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Children's Health Is Coming Second to The Profits of Baby Formula Peddlers
Like most of the world, I was mistaken. I thought that the aggressive promotion of baby formula was a problem confined to the poorer nations, where weak or complicit governments are pushed around by corporations, and mothers are gulled into swapping the breast for the tin. But after I wrote about the bullying of the government of the Philippines by baby formula companies a fortnight ago, the National Childbirth Trust and Baby Milk Action got in touch to tell me a story much closer to home.
We don't have mass deaths from dysentery in the United Kingdom, though babies here are five times more likely to be admitted to hospital with gastroenteritis if they are bottle-fed. But if children don't breastfeed they become susceptible to an astonishing range of illnesses and conditions, regardless of how rich their parents are. A study of 600 Dutch people around 50 years old found that those who had been bottle-fed had higher rates of risk factors for cardiovascular disease than those who had been breastfed. A meta-analysis of studies covering 69,000 children found that breastfeeding protects against obesity. It also appears to reduce the incidence of asthma, allergies, childhood cancers, diabetes, ear infections, Crohn's and colitis (the references are on my website).
So how well do we do? About as badly as a developed nation can. In a recent survey of 16 European countries, the UK comes second to last, beating only Belgium. When our babies are six months old, just 21% receive any breastmilk, while in Norway the rate is 80%; 24% of British babies never taste breastmilk at all - in Norway it's 2%. Remember this next time someone tells you that the rate can't be increased because lots of women can't produce milk. The constraint is not biological but political. The Norwegian government has passed laws that make breastfeeding as easy as possible: all women are entitled to a year's maternity leave on 80% pay, and state employees are given special breastfeeding breaks.
Here we have been allowed to remain in an almost medieval state of ignorance. A survey by the Department of Health found that a fifth of women under 24 thought breastfeeding would ruin their bodies, and that women greatly overestimated the difficulties of producing milk. Perhaps most significantly, 34% believed that infant formula milks were "very similar" to or "the same" as breastmilk. A poll by Mori for the National Childbirth Trust found that about a third of women had received the impression that infant formula was "as good as" or "better than" breastmilk.
How could this idea have persisted, despite all that we now know about breastfeeding? Partly because the formula companies have been able to keep making bold claims about their products. In January the body that coordinates the enforcement of trading standards sent a letter to all the local authorities in the UK. It listed five kinds of claim that are not compliant with British regulations on selling infant formula. One of them was "closer than ever to breastmilk". Yesterday morning I bought three cartons of infant formula from my local co-op and chemist. On the front of Cow & Gate's packet is "Closer than ever to breastmilk". SMA Gold is "now even closer to breastmilk", while Milupa's Aptamil is "the closest to breastmilk".
The claim that "prebiotics" support a baby's "natural defences" is also ruled out. But yesterday I learned that "babies thrive when their natural immune system is supported, so Cow & Gate babymilks are developed with special nutrients, such as prebiotics, that can do this. It's our way of helping you to protect your baby." The Aptamil packet claims that "prebiotics ... support your baby's natural immune system". It also made claims, about fatty acids, nucleotides and betacarotene, of the kind the letter warned against. All five of the examples listed in the letter, in other words, appear on just three packets. The packaging also seems to contravene a guideline laid down by the World Health Assembly in its international code on breastmilk substitutes: that containers should not show "pictures or text which may idealise the use of infant formula". The Aptamil box carries a picture of smiling faces hanging from a baby's mobile. Cow & Gate's carton has a cute picture of a teddy bear with a bottle, and SMA has a fluffy duckling sleeping with a contented smile.
Baby Milk Action contends that some companies have found a clever way of getting round the law banning adverts for infant formula. They legally advertise follow-on formula instead. The packets of infant and follow-on milk sit next to each other on the shelf and look very similar: the advertising for one product is likely to affect sales of the other. Campaigners point to some adverts that don't make it clear which of the two products they are promoting. When Baby Milk Action complained to the Advertising Standards Authority, it was told that the authority won't investigate unless the adverts specifically mention infant formula. Follow-on milk, according to the World Health Assembly, is unnecessary.
I would not suggest that a woman sees a fluffy duckling and thinks, "Right, I'll give up breastfeeding." But if she is having trouble producing milk, the packaging appears to offer reassurance: "Closer than ever to breastmilk" might sound close enough.
The law can be tightened, but only with your help. For the past three years, the Food Standards Agency - having at last got something right - has been pushing the European commission for tougher rules. Outgunned by corporate lobbyists, it has mostly failed. In December the commission issued a new directive that, far from banning the advertising of follow-on milk, appears to ban the banning of it. Though the commission's own scientific advisory body says the manufacturers should remove all nutrition claims except "lactose free", the new directive would allow companies to make other statements for which the scientists say there is no evidence. An obscure rule allowed the commission to draw up the directive without consulting the European parliament. The bureaucrats and the corporate lobbyists have been unmolested by the interests of the hoi polloi, and it shows.
The British government has some discretion about how this directive will be passed into law, and the Food Standards Agency is currently drawing up a legal instrument for implementing it. But it has hit another obstacle: a corporate sleeper cell inserted into the heart of government by Tony Blair, called the Better Regulation Executive. Its function seems to be to block any rule that might interfere with a company's ability to make money. Its executive chairman, William Sargent, previously ran a company which produces digital images for the advertising industry. Government officials report that Sargent is fiercely opposed to making the advertising rules any tougher than the directive requires.
Left to their own devices, our two prime ministers will put healthy profits ahead of healthy children. So they must not be left to their own devices. We have one chance, by lobbying Downing Street, to help the progressives in government to beat back the corporate yes men. We should use it.
