While searching for something else, I found this document called:
Infant Formula Prices and Availability  - Final Report to Congress
 
It only reinforces how much power these companies have.  
 
 
 
HYPERLINK
"http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/efan02001/efan02001.pdf"http://www
.ers.usda.gov/publications/efan02001/efan02001.pdf
 
Historically, the infant formula industry has been
highly concentrated, with a small number of manufacturers.
The manufacturers are usually owned by pharmaceutical
companies, and those companies produce
the vast majority of infant formula sold in the United
States.
 
 
 
Medical detailing is the manufacturer’s
practice of contacting hospitals and medical
practitioners directly, providing them with free or discounted
infant formula and encouraging physicians to
recommend one particular brand of formula (GAO,
1990). Medical detailing also includes providing hospitals
with “discharge packs” containing formula samples,
cents-off coupons, and company advertising
aimed at mothers when they leave the hospital with
their babies; such activities may serve as implicit
endorsement of a particular brand of infant formula by
the hospital. To the extent that parents of formula-fed
infants develop a strong brand loyalty, their responsiveness
to price differentials across brands is reduced.
******Thus, medical detailing may provide some market
power to pharmaceutical companies.****** 
 
 
Note that this committee is not even questions the ethics of this!!
 
I know you are all saying " duhhhh" but I can't help but be shocked over
and over again.  
Could we get Michael Moore to do a documentary on the subject?
 
Esther Grunis, IBCLC
Lis Maternity Hospital
Tel Aviv, Israel
 

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