Slamming ‘big formula milk companies’, WHO scientist calls for urgent action to protect nursing mothers
“This new study shows the the enormous economic and political power of large formula milk companies, as well as major public policy failure that prevents millions of women from giving birth to their children,” said Nigel Rollins, one of the authors of the series on the $55 billion-a-year industry and their marketing “playbooks”, published in the book peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet.
“Actions are needed across different areas of society to better support mothers to breastfeed as long as they want, alongside efforts to combat abusive formula milk marketing once and for all,” he added.
650 million pregnant women are not protected
The third edition recommends much more support for breastfeeding within the health and social security systems, including guaranteeing adequate paid leave.
Currently, around 650 million women lack adequate protectionnote books.
Written by a team of doctors and scientists, the series is considered formulaic selling harmful practices and target parents, health professionals and politicians, and how nutrition practices, women’s rights and health outcomes, are determined by power imbalances and political and economic structures.
“Breastfeeding is not only the responsibility of women and need the means of the collective society that takes gender inequality into consideration,” the authors wrote. Indeed, reviews from 2016 to 2021 and national case studies indicate that breast practices can be improved rapidly through multi-level and multi-component interventions.
Dairy lobbyists’ misleading claims
The World Health Organization has addressed the decades-long challenge of questionable marketing practices among infant formula producers. In 1981, he developed the International Code of Marketing of Milk Substitutes, following a research report on Nestle’s targeted marketing in low- and middle-income countries in the 1970s.
The new version states that misleading marketing claims and regulatory lobbying from dairy and formula companies add to the challenges parents face.
Such claims as suggesting that formula reduces stress, can help with colic, and prolong sleep, only increase parents’ anxiety, the papers say.
Linda Richter, of the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa and co-author, said the formula milk industry. uses “bad science” to suggest, with little supporting evidence, that their products are “solutions to common child health and development challenges”.
This marketing strategy”clearly violates the 1981 Codewhich says that labels should not be designed for the use of formulas to sell more products,” he added.
Great benefits of breastfeeding
WHO recommends exclusive breastfeeding for at least six months. The practice provides huge benefits to babies and young children, from reducing infection risks to reducing obesity rates and chronic diseases later in life.
However, globally, only about half of newborns are breastfed within the first hour of life
A mother breastfeeds her baby at a child health center in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Companies exploit the lack of support
At the time less than half of the newborns are breastfed, according to WHO guidelines, the series explains how the company does it. marketing exploits the lack of support for action by governments and society.
The tactics also use gender politics to sell their products, promoting breastfeeding as “moral justice” while presenting formula milk as a “convenient and powerful solution” for working mothers, the authors found.
Milk politics
Drawing attention to the power of the milk formula industry to influence national political decisions, the series says that the companies also interfere with international regulatory processes. For example, the dairy and formula industries have formed a network of unaccountable trade groups that advocate against policy measures to protect breastfeeding or control the quality of infant formula.
In the face of those pressures on parents, the authors of the series make several recommendations; among them is the need for broader actions across workplaces, health, governments, and communities, to better support women who want to breastfeed. They also called for proper recognition of the contribution of unpaid care work to national development.
Set recommendations
Series author Rafael Pérez-Escamilla, of the Yale School of Public Health, highlighted other important steps.
“Given the great benefits of breastfeeding to their families and national development, women who want to breastfeed need to be supported as much as possible so that they can meet their breastfeeding goals,” she said.
“A major expansion in breast health professional training, and statutory paid leave and other protections are essential.”
