Company selling human breast milk for profit - female exploitation?

[Knoxinbox]

www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-hereford-worcester-58343016

1.To me, this seems wrong. Like the article says will women be tempted to donate milk that should be feeding their own babies for money? Even if it doesn’t affect their own babies getting an adequate supply, producing extra milk is not without its health costs to the mother. And I feel that if women are willing to donate milk then isn’t it better it goes to the NICU for premmies rather than for a company to make a profit?

I don’t know this just seems like yet another way to exploit and commercialise women’s bodies to the detriment of their health and possibly to their babies health too.

1. Aside form that, the other issue to me is that breast milk is a live product - full of antibodies from the woman’s immune system. Has there been any long term studies about the affects of consuming breastmilk from multiple sources and therefore multiple women’s white blood cells - could this have to potential to trigger an inflammatory disease in the baby years later?

I myself have an autoimmune arthritis condition as well as PCOS and IBS - and I’m aware that research shows that the longer I breastfeed my babies the more protected they will be from inflammatory diseases in later life. I fed my DD for 3 years and am still feeding 3 year old DS.

But obviously we have a close physical relationship where they have fed directly from my breast and so our immune systems have communicated with each other every day.

Has anyone studied the effects of just ingesting a strangers breastmilk on the recipients immune system long term?

I don't think breast is best is a bad message. It's all the stuff around it that's the problem...

My long held view.

Many bf advocates irl and on here are really unhelpful. They are way too not sure of the word. Inflexible? Unempathetic? You'd think not bf is. Well you might as well be feeding it gin diluted with ditchwater.

Not all but a lot about.

For me I always thought I'd bf why not. The messages I got at nct and posters at hosp made me want to ff. Childish yes but that's my personality unfortunately. It was infantilising prescriptive pushy and got my back up.

Society and the media just love judging mums whatever they do. Polarising and separating into two warring groups.

Irl of course most women don't care too much what others do as long as they are ok.

But the constant stirring.

CS Vs VB
Bf Vs FF
Ft Vs PT Vs SAH

The papers love studies that they can publish with a headline that will indicate that some mothers have done it wrong and usually with a headline that isn't really what the study says.

Growing and birthing a baby is massive and they are so vulnerable. You want to do the best you can. It's a highly emotional topic. Obviously.

Breast is best is fine.

What's not fine is the way it's messaged when you're Pg so hard and then NO support post natally to bloody well do it.

The way that best is well it's not like the formula companies overseas whose practices result in death. It's fine. It's a marginal thing. It's not sodding poison.

The fact is women are grown ups with lives and existing children and difficulties with it and etc and it's up to them. Give the info factually. Don't over egg it. Support women who want to properly. Have a go if you don't get on with it then switch is also fine. Don't present it as failure fgs!

The stats are imo dodgy. They measure exclusively bf. They should measure receiving BM fully mainly or some. A baby has one bottle at 2 weeks. Is exclusively bf apart from that from birth to 2 years. Not in those stats. It makes it seem more difficult and unusual than it is.

That's what I think.

The current push I've seen from a few angles to downplay remove the benefits of bf entirely are a massive problem.

It is better for the baby for a host of reasons.
Once you get the hang of it, it's convenient (assuming not pumping for work etc)
It's free
It protects against some diseases
Etc.

These are facts. Facts are fine.
What is not fine is various orgs the media etc behaving as if it's such a massive deal that if you don't do it you have doomed them.

It's guilt inducing shit and it fucks me off.

Facts are not the problem. It's the messaging.

Sorry protects the mother against some diseases.

But it's marginal.

Paying £££ for someone else's milk is silly. And misses a lot of the point of why bf is beneficial.
FF is perfectly good and loads of babies had/ have it and are healthy happy successful etc etc.

If women choose not to breastfeed or find that they can't, or there is no mother there to breastfeed, then that's what formula is for. Buy it from the most reputable company you can, as your income allows. Creating an industry around donated human milk, based on parents anxiety/worry/shame/whatever about formula is not something I would ever want to see.

Yes this ^^ and yes to the points people have made about not selling body parts/fluids for money! This is exploitative from so many angles to me

Being adapted to the age/health of the baby isn't the only benefit of breastmilk.

The crazy shaming and claims by some people about breastmilk are overblown and unhelpful. But this tendency to try and say that there is no real difference is also inaccurate and unhelpful.

As far as safety in processing, it's worth noting that this is also something that is a concern with formula. It's made in a factory, there can be errors, contamination, etc. Recalls of formula are not unknown.

