Alcohol consumption in pregnancy can result in fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) and other adverse health effects for the child including brain damage, congenital anomalies, and cognitive, emotional, behavioural, and adaptive functioning deficits. Disadvantaged and particularly vulnerable populations have higher rates of alcohol-related death and hospitalisation. It is the leading risk factor for premature mortality and disability among people aged 15 to 49 years. According to the World Health Organization the harmful use of alcohol accounts for 7.1 and 2.2% of the global burden of disease for males and females respectively. Alcohol is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, several kinds of cancer, chronic liver and pancreatic diseases, and mental illnesses. The alcohol industry also contributes to chronic health conditions. The experience of family violence can lead to the use of alcohol consumption as a coping mechanism, and children who witnesses violence, or its threat between parents, are more likely to display harmful drinking patterns later in life. Alcohol is estimated to be a factor in up to 65% of reported family violence incidents and in up to 47% of child abuse cases each year in Australia. These together with healthcare costs including hospitalisation, labour costs, and child protection services for dealing with child maltreatment, are estimated to cost Australia Au$36 billion annually. Negative individual and societal impacts involve loss of life, including from suicide, increased disease risk, crime, and road accidents.
In Australia, more than 5500 lives are lost, and 157,000 people are hospitalised annually as a result of alcohol consumption. It is estimated that alcoholic beverages, including beer, account for 0.7% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across the complete product lifecycle. Grain farming and beer production involve high water consumption and waste generation, while transportation and retail refrigeration are energy intensive. These impacts begin with the brewing process, as the grain, glass, and product delivery all leave environmental footprints. The different methods revealed sufficient information to recognise that strong regulatory frameworks are needed to help to avoid or to mediate negative health impacts.Įxtensive literature examines negative impacts from the products and operations of the alcohol industry. It highlights the need and opportunity for future research. Our research indicates that studying a TNC in a rapidly changing global financialised capitalist economy in a world which is increasingly being managed by TNCs poses methodological and conceptual challenges. We found adverse health impacts including from fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and violence and aggression which disproportionately affect Indigenous and other disadvantaged populations. CUB engage in a range of business practices which benefit the community, including sustainability goals and corporate philanthropy, but also negative aspects including from taxation arrangements, marketing practices, and political donations and lobbying which are enabled by a neoliberal regulatory environment. We found both positive and adverse findings of the corporation’s operations across all domains. Beer attributable fractions and deaths and CUB’s share were also estimated.
We also conducted an ecological study for estimating alcohol attributable fractions and burdens of death due to congestive heart disease, diabetes mellitus, stroke, breast cancer, bowel cancer and injury in Australia.
The data were mapped against a corporate health impact assessment framework which included CUB’s political and business practices products and marketing workforce, social, environmental and economic conditions and consumers’ adverse health impacts. Data identifying potential impacts were sourced through document analysis, including corporate literature media analysis, and 12 semi-structured interviews. CUB is an Australian alcohol company owned by a large transnational corporation Asahi Group Holdings. The aim of this paper was to adapt existing Health Impact Assessment methods that were previously used for both a fast food and an extractives industry corporation in order to assess Carlton and United Breweries (CUB) operations within Australia. There has been limited research on community exposures to TNC policies and practices. The practices of transnational corporations (TNCs) affect population health through unhealthy products, shaping social determinants of health, or influencing the regulatory structures governing their activities.
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