PEPSI: Professor wanted to contribute her expertise

From Page A1 values, including health, nutrition, and sustainability, Professor of Human Ecology Jennifer Falbe got involved with the working group. “I wanted to contribute my expertise in public health, nutrition, and pouring rights to solve this problem.” Falbe is the faculty lead for the UCwide Healthy Beverage Initiative (HBI), which promotes tap water access and reduces the ubiquity of sugar-sweetened beverages across the UC system.

Set up by the university’s Preferred Partnership Program (UP3), which the administration oversees, the working group is also being asked to consider whether we should continue pouring rights contracts at all.

Falbe’s ongoing research on pouring rights has identified multiple ways these contracts negatively impact public health, sustainability, choice, equity, and university reputation while generating only relatively small amounts of money for campuses. “The current contract brings in under $1 million per year, compared to UC Davis’ over $6 billion annual budget. In comparison, there are individual faculty members who bring in more money in federal grants, and Davis received a single $50 million donation last year,” she said.

She said it’s “absolutely possible” for the university to sell beverages produced by smaller companies and to do so without a pouring rights contract. “A pouring rights contract is not just a purchasing and procurement contract. It restricts choice while requiring the university to actively market and sell drinks — in this case, mostly unhealthy or unsustainably packaged drinks — to students, staff, faculty, and community members.”

Falbe said if UC discontinued pouring rights contracts, it could easily purchase beverages produced by smaller companies through its existing purchasing agreements with general food and beverage distributors. It could also set up purchasing agreements directly with smaller companies.

UCSF, the University of Vermont, Humboldt State, and San Francisco State University do not have pouring rights contracts. Also, the University of Michigan, a huge undergraduate university, does not have a pouring rights contract that affects campus dining (they have an athletics pouring rights contract, though).

“Leaving a pouring rights contract does not mean there will no longer be any Pepsi or Coke products on campus. Those could still be sold among a much wider selection of beverages.”

Because of this contract, she said, UC Davis is out of compliance with their single-use plastic elimination policy. “If we were not stuck in an exclusive contract, we could shift beverage service away from a throw-away model toward one that uses refillable bottles and beverage dispensers with some single-use aluminum cans.” She said this is exactly what many employers do to innovate their workplace food service. “Universities should be leaders in innovation, not stuck in outdated contracts that limit our autonomy.”

Relatedly, Falbe stated the contract states there’s a minimum number of cases of single-use containers the university must purchase to get sponsorship payments. It also contains a “volume incentive fund” that gives the university more money if it purchases more cases. “This incentivizes selling and marketing more Pepsi beverages and reliance on single-use containers rather than beverage dispensers with refillable bottles and tap water,” she said.

Falbe said the contract requires the university to actively market Pepsi products to the campus in various ways (e.g., large signage across campus, radio, scoreboards and videoboards, print media, and email blasts). The contract even requires athletes to drink water from Gatorade merchandise, giving the impression that they are drinking it: “Water and any other beverage can be placed in or near Players’ Areas as long as it is placed in Gatorade Merchandise.”

Further, she said the contract appears to market sugary drinks to children through “Marketing Program Support” for a “Disadvantaged Youth Program” and providing “Gatorade Product and

Gatorade Merchandise” to UC Davis summer camp.

Other issues, Falbe lists include a choice limit. Not only does the contract require that 90% of beverages come from a single company, it further limits the product mix from that company. For instance, she said the contract requires the availability of specific sugary drinks: “Pepsi shall have the right to make available a Product mix that shall include at a minimum the following Packaged Products: Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, Sierra Mist, Mountain Dew, Dr Pepper, Crush, Gatorade, Lipton, Aquafina, Rockstar, Muscle Milk, Starbucks, Sobe Lifewater, O.N.E. Coconut Water, Ocean Spray Juice; and shall have the right to maintain a Packaged Product mix throughout the Term of the Agreement similar to the Packaged Product mix of the Fall 2014 quarter....Pepsi shall have the right to discontinue the distribution of any one or more of the Products during the Term...”

Healthy choices, meanwhile, are especially limited. A working group audit on campus showed that most beverage brands available and advertised are sugary drinks, which the CDC and World Health Organization recommend limiting in workplaces and universities.

Also, she acknowledges these anti-competitive contracts create monopolies on campus and lock out small and diversly-owned businesses, counter to UC