>From: [log in to unmask]
>Date: Thu, 20 Jun 96 17:20:20 CET
>To: m.e.kennedy
>Subject: Breast feeding in Germany
>
>          Dear Jim,
>
>          It is somewhat overstated to say women are forced to have
>          their breast milk test.  I understood that some women's
>          group had petitioned the EU Parliment regarding their right
>          to have their breast milk tested.  From my understanding,
>          the situtation in Germany is the following:
>
>
>
>          The quasi-governmental (then West) German Research
>          Foundation Commission for the Assessment of Residues in
>          Foods addressed breast milk contamination several times.  In
>          1984 the Commission made a recommendation that babies be
>          breast-fed exclusively for the first four months of life,
>          and that women interested in breast-feeding for longer than
>          four months should have their breast milk tested for
>          presence of contaminants.  The Commission based this
>          recommendation on its balancing of diminishing additional
>          benefits of longer periods of breast-feeding expected after
>          the first 4 months against the health risks posed by breast
>          milk contaminants, which it believed to constantly increase
>          as the period of breast-feeding lengthened.  Additionally,
>          the Commission proposed "guideline values" for several
>          organochlorine contaminants.  The Commission suggested that
>          the risks to infants resulting from levels in excess of the
>          guidelines should be reduced by lowering the fraction which
>          breast milk constitutes of an infant's diet and replacing
>          it with supplementary food.  In 1992 this recommendation was
>          reconsidered by some of its original authors in the light of
>          new data on the levels of dibenzodioxins and dibenzofurans
>          present in breast milk, and they reaffirmed it.  The
>          Commission itself, however, has been dissolved and the
>          German government never endorsed the recommendations
>          discussed above.  The then German Federal Health Office
>          (now Federal Institute for Consumer Protection and
>          Veterinary Medicine) recommendation is that complementary
>          feeding should be initiated between the 4th and 6th month
>          for reasons of nutritional physiology.
>
>          I hope this is useful.
>
>          Gerry
>
>
>