Help Restrict the Promotion of Formula milk - Send Email to FSA before May 5th

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This is from the Breastfeeding Manifesto Coalition ....

How a baby is fed has profound health implications for both mother and child. It is very important that all parents, those who use formula and who breastfeed, have access to reliable information based on evidence that is free from commercial pressure. Only when this happens will parents be able to make a fully informed decision about how they want to feed their child.

In the UK however, weak laws mean that formula advertising and promotion far outweighs good quality information on feeding. The result of this is that formula feeding mothers find it hard to access reliable information to understand the facts about the various products, including safe preparation and storage of formula milk.,

To improve protection for parents and babies the Breastfeeding Manifesto Coalition is calling for the WHO Code of Marketing of Breastmilk substitutes and subsequent resolutions to become the Law in the UK (Objective 7 of the Manifesto). This is something we are committed to, but it can't happen overnight.

However, we do have an opportunity NOW to help move UK legislation in the right direction and strengthen the legislation governing baby milk promotion in the UK. The Food Standards Agency is consulting until February 5th on the new Guidance which the formula milk advertising must follow when promoting, labeling and advertising formula milk.

Please send the email below and play your part in helping to ensure that the new Regulations are as strong and robust as possible. Public pressure makes a real difference so make your voice heard!

www.breastfeedingmanifesto.org.uk/make_your_voice_heard_2.php/

Formula milk is important. More important than many medicines. So surely it is crucial to have up to date, thoroughly researched and UNBIASED information available, and to prevent the spreading of any information about it that is not UTD, researched and unbiased? Why is that so controversial?

And why do people keep saying advertising doesn't work? Do they think huge companies choose to invest so much money on a whim? Please someone answer that because it really bugs me.

Of course you are right about the multiple influences on BF rates, SM. But you're not seriously suggesting that poor transmission of knowledge by frontline HP's does not play a part?

You will know, given the sound of your posts, the additional impact that having medical and professional status has on encounters with BF women. There are lots of people who get stuff wrong; but it is the job of HPs to get this one right - and they so often don't.

i am differentiating between the influencing factors.there is a multitude of staff some competent some not BUT this is a complex issue. anecdotally yes one can swop yarns oh my MW/GP/Nurse said give the baby a cuppa tea.and there are also some VG staff out there too

many mums come to hospital with preferences and their own volition.a good practitioner can present information and collateral data but with best will in the world no HP can compel any adult with full capacity and consent to do anything

I remember my days of being really angry about things that were said about formula. There have been people, on Mumsnet, who have labelled it akin to junk food/Macdonalds and have made snidey comments about it and the people who do formula feed. This is true - poeple have said these things and there are people on this thread who know this is true.

I'm long enough in the tooth now though to realise that this thread is not about the demonisation of formula, and never once about mothers who feed their babies formula, but about support for the normalisation of breastfeeding through banning the advertising of baby milks. The advertising of formula (thinly veiled)/follow on milk allows mothers to believe that it is so close to breastmilk you would barely tell the difference an the drip drip drip effect is such that mothers who want to breastfeed end up giving up before they really want to.

In my opinion, anyway. I was an adopted child, and by necessity was formula fed, but to be honest that is what I thought formula was purely for. It was a horrible shock when I couldn't get my DS to latch and eventually I fed him formula. I think a lot of people feel raw about it when it wasn't what they envisaged.

This will be totally out of context with the thread being posted now, but I just wanted to say it after reading the thread. Tiktok in particular is probably the fairest person on Mumsnet regarding the feeding of babies and approaches it in a truly professional manner.

My stance is that I think that the advertising and promotion of baby milk should be banned - I would fully support a "national formula" for those who could not or did not want to breastfeed, but with the lack of that I would fully support an independant comparison of formula milk.

Information, not advertising.

Scottishmummy - I have to say that I agree no one can compel anyone to do anything against their will - the point is that advertising changes the way people view things.

