Here are some answers to some questions posted this week. Thank you for your interest. 1. We are helping new moms succeed at breastfeeding. Once they succeed and are nursing their own babies well, it's only natural that they want to help other moms with their babies. They like the fact that all of the milk is going for very sick babies aned many of them have quite a lot of milk in their freezers and they don't want to throw it awat. We send our milk to Prolacta for processing and distribution only to neonatal intensive care units. 2. We are not yet a member of HMBANA but are interested in looking into it. We do no pasteurize on site. We provide initial donor screening, facilitate the blood test and ship it to a central lab, collect the cheek swab for the breast milk fingerprint, then give them their free breast pump and their bottles and supplies. Then, they bring the pumped milk back, we scan it into our Donor Center Management system software and create the audit trail and and the shipping labels to ship the frozen milk to Prolacta for processing. The shipping container even contains a data logger so that we always know that the milk was kept within safe temperature levels. 3. We don't sell the milk at all. Mothers who donate to our milk bank do so because they want to help sick preemies. But I think that other milk banks do charge for their milk , but I may be mistaken. We can't send any milk to mothers because #1 all of the milk is shipped by Prolacta to hospital neonatal units and they do not sell directly to consumers. When we get phone calls for milk to be sold directly to a family, we always give the number of the nearest HMBANA milk bank. 3. Until we opened there were only two licensed milk banks in Ca, one in San Jose and one at Westlake Village. 4. The best way to explain it is that everyone you listed is passionalely committed to making donor milk universally available to all patients in need. There seems to be two basic models, the HMBANA model where the milk bank has to do everything, including processing and needs to raise the money to cover the losses and the initial purchase of the equipment or the Prolacta model where we are provided with all of the basic equipment and are given the right to use the Donor Center Management software system plus the SOP's for milk banking filed with the State of Ca. Plus we liked the fact that the business model allowed us to focus on care for the mom and baby and not have to constantly be fund raising to keep our doors open. I think there's a need for both models and let the people choose what is best for them. I would also like to clarify a question from earlier in the week about the milk being used for research for adult theraputics. All of the milk from qualified donors is processed for premature and critically ill babies. When we receive milk that is not in compliance with the requirements, mothers are offered the opportunity to donate it for research. Prolacta currently uses this milk to optimize their processing methods to preserve more nutrients, and to look at levels of sIgA and other protective factors within human milk. Thanks *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html