Bad new for babies: Nestlé to acquire Pfizer Nutrition in strategic move to enhance its position in global infant nutrition
http://info.babymilkaction.org/pressrelease/pressrelease23apr12


Press release 23 April 2012

Nestlé has won a fierce battle with Danone to acquire the Pfizer Nutrition business, including brands such as S-26, SMA and Promil brands of breastmilk substitutes. Nestlé is the one of the four most boycotted companies on the planet and the most boycotted in the UK - where it now enters the mass formula market - according to a past survey by GMI Poll. On 19 April Nestlé Chairman, Peter Brabeck-Letmathé, rejected a call at the company's shareholder meeting by Baby Milk Action to bring baby food marketing practices into line with World Health Assembly minimum standards, stating it was not for Baby Milk Action to tell him what to do. Concerns raised by Baby Milk Action include Nestlé's targeting of health workers and parents. The International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes prohibits companies from seeking direct or indirect contact with pregnant women and parents of infants and young children. 

In its press release announcing the Pfizer purchase, Mr. Brabeck states: "The combined entities will enable us to deepen our engagement with consumers, offering them a wider choice of nutritious food to ensure their children make a healthy start to a healthy life." Nestlé says of Pfizer Nutrition, "85% of its sales are in emerging markets". 

In poor conditions, breastfeeding saves lives. According to UNICEF 1.5 million babies die around the world every year because they are not breastfed.

Baby Milk Action's Campaigns and Networking Coordinator, Mike Brady, said:

"Last week Mr. Brabeck rejected our call for Nestlé to bring its policies and practices into line with World Health Assembly measures. His announcement today shows exactly how the company undermines breastfeeding by suggesting mothers need Nestlé products to 'ensure their children make a healthy start to a healthy life'. Children fed on formula are more likely to become sick than breastfed children and, in conditions of poverty more likely to die, which is why breastfeeding is the true health start."

Posted by Renee (in Vancouver)



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