The Dangerous Illusion of the Policy Priesthood: Why Excluding Industry from Health Policy Will Backfire

Following Chris van Tulleken's parliamentary testimony to the Health and Social Care Committee hearing on Food and Weight Management, Professor Anna Gilmore called on the food industry to be "shut out of the policy room.”

Enthusiastically endorsed by a raft of fellow academics, her call represents a troubling trend in public health thinking—one that confuses moral posturing with effective governance, which ultimately harms the very people it purports to protect.

The academics’ argument rests on a seductive simplicity: if an organisation stands to lose or benefit from a policy decision, they should be excluded. "They are conflicted," declares Gilmore, the Professor of Public Health at the University of Bath. But this reasoning collapses under the slightest scrutiny. By this logic, the NHS should be excluded from healthcare policy discussions because it benefits financially from increased funding.

Charities campaigning for obesity interventions should be barred from the room because they depend on the problem's existence for their budgets. And perhaps most awkwardly, the academic researchers themselves—whose grants, publications, and careers are built on obesity research—should recuse themselves from policy debates.

The truth these academics ignore is that every stakeholder in a policy debate has interests at stake. The question is not whether conflicts exist—they always do—but whether we design processes that channel those conflicts productively or simply pretend they don't exist by banning inconvenient voices.

The Evidence They'd Rather You Didn't See

The irony of van Tulleken and his academic cheerleaders demanding industry exclusion is that it directly contradicts the UK's most successful public health achievement in recent decades: salt reduction.

Since 2003, UK salt intake has fallen from 9.5g to around 8g per day through a voluntary reformulation programme that required industry engagement. The Food and Drink Federation's members have achieved a 31% reduction in salt, 30% reduction in sugar, and 24% reduction in calories over the past decade. Products that were once 20-40% saltier are now fundamentally different because manufacturers were in the room, understanding what was technically feasible and economically viable.

This wasn't industry capture, it was collaborative problem-solving. Public health officials set ambitious targets. Industry explained what was technically possible. Scientists provided evidence. The result? Real progress that saved lives without economic disruption.

Now compare this success story with alcohol policy, where the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control's Article 5.3 has created the exclusionary model these academics want to replicate. Research published in Health Policy and Planning shows that alcohol harm has actually gone backward globally in the past decade, while tobacco—subject to the same exclusionary approach—has seen progress slow in recent years after initial gains.

Why? Because excluding industry doesn't make conflicts disappear—it drives them underground where they're less visible and less manageable. As research in PLOS One demonstrates, the alcohol industry has maintained influence through less transparent channels precisely because formal engagement mechanisms were closed off. The result is worse policy, not better governance.

Who Really Benefits from the Exclusion Fantasy?

Let's be frank about who profits from this moral theatre. When Gilmore demands industry exclusion, they're not proposing a power vacuum—they're proposing that they fill the space. These are academics whose careers depend on positioning themselves as the sole arbiters of public health truth, uncorrupted by commercial interests.

But consider what this creates: a policy priesthood whose pronouncements must be accepted on faith because no counter-expertise is permitted in the room. When van Tulleken tells MPs that "everything about the packaging and marketing and the regulations says this is healthy" about products like wholegrain bread and yoghurt—yet these foods will apparently "definitely" cause overconsumption—we're witnessing advocacy, not evidence-based policy.

The claim that ultra-processed food is "engineered...using brain scanners" to be "addictive" is a particularly egregious example. This sci-fi rhetoric ignores that food scientists use basic sensory testing panels that have been standard practice for over a century, not some nefarious manipulation technology. But when you've excluded the actual experts who understand food manufacturing from the conversation, such myths go unchallenged.

The Implementation Gap Nobody Wants to Discuss

Here's what the exclusionists systematically ignore: policy that can't be implemented is worse than no policy at all. It breeds cynicism, wastes resources, and ultimately damages public health credibility.

The UK's reformulation programmes demonstrate why industry knowledge matters. Reducing sugar in breakfast cereals requires understanding how sugar affects texture, shelf life, and microbial safety—not just sweetness. Cutting salt in bread affects yeast activity and dough development. These aren't trivial technical details; they're the difference between policies that deliver public health improvements and policies that result in product failures, consumer rejection, and eventual abandonment.

When researchers at University of Bath's Tobacco Control Research Group studied attitudes toward industry engagement, they found even among public health professionals, there was recognition that the food industry differs fundamentally from tobacco. Food companies produce products spanning the health spectrum, from genuinely nutritious foods to occasional treats. Treating them as morally equivalent to tobacco manufacturers is both intellectually dishonest and practically counterproductive.

A Question of Democratic Legitimacy

There's a final, fundamental problem with the exclusionist agenda: it's profoundly anti-democratic. When academics demand that entire industries—representing millions of jobs and a quarter of UK manufacturing—be barred from policy discussions affecting their businesses, they're not championing good governance. They're advocating for technocracy which exempts itself from the messy compromises of democratic deliberation.

Wes Streeting, to whom Gilmore directs her demand for action, should recognise this trap. Effective health policy requires building coalitions broad enough to sustain implementation through political cycles. Policies imposed on industry despite their exclusion from the process will face legal challenges, implementation failures, and political reversal. Policies developed with industry—under transparent, accountable processes—have a fighting chance of delivering sustained public health improvements.

The salt reduction programme proves this works. The stagnation of alcohol policy under exclusionary frameworks proves the alternative doesn't. Yet van Tulleken and his academic chorus persist in demanding we repeat the failures while abandoning the successes.

Perhaps that's because, for some, the appearance of moral purity is more important than the messy reality of making progress. But the public deserves better than virtue signalling disguised as health policy. They deserve reforms that actually work, even if that means acknowledging that industry expertise is sometimes necessary for industry transformation.

The food system has its issues but fixing it will require including every stakeholder in the solution, especially those with the technical knowledge and implementation capacity to turn policy ambitions into practical reality. Shutting out industry might satisfy academic vanity, but it will do nothing for public health. And the people who will pay the price won't be the professors in their university offices, but ordinary families trying to make better choices while facing higher food costs and fewer options, while researchers congratulate themselves on their uncompromising principles.

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