8 Comments so far
Show AllChildhood is being taken away by corporations. Marketing to the unborn is cruel. Kids today are bombarded with advertisements and are treated as consumers. Parents today compete with the TV for the attention of their kids. And it's not just the physical health, but also the mental health of our kids that we should be worried about. America is a cruel country to grow up in today.
Hoa binh
I nursed my youngest son until he was two-and-a-half years old. A native of Germany where breast-feeding was considered the norm, I was surprised at the resistance and downright hostility I received in the US for nursing my son that long. Some people even intimated that I might be perverted!
However, it was well worth staring down the censors:
In the 23 years of my son's life--not counting the appointments at the Wellbaby Clinic for regular check-ups-- he went to the doctor for medical care three times: once for an ear infection after swimming in a lake at camp, once for chicken pox that got into his eye, and once for a dog bite.
With the US healthcare system rotten to the core, I am glad I was able to give him the kind of health insurance that money just cannot buy.
Does the below from Wiki indicate that we can count on Hillary to address these issues:
...Hillary received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from doctors, hospitals, drug companies, and insurance companies for her 2006 re-election in the Senate, including several insurance companies were members of the Health Insurance Association of America that helped defeat the Clinton Health Plain in 1994
jon
Connecting the dots: from human behaviors to ecosystem decline
http://StudentsFroTheEarth.org
For corporations to sell many things they have to convince people it's better than what's NATURAL. The co-opting of the breast, replaced by these artificial food-milks is a case in point. It's a delicate subject to speak about, but how many adults suffer psychological withdrawal from never being breast fed? I would love to see an ad with Hugh Hefner's face between two breasty women, milk on his lips, with the caption, "God Milk?" (I am American and nursed both my children until they were about 2, and except for the older daughter's exposure to foul air in NYC after 911, neither has EVER been treated in a hospital. They are strong, healthy young women. One is now nursing her 18 month old son.)
Everything is second to profits for the new world mafia order.
Around ten years ago, there was a period of time when media seemed to be aggressively trying to portray the natural world in its entirety as deeply threatening and dangerous. I wish I could remember specific examples of this, but it's getting too long ago.
While the strategy of aggressively portraying all things natural as dirty, germ laden, and dangerous seems to have been abandoned, this is still clearly the underlying message.
The cashier in our country hardware store finds it strange that people buy bagged manure to fertilize their gardens. I suspect that people would think me very strange indeed, if they happened to notice me gathering red clover blossoms and elderflowers for herbal teas, and mullein flowers for medicine. Although it would be perfectly okay to buy the same stuff at the health food store, since all things that pass through the rituals of commerce are sanctified and sanitized thereby.
I've known city folk who wouldn't eat garden produce because it had not been blessed by the priesthood down at the USDA.
It's the same thing with mother's milk: Nature is dangerous and polluting; the sanitized man-made product is hygienic.
The ritual of a commercial transaction is so essential that for a mother to nourish her baby without the benefit of a commercial middleman is highly suspect, heretical, and taboo.
When your religion is greed, I suppose you will find a way to insert some agency for profit between every person and their every need and desire--and find a way to promote the view that removing the commercial element from the picture is the act of a person who is dirty in their personal habits, stupid, uneducated, and too poor to know any better--and that such a dirty and disgusting predilection makes that person a danger to the rest of sanitized society.
scvile: Excellent points! As for who may find you strange for making tea, I always use the yardstick of what this nation (USA) holds as legal as a basis for how perverse and off-kilter its values are: alcohol, guns, tobacco, violent sports, inventing REASONS to go to war. In that cultural nexus, the SANE is the one who does not march along, but finds the courage, sanity and sanctity to march to his/her own drummer. THAT is a triumph with a 24/7 media pumping out norms, and enriching the likes of "Dr Phil" to present simplistic recipes of how each should live, the media version of authoritarianism. It all reminds me of a Twilight zone episode where each person must undergo "the transformation" to look, feel, and act alike. Ever wonder why Creator didn't focus on only one kind of flower? Diversity is the rule of nature, but the automotons in the various corporate entities who worship mammon and must substitute the natural gifts for their Pay-per-view species of alternative, think they can line up nature, line up genes, force plants to produce in rows (like soldiers), tell time to march off calendars AS IF each day is alike, etc. I mean this uni-form stuff is ANTI-Life! Little wonder babies die, kids are getting fat and/or developing Diabetes. The whole model is an insult to and assault upon the GREAT mother. It is another form of misogyny.
P.S. In a sense there is no need to make nature dirty these days, AIDS fulfills the task. I thank the God-dess that I came of age sexually in a time when FREE love was possible, when one could experience different partners and not have to put a baggie on their genitals. These kids today risk their lives literally for that liberated level of sexual exploration. They are taught NOT to trust their bodies. Every natural emission or scent has to be masked by some kind of chemical "perfume" or similar agent. People live in a state of divorce from all things natural, and wonder why thus displaced from sentience and feelings, the richest nation in the world finances a killing machine the karma of which (in boomerang) we, as a nation, are yet to know. As I have said in many posts, LIFE is a dance between the sacred Yin and the sacred Yang. Neither is better than the other, they are compliments. BOTH are needed (hello, DNA) to make life, and neither can sustain LIFE or living systems without the loving engagement of its intended other half. Metaphorically, this places the onus on civilization to lift the value of women, the female contribution to society, the female SACRED factor (long missing) from religion, and the feminine province of true intelligence: that of intuition. Mankind has played with, navigated with ONE (ideological) oar for so long, the boat that endlessly circles getting no where (in terms of a spiritual progress to better navigate the high tech inroads) is taken for "reality," or most obscene of all, "God's will." It is time to raise our vision higher than the paradigms that have educated our minds and led us to where we now face massive conundrums. Einstein said, "No problem can be solved at the level of thinking that brought it about." Amen to that.