Nancy Wight wrote: "When I first heard about commercialized breastmilk
banking I thought "how terrible"! BUT >>>Commercialized breastmilk banking
and
component preparation may actually be good for breastfeeding in general, as
people can recognize breastmilk as a true economic resource..."
When I was doing the research for a booklet that I co-authored this year,
"Breastfeeding at a Glance: Facts, Figures and Trivia about Lactation,"
(http://msnhomepages.talkcity.com/SupportSt/ammawell/publication.html), one
of the many pieces of information that I tracked down was the cost of
banked human milk from the five milk banks in the US: about $3.50 per
ounce. Yes, the milk is donated and, yes, the milk is sold. However, the
selling price is actually the milk banks' cost of processing (including
pasteurizing and storing) and shipping the milk, not a fee for the milk
itself. Here's an excerpt:
'Breastfeeding women may not associate a price with their product, but if
you need to buy breastmilk, it can be quite costly. Five US milk banks
currently supply over 300,000 ounces of donated, pasteurized human milk
annually--primarily to babies who cannot tolerate other feedings and whose
mothers have supply problems--at a cost of $3.50 per ounce for processing
and shipping. Feeding a baby on purchased donor milk for the first year
would cost almost $41,000! No wonder the nickname for breastmilk has become
"liquid gold."'
Cynthia
Cynthia Good Mojab, MS Clinical Psychology
(Breastfeeding mother, advocate, independent [cross-cultural] researcher
and author; freelance writer; LLL Leader and Research Associate in the LLLI
Publications Department; and former psychotherapist currently busy
nurturing her own little one.)
Ammawell
Email: [log in to unmask]
Web site: http://members.home.net/ammawell
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