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Lactation Information and Discussion <[log in to unmask]>
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Wed, 17 May 2006 16:36:59 -0400
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I feel compelled to respond to Anna Greenberg's message regarding the survey her firm conducted for the International Formula Council (IFC). This survey of 400 Massachusetts mothers regarding whether or not they wanted a free discharge bag upon leaving the hospital, was distributed to all major Boston and Massachusetts media as well as to the relevant state government offices in the hopes of swaying the Public Health Council and the Executive Offices to vote against reinstating the ban on hospital distribution of formula company discharge bags. The survey was not published in the newspapers because the reporters knew it to be an industry sponsored ploy. The reporters I talked with actually laughed at the survey! The source of the mothers' names and phone numbers may have been bought from a sample vendor but their source of names could easily have been the formula company sponsored mothers' clubs. 
 
We have no idea what questions were asked in this survey. If it was simply asked would you like a free gift, well most mothers would say yes! However, if mothers were asked if they were aware that the discharge bag was the star performer in formula companies' marketing schemes, did they realize that they were being exploited by industry to purchase a product 40% more expensive than the store brand, if they knew that a formula-feeding mother would pay $700 a year more than the store brand because greater than 95% of mothers use the brand given to them by the hospital, that it would lead to decreased exclusive breastfeeding at all points measured between 0-6 months, that in the bag's presence, low income mothers were 6 times less likely to be breastfeeding at all at 7-10 days---would this have made a difference in the survey's conclusions?
 
As an update on what is happening in Massachusetts, one of the members of the Public Health Council that was the vocal supporter of the bag ban was removed from the Council and replaced with an attorney of the same political party as the governor. The vote will be taken on Tuesday May 23. We have enough problems without formula company surveys trying to dilute and adversely influence public health issues.
 
Marsha Walker, RN, IBCLC
Weston, Massachusetts
 
 
 

 

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