For me I always thought I'd bf why not. The messages I got at nct and posters at hosp made me want to ff. Childish yes but that's my personality unfortunately. It was infantilising prescriptive pushy and got my back up

I completely know where you're coming from.

Hi, really interesting thread. I'm an NHS doctor and started to become interested in milk banking during my PhD. The NHS services have always run on a shoestring and haven't been able to scale up to meet demand, which leaves a gap to be exploited. In 2016 a group of milk banking experts, midwives, medics and academics set up a charity to fill the gap in both evidence and donor milk, and that became the Human Milk Foundation (humanmilkfoundation.org). We support mums through the process of donating milk and now work with over 40 NHS hospitals and hundreds of families in the community facing breastfeeding challenges, including those who have had traumatic births or are being treated for cancer. It's been really difficult scaling up even more through the pandemic - every time we put any communications out, even just a Facebook post, the demand is astonishing. The charity is growing and extending across the UK, and if any of you wanted to get involved that would be amazing. What we achieve every day is quite mind-blowing, and this clearly should be a service available across the UK no matter what someone's financial situation or geography is.

humanmilkfoundation.org/about-us/
MilkBankMum thanks for posting. Wishing you best of luck with this new impressive project to fill a crucial gap. Are you unique doing this work nationally and charitably in the UK? I really hope you can scale it up.
If anyone posting here is writing letters to object to commercialisation, this charity could be good to mention as it can be an example of why commercialisation is 😁not needed to benefit babies, which is something people who are pro-commercialisation will argue for. It’s a good back up for the arguments about why a change in the law is needed.

Plus it’s clear that other things that this charity milk banking model aims to do around ‘support’ and ‘science’ are really important gaps which commercial models will never fill, as it is against their business model to do that stuff.
If Commercial companies gain a foothold in the UK this could also make it more difficult for a charity to succeed in things like encouraging research which benefits everyone and which will update and improve health care for babies and lactating women. Or charitable work providing peer support or giving reliable objective professional advice to parents will get harder. All of which it done well, will make a massive difference to mothers’ and babies’ experiences around this and which a money making company can’t do in an unbiased way. Or giving the appearance of being unbiased. Think about how a lot of people don’t trust drug companies, for this reason. (Whole other thread but it’s a fact that they don’t and that money making interests in areas like this create strong feelings)

On the other side of the coin, charities like this one will benefit if the obvious risks of commercialisation of breastmilk supply for women and babies (which are ethically unjustifiable) are properly legislated against. Legislation would validate what the charity world is doing working with the NHS and why their charity work is needed and the legal protections are needed.

MilkBankMum is the challenge your charity has to scale up, because of lack of funding primarily? I mean, rather than say challenges from lack of donor supply, or lack of recipient take up or logistical (non-financial) problems with receiving and storing milk or using it for babies who need it? I hope you can find major NHS or government funding or grant funding to grow your work whatever the challenges come from because money will help.

This is something that people writing to MPs etc could argue for - maybe your charity could offer some text to cut and paste on this MBM? There seems to be a lot of support around this issue.
Your charity could argue for it to become a MN campaign to get national funding and secure this infrastructure you are building up for genuinely non-commercial breast milk donation and supply, into the future? and for the whole of the UK? It could be a brilliant MN campaign.

If it would be too much for your charity to front it, it could still be a brilliant MN campaign to get commitment for national funding as a protected national milk banking fund which charities like yours could then apply for funding from?

Would also help if letter writers concerned about the commercialisation and/or who want to promote your work can say that your charity are already working with the NHS in each of the UK nations to coordinate with the NHS’ work and reach babies who need this directly (and in a way that’s manageable for your charity), for example. Is that what’s happening?

Anything that requires ‘new’ funding to be raised needs to make it crystal clear that they are already using/already tried accessing absolutely all of the available avenues. So eg if there are other charities doing the same thing then you’d ideally need to be able to show you’re already teamed up and working together with them everywhere you can, etc to be as efficient and accessible as possible.

I don’t have much time to look through the website you linked to so maybe this kind of thing is already on there- my apologies if this is unwelcome input. I don’t know your specific patch at all. I’m just very happy to see that an actually altruistic non-commercial national charity is already available to help babies. Its existence, hopefully will make the exploitative and unsafe commercial model obsolete if you can grow faster than they can. However, legislative change to protect women and babies is also clearly needed. This is because (no offence) charities can come and go or take different approaches in the future. We have teams of MN threads on that. Charities’ existence alone is not sufficient to safeguard those who need it in the future.

