR firm) can teach you about eating right.

By year's end, the European Union is expected to adopt REACH, a proposal that would "require manufacturers to test industrial chemicals used in the manufacturing process to gather health and safety data." REACH stands for "Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals." The bill "has prompted a U.S.-led coalition of 13 countries to step up lobbying efforts to make the final measure more amenable to industry," reports the Wall Street Journal. "The diplomatic missions of the U.S., Japan, Australia, India and other countries issues a length joint critique of the proposed law this month, saying certain provisions would disrupt international trade without offering clear environmental benefits." C. Boyden Gray, the U.S. ambassador to the EU and former chair of FreedomWorks and Citizens for a Sound Economy, said European policymakers "never did a proper impact assessment to evaluate the risk-versus-benefit status of this legislation."

A report by Consumers International, a global federation of consumer organisations, examined the corporate social responsibility policies of 20 major drug companies to test what information they disclose about sponsoring patient groups, funding disease awareness campaigns and offering hospitality to medical experts. The report, Branding the Cure: A consumer perspective on Corporate Social Responsibility, Drug Promotion and the Pharmaceutical Industry, "found only one company, (Eli Lilly), provided information on policies towards patient organisations; Less than half provided information about codes of conduct for gifts and hospitality to health care professionals; Pfizer, that worlds biggest pharmaceutical company, provides no specific public information about its marketing code of conduct." The report concludes that self-regulatory codes of conduct are inadequate and that there is a need to "dissolve [the] veiled relationships between pharmaceutical companies and health researchers."

The European Centre for Public Affairs (ECPA), a non-profit PR training and research group, is calling on PR consultancies to outline how they would improve the image of the PR industry. ECPA deputy chairman Michael Burrell told PR Week that it was "important that the industry promotes and defends itself." However, Burrell recognises the that improving the image of the industry won't be easy. "It is a close to insuperable challenge to actually promote positive news stories about what [the public affairs industry] does," he said. Burrell is European Chairman of Public Affairs for the privately-owned PR firm Edelman.