From James Akre (with his permission) James said that he had sent the following to nearly 100 addresses in Australia & NZ and that he is happy for his commentary to be disseminated as wished.

PS:  I always get so side-tracked by the simple eloquence of Jim's writing, it takes me a while to re-focus on the content!

Happy reading!

Julieanne

"Commentary on infant formula regulation review in Australia and New Zealand

On 26 September 2012 Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) released a consultation paper on the regulation of infant formula products in the Food Standards Code http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/scienceandeducation/mediacentre/mediareleases/mediareleases2012/26september2012callf5638.cfm. The consultation paper covers a range of issues including how the current standards operate, composition of products, and labelling and advertising.

I hope that the ode to ignorance advocated by the health 'professional' and industry rep cited here http://www.nzherald.co.nz/health/news/article.cfm?c_id=204&objectid=10837446 contribute to strengthening the hand of those responsible for conducting the infant formula label warnings review in Australia and New Zealand. If the review is truly evidence-based, it should be easy to cut through the bombast and rhetoric and make the necessary risk-related changes.

This approach is totally consistent with how public health recommendations generally are conceived, formulated, transmitted and understood. Certainly, few observers focus on the benefits of not smoking, ensuring that children are protected against the major childhood diseases, using a seat belt and placing children in sturdy car seats while driving, making sure that medicines and cleaning products are kept out of reach of young children, or always using requisite safety gear, for example helmets, gloves and eye protection, when engaging in potentially dangerous activities. Rather we emphasise the risks involved, to ourselves and others, if we fail to heed elementary health and safety precautions.

And surely the competent national authorities responsible for promoting public health and safety are unlikely to agonise over the possibility of inflicting guilt on the citizenry by calling attention, bluntly and repeatedly, to the risks incurred when people act contrary to the warnings given. Why should it be any different for messages about breast milk and breastfeeding?

It is time to stop referring to the benefits of acting consistently with who we are as a species and to zero in on the dangers – for mothers and children alike, and thus the entire population, throughout the life course – if we fail to do so.

It is time to take infant formula down from its inappropriate nutritional pedestal and to transform its unjustified image among health professionals and the general public alike, as the 'obvious' substitute for breast milk. As the World Health Organization has repeatedly made clear, in those few situations where infants cannot, or should not, be breastfed, the choice of the best alternative – expressed breast milk from an infant's own mother, breast milk from a healthy wet-nurse or a human-milk bank, or a breast-milk substitute – depends on individual circumstances.

Fortunately, in an emergency infant formula can sustain infants who, for whatever reason, are denied access to human milk. However, when infant formula is pitched as somehow suitable for routine non-emergency use, this formerly life-sustaining crisis commodity is instantly transformed, indeed denatured, into a paediatric fast-food.

Moreover, the generalised use of an inert manufactured product that is typically based on the milk of an alien species carries with it significant and irreversible negative consequences, across the entire life course, for health and well-being. We need to remove infant formula, once and for all, from the kitchen pantry and permanently relegate it to the medicine cupboard, where it got its start as an emergency nutrition intervention.

In the second decade of the third millennium, deconstructing infant formula – by transforming both popular and health professional perceptions of formula from the best nutritional alternative to breast milk to the least-bad alternative – may well be our single most important priority in this context.

Surely, Australia and New Zealand are already in possession of the science-based information permitting them to pursue protection of society's youngest and most vulnerable members without being distracted by specious, indeed insulting, allusions to feel-good assurances for mothers. If scaremongering there be, it is rather the product of those promoting denial of the risks involved in deviating from the nurturing and nutritional norm for the young of our species.

James Akre
Geneva, Switzerland
30 September 2012"

             ***********************************************

Archives: http://community.lsoft.com/archives/LACTNET.html
To reach list owners: [log in to unmask]
Mail all list management commands to: [log in to unmask]
COMMANDS:
1. To temporarily stop your subscription write in the body of an email: set lactnet nomail
2. To start it again: set lactnet mail
3. To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
4. To get a comprehensive list of rules and directions: get lactnet welcome