Dear Friends,

Yesterday's Christian Science Monitor had an excellent article about the
persistence of infant formula marketing in East Asia, which is being
addressed this week at a regional WHO & UNICEF meeting in the Philippines.
You can read it on the CBS news website.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/06/22/health/main2967742.shtml

You can comment at [log in to unmask]

I'll copy the article for you here.
Chris

Chris Mulford, RN, IBCLC
LLL Leader Reserve
Working for WIC in South Jersey (Eastern USA)
Chair, Workplace Bf Support Committee, USBC
Co-coordinator, Women & Work Task Force, WABA
 

Baby Formula Goes On Trial In Asia
Health Experts Urge East Asian Countries To Tout Breast Milk's Benefits
BANGKOK, Thailand. June 22, 2007
(CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR) By Simon Montlake

Fast Fact

Global efforts to promote breastfeeding are stalling in East Asia, where
many working mothers in urban areas are opting instead for infant formula. 
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For decades, moms everywhere have been told that "breast is best" for
babies. Health care experts say that message goes double in the developing
world, where clean water for bottle-feeding is a luxury and, they say,
breast-feeding can be a key factor in an infant's survival. 

But global efforts to promote breast-feeding are stalling in East Asia,
where many working mothers in urban areas are opting instead for infant
formula. 

The result, say U.N. officials and Asian health campaigners meeting this
week in the Philippine capital of Manila, is a decline in breastfeeding in
several countries, even while it's rising in Africa and other developing
regions. 

While the East Asian average for exclusive nursing is 35 percent for the
first six months, that figure falls to 5 percent in Thailand, according to
the World Health Organization (WHO). In Vietnam, the breastfeeding rate
almost halved in four years, falling from 29 percent in 1998 to 15 percent
in 2002. 

Experts at the regional conference, organized by the United Nations
Children's Fund (UNICEF) and WHO, say countries are backsliding in their
efforts to tout the health benefits most physicians associate with breast
milk. One of reasons for this trend, says a UNICEF expert, is multinational
companies that dominate sales of breast-milk substitutes. 

Health experts say U.S. companies are among those using aggressive marketing
to hawk infant formula in Asia's dynamic economies, the same kinds of
tactics that sparked a boycott campaign of Nestle products in the 1970s.
This led to the adoption in 1981 of a global marketing code for such
products. 

Targeted Advertising For Asian Wealth 

A generation later, there is suspicion that milk companies are targeting
gullible mothers in Asia with false advertising, contrary to the spirit of
the code. Lost in the marketing deluge, say critics, is the scientific
consensus that advocates exclusive breastfeeding, particularly for the first
six months of a child's life. 

Such tactics are common in developing Asian countries, where the market
potential is greatest, says David Clark, a legal expert for UNICEF who
advises countries on how to outlaw abusive marketing practices. As incomes
rise and more women join the workforce, companies are zeroing in on Asia,
which now accounts for 36 percent of global sales of infant formula. 

"You have countries in Asia where people have more disposable income in the
middle classes, so it becomes a target for aggressive promotions," he says.
"And although it may be targeted at that population, the advertisements are
seen by poorer members of the community who can't afford the product." 

The battle over how to regulate marketing for milk formula has taken on
particular prominence in the Philippines, which has sought to extend a 1986
law, known as the Milk Code. The law placed limits on formula companies'
marketing practices. 

Public-health officials want tougher rules in order to reverse a decline in
breast-feeding in a country where nearly 1 in 3 infants are underweight at
age 1. 

The Philippine Supreme Court met Tuesday to hear a challenge from an
industry group to the proposed new rules, which would tighten existing
controls on advertising. The rules would also force manufacturers to include
warnings of the risk of contaminated formula on their labels. The group says
the Department of Health has overstepped its authority by extending the law.


Later Tuesday, the Philippine government ordered the recall of millions of
cans of baby formula produced by US producer Wyeth, one of the companies
behind the lawsuit. The government said the product may have been
contaminated after a typhoon flooded a warehouse last year. 

A Question Of Intentions 

Milk companies insist that they're offering a reliable alternative for
mothers who are unable or unwilling to breast-feed their infant. 

Tracey Noe, a spokeswoman for Chicago-based Abbott Laboratories, told The
Associated Press on Tuesday that no companies disputed the benefits of
breast milk over bottle-feeding. Abbott Labs, for example is a supporter of
"Business Backs Breastfeeding," a program designed to help businesses meet
the needs of breast-feeding mothers upon their return to work. 

"The real focus here is that infant formula is the only healthy, safe,
physician-recommended alternative for moms who can't breast-feed," Ms. Noe
said. Abbott produces Similac, an infant formula. 

That isn't the message that Ding Bing says she got from her managers at
Nestlé in China where she worked for five years as a marketing rep for
infant formula. Ms. Ding, who spoke by telephone from the UNICEF/WHO
conference, said the Swiss company told expecting mothers attending
antenatal classes that Nestlé's Good Start formula was superior and that
many of them would be unable to produce sufficient breast milk for their
baby. 

"The company told the staff that infant formula is better. It didn't tell us
that mother's milk is enough; they couldn't tell us the truth," she says. 

Ding quit her job last year and now runs a breast-feeding Web site and
volunteers on weekends to teach new mothers how to nurse. She says young
women in Chinese cities are misled by false advertising and their own
doctors, who are paid by formula companies to give out information sheets
and free samples of their products. 

"We are told that formula has additives and ingredients, that it's good for
the child," says Yeong Joo Kean, a Malaysian lawyer for the International
Baby Food Action Network, an advocacy group. "For this region, it's just so
enticing, it's seductive. I'm not surprised that parents are falling for
it." 

Breast milk contains antibodies and enzymes that speed the healthy growth
and development of infants and may also lower the risk of chronic diseases
later in life, according to WHO. 

Struggling parents who opt for formula often dilute the product or
substitute rice flour and other powders that lack essential nutrients, say
health experts. In the Philippines, where bottle-feeding costs a minimum $43
a month, an estimated 16,000 infants under 5 die annually because of such
practices, according to UNICEF. Campaigners point to Cambodia as a sign of
what can go right. A national campaign there has raised breast-feeding rates
at six months to 60 percent, up from 10 percent in 2000. Over the same
period, child mortality fell by one-third, a huge gain that can only be
explained by the switch to breast milk, says Karen Codling, a nutritionist
for UNICEF. 

Copyright © 2007 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.

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