France's Health Minister has said she is in support of plans that would criminalize the use of advertising with anorexic models in France. According to the health ministry, it is believed that about 40,000 people have anorexia in France and 90% of them are women.

According to Socialist lawmaker Olivier Veran, who is also a doctor, the aim is to include language to an upcoming health bill in order to make it unlawful to employ models deemed to have an eating disorder. According to experts, the measure would put France among countries such as Israel and Spain that are cracking down on the glorification of dangerously thin models.

Modeling agencies would need to make a medical report that will show that their models have maintained a healthy mass-to-height ratio. Veran was anticipated to propose the amendments later Monday. It is part of a health reform bill to be presented in Parliament's lower house on March 31.

Models from the catwalks whose body mass-to-height ratio was below 18 were banned in Spain in 2007. In 2013, a law banned underweight models in Israel.

There is a possibility that France might become the latest country to ban the use of underweight fashion models. In 2010, concerns related to anorexia in the modeling industry drew widespread attention. At that time, French model Isabelle Caro died at the age of 28.

Caro had discussed publicly about her struggle with the eating disorder that began at the age of 13. In an interview on the VH1 show ‘The Price of Beauty’ shortly before her death, Caro said that a fashion designer once asked her that she had to lose weight to be a model and at that time she only weighed 86 pounds.