Scottishmummy - exactly, they all are relevant - where did I say that they weren't??? And formula advertising and culture feeds into several of them - peers, partner and family for instance - as well as HPs.

Though just because those people receive training, doesn't mean that it's particularly good training. And even if they're trained, their underlying attitudes to how much it matters that someone succeeds in BF are going to be influenced by far more than what they've been told 'officially'. After all we're all told in theory that breastfeeding matters, but some people make it very clear that really in their opinion it's six of one and half a dozen of the other and it doesn't really matter what you do. Individual attitudes have complex influences and formula marketing influences those in ways that often counter efforts to support bfing.

Sorry for late reply there by the way, my battery went (computer that is, I am not a robot).

"Formula milk .. More important than many medicines"are you aware that in paediatrics's and CAMHS many medication are prescribed outwith licensing protocol.in fact FF is much more rigidly regulated

Winestein - Have just been trying to write a similar post, but my head is too muddled by watching Heroes, you have just said what I would have liked to say - thankyou.

Once upon a time, I used to write briefs for advertising agencies to come up with campaigns to sell the products of the company I worked for.

Those briefs weren't to give unbiassed information to my target audience.

They were to SELL MORE of our products.

They were directing the agencies to portray my product as friendlier, safer, more reassuring, more practical, more convenient, more risk free than our competitors, and than not having any product at all.

I've had shockingly huge budgets to spend on winning new customers that would make my company more profits.

Do you think my brands were better? I'll leave that up to you to guess. What I know is that there are thousands of customers out there who bought those products who would be better off in the long run had they not bought mine, or indeed anyone elses product. Many, many of our customers would have been better off if they had received unbiassed advice from a knowledgeable, neutral source and avoided our products altogether.

ADVERTISING IS JUST SMOKE AND MIRRORS. Babies and parents deserve far better than that.
They deserve real information.

Fair enough scottishmummy, I didn't realise that, no. It doesn't detract from my main point though.

Is anyone willing to tell me why, if advertising doesn't work, companies spend millions on it? Maybe we should tell them - the money could go to much better use.

PSML at how bad this thread has got! Was reading through the the statements and OMG did I start this? Hmm... oops! Thats what I get for havin an opinion eh? LOL And whats with the BF mafia? Is this a term used to get at u or used by u? Am confused.....

a national formula?

With no freedom of choice or an open market? What about if the baby reacts badly to the formula or needs goats milk? What would you suggest we do then?

You lot are absolutely living in a dream world - it shows how little you know about the realities of FF so please don't come up with these ridiculous ideas.

Crush: You say "a national formula?

With no freedom of choice or an open market?"

It would be perfectly possible to have a 'national formula' like National Dried Milk - available for about 20 years during and after the war. Other brands of formula could be available, too (as they were then) and all would be subject to limits and controls, to ensure ethical marketing. But the 'national formula' would be concerned with providing non-branded, high quality, good value, safe product, with transparent manufacturing processes (ie we know exactly what goes into it).

"What about if the baby reacts badly to the formula or needs goats milk? What would you suggest we do then?"

Well - what do you do now? If a baby has a reaction to formula, no one can tell if his reaction is caused by the formula without a lot of guesswork and experimentation. If a baby had a reaction to the 'national formula' it would be recorded, ingredients would be known, and if he needed goats milk, then of course he could be prescribe it, as now.

This is not a crazy plan, at all.

"for as long as we demonise and are divisive about certain groups eg HP how will collaboration and good practice happen?. or is the not too subtle inference that only a select few campaigners can disseminate information correctly"

Sorry - but I speak as I find.

I'm a user rep at our local hospital which has a very sound infant feeding policy, but is very, very poor in practice.

Over 50% of BREASTFED babies are given formula within 12 hours of birth in this hospital, including a large proportion of healthy, full term babies with normal blood sugars.

