Ocado contravening the International Code of Marketing Breastmilk substitutes

[penelopethefrog]

Grrrr. I liked Ocado. Thinking whether to switch as I saw they had offers on bottles and teats for newborns this month, so I sent in a complaint and got a two line e-mail saying that they meant no offence with the offer.

Which rather misses the point.

I'm not actually an activist on this (well I suppose complaining to Ocado now makes me one), just have three kids now and very nearly stopped breastfeeding the eldest at 2 weeks old, due to difficulty and thank my lucky stars I had the right encouragement to continue, so the more I see incentives to bottlefeed, the grouchier I get about it.

And? what is your next step?

I thought it only applied to the actual formula?

Strictly speaking they could argue that the bottles are also for expressed breastmilk.

Surely people use bottles for expressed milk too?

X-posts!

Erm. So you can't use bottles for breastmilk then?!

the WHO code applies to bottles and teats as well as formula. UK law applies only to formula. The reason that the WHO code covers the whole paraphanalia of bottlefeeding is that the use of bottles for ebm is a tiny, tiny proportion, even more so in developing countries where children are much likelier to get sick from lack of breastmilk.

bibbitybobbityhat my next step is probably to switch to tesco or waitrose. I'm just having a complain :-)

Well the developing countries bit obviously doesn't apply to Ocado.

Don't expect tesco to be overly pro-bf i'm afraid. Also think it's not that tiny a proportion that use expressed milk? Maybe not as often.

Can only talk for myself, but in early days i used bottles for ebm when i really needed some sleep, honestly think that was what enabled me to carry on bfing for 9 months.

I don't use Ocado anyway. They refuse to wrap raw meat separately to other fridge stuff. So they lost a (fussy vegetarian) customer. I questioned this with customer services and they said it was against their policy (despite being more hygenic incase packets split in transit). GGGGrrrr.