Nina Berry writes:

> Rather than asking mothers if they believe they are
> influenced by IFC member's aggressive marketing, perhaps they could ask,
> "Are mothers, in fact, influenced?" This would mean examining the feeding
> behaviour of mothers who have been subject to this marketing and compare
> it
> with a control group who are not subject to such marketing. (They may need
> to fly to PNG where such marketing is proscribed by legislation to find
> such
> a group.)

I think it would be almost impossible to find a control group that
'matched' the intervention group sufficiently.  Many forms of formula
marketing are proscribed in the UK, but manufacturers show increasingly
imaginative ways of getting round the laws.

For instance, they market very heavily to healthcare professionals. One
particular company is very strong on this, and it is almost always this
particular brand that HCPs recommend to their clients.

The same company has placed a series of articles in an upmarket newspaper
- not directly advertising the formula, but naming it as the sponsor.

All the manufacturers use the internet, direct mail, helplines, to reach
mothers.

At 'Baby Shows', massive marketing opportunities for everyone who wants to
sell stuff to mothers, the biggest, glitziest stands are always those of
the formula manufacturers. It's the same at conferences for HCPs.

The ads for follow-on formula are on TV and in magazines, using the same
branding as the non-follow-on milks.

We got rid of formula samples in hospital and outside of it years and
years ago, but the marketing has just moved elsewhere.

Our laws in the UK need to be strengthened and policed, and maybe it will
happen some day....


Heather Welford Neil
NCT bfc, tutor, UK

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