I talk to women all the time about their breastfeeding experiences and frankly incidences of poor practice and bad advice outnumbers good practice by about 3 to 1. It's dire.

I would also want the 'national formula' sold at a fair price - which would be a lot cheaper than formula is at present, because it needs expensive packaging and marketing.

HP organisations themselves recognise serious shortcomings in practice and in their training - it makes no sense to remove them from general criticism of the lack of knowledgable support people get with their breastfeeding.

As a society we cannot train grandmothers, aunties and best friends in supporting mothers' breastfeeding, or hold your mother in law to account for telling you to 'get the baby on a bottle'....but we can expect midwives and HVs and others to be trained in this essential part of their job, we can have policies and protocols, and we can expect managers and supervisers to challenge staff members who ignore good practice.

crush, that was the opinion of one poster, please don't label everyone with your sweeping statment .

This seems have gone off beam somewhere; the point of the debate is that there should be better access to the right sort of information, and that formula companies twisting the laws to suit their own financial gain is just wrong. It's not about banning the formula or women's access to it; it's not about condemning women who can't or chose not to breastfeed. why do peopple always get so defensive about this issue?
I FF but still think the formula companies are wrong; why is it so difficult for the FF mums on this thread to see it too?

youngbutnotdumb, thank you for once more bringing a valued and reasoned point into this discussion...........lol

Hello lackaDAISYcal
Did I sense some sarcasm there by any chance? LOL. No I made my point on like the 2nd page just checked it 2day and it had all spiralled into my argument!!! Thats what I was saying!
Anyway it isn't so hard for FF mothers to see the point but it just seems everytime there's something said about FF on TV etc it always seems to end up being criticised on here but if it were BF it'd be all good to have that rammed down our throats!

YBND, Why cannot you not see this isn't about whether you breastfed or not, you have a right to make whatever decision you are happy with wrt to feeding your baby, we just think that you should be treated like an adult and given decent information to make that choice with rather than the bollocks that formula companies spout.

Did I say it was about BF or FF? Nope don't think so!!!

Said it's ok to have BF rammed down our throat in pointless adverts but they aren't even allowed to say 'oh look u can buy cow and gate milk if u can't dont want to BF' without bloody pro BF moaning about it fair enough its better blah de blah but surely whatever makes ur child live is a good thing?where's the sense in that?

Either way if a pic of formula milk came up with no words etc just a tub of Formula they'd bloody moan its corrupting peoples minds and wrecking the lives of innocent children! Well so they say.

How many BF adverts do you see?
Honestly, I don't think I've ever seen any.

And you did say it was about BF, "but it just seems everytime there's something said about FF on TV etc it always seems to end up being criticised on here but if it were BF it'd be all good to have that rammed down our throats!"

As I, and many others have said, it's about making things better for Both mothers who want to BF, not having the drip drip effect of formula advertising (for example, a mum sat up in the middle of a growth spurt, absolutely shattered, could so easily remember seeing Dad getting up in the middle of the night and making a bottle on the SMA advert and introducing a bottle-that's why they did the advert that way, and bent the rules by claiming it was for follow-on-milk) and for formula companies, if they were not able to actually advertise their milk but were allowed to make known research studies then maybe we'd have some proerp tests done on the different milks available? maybe they'd even try to be the best milk for baby because they knew that's why peopel would buy them

OHMIGOD! We could actually get formula companies trying to make milk that was best for baby& rather than just claiming it

I have seen two BF adverts FYI there was one whilst I was pregnant in 2006 and it was just all random women siitin around talkng to people whilst BF in different places and at the end it said 'What are these women doing to make sure their baby's have the best possible start?'.

The other one was basically the bloody same except a different slogan. It was never off STV!

Well at the end of the day I have yet to meet someone who's baby has died or damaged in any way due to formula milk.

Not true, you've yet to meet someone whose baby's health was damaged by formula milk that has known about it or decided to tell you.

Formula milk has risks, it does cause problems.