Is this charity taking a public view on the initial topic of the thread, the commercialisation (and exploitation) of breastmilk, women and babies?

We have teams of MN threads on that.

REAMS .. not teams!

Thanks @ChattyLion, this is brilliant feedback. If you have little time you can see the vision here in our third year film:

The Hearts Milk Bank is unique and growing rapidly with the same model and vision as when we got going 5 years ago, and demand rises every month from both hospitals and families at home. This is actually the first time I've ever posted on MumsNet because we've always had to very carefully balance raising awareness against the resources and people that we have in the milk bank. Even a single Facebook post can send hundreds of wonderful mums finding out about being able to donate precious milk to our office, and we have been easily overwhelmed. It is only through everyone working so hard through the pandemic to keep services going that we have been able to grow by winning small National Lottery and Comic Relief grants.

Our team has used the last 5 years to create the evidence needed to support the availability of donor milk - there is a lot published already in how it supports infant health, but we are always working uniquely to highlight the impact on mothers' physical and mental health - where donor milk and lactation support are available as a bridge to overcoming problems in the first few days and weeks, it can be transformative. Where breastfeeding is completely impossible, it can give time and space for new mothers to adjust to a reality that might be very different from what they expected before giving birth. Having a traumatic feeding experience immediately on top of birth can be so hard.

Your idea about a template letter to MPs is brilliant - we are now at the point where we can demonstrate exactly what is needed, how it should be implemented alongside hospital and community NHS and third sector support, and how much it will cost. And it is less expensive than you might think. Women deserve better perinatal services across the board and this is one that we aim to fill. Do you think you could help us to spread the word (very much a MumsNet newbie!).

Thanks for the video link- your work looks incredibly interesting and valuable. I’m a bit confused about the difference between what the Hearts charity do and Human Milk foundation, but in any case that is a great video which will be very effective in raising awareness for the charities involved.

To start a MN campaign it looks like you have to start a thread in the Campaigns section and ask them to take it on, which MNHQ will then decide whether or not to do. Explainer here www.mumsnet.com/h/campaigns
You can start a thread in the Campaigns topic here calling for your campaign to be picked up by MN: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/mumsnet_campaigns

I wondered about the scaling up that you mentioned- does your charity have to work individually with donors and parents and individually with each hospital, which sounds like a vast amount of work to make your donation resources vs public benefit equitably accessible? There must be way more than 40 NICUs and maternity units in the UK, presumably in the hundreds? Or do you work with hospitals at Health Board/CCG level? Or via overarching National level partnerships with the bodies which set the patient pathways and commissioning, in partnership?
Where does the work of your charity stop and start and the work of the NHS take over? I’m still not quite clear what it is exactly that you need the public support or public money to help you to do. Identifying that really clearly would obviously help in your letter campaign or if a Mumsnet campaign could be got off the ground.

For example, seeing the couriers on the promotional video presumably delivering breastmilk milk, are you working with NHS transport and they cover that side of it, or is couriering another thing that you have to raise money for? And does your charity pay for the pasteurisation of the milk or does the NHS cover that?

You may not be looking for this, but if you want to ask MNers for advice and support about how you might raise extra funds or secure long term financial support to grow what you do, it might help to talk a bit more about how the current relationship with the hospitals and the NHS works more broadly. Does the NHS see what you offer to their patients, by providing their babies with donated pasteurised human milk, as an (optional) part of evidenced good (medical) care for a baby with proven benefits, or is it seen like more of a social support activity that might support the mother if she wants to breastfeed in future, or if she knows she won’t be able to do that herself (but really values the opportunity to give her baby breastmilk), or is it both of those aspects?

It feels like the emphasis in how the NHS sees your work and its benefits would be likely to affect how they will work with the charity or fund some or most of its work (or not) and that will affect how your fundraising works overall?

For example if NHS bodies see what you do as a social benefit and therefore just a ‘nice to have’ non-essential. Presumably then, providing donated milk would be more expensive for the NHS to organise and fund than buying formula? or they may see it as more time consuming and effortful to provide or even more potentially risky to babies’ health than formula would be? In which case there would be other issues to raise with them regarding patient benefit.

So anything more you can say on here about how you would ideally like any interested MNers to try to help you in your work would be helpful.

Finally, you might not want to comment publicly on the future legal changes side of this, or on the commercial companies moving into this area, but hopefully the Trustees of the various breast milk donation charities listed on your video will be thinking about those issues.
As you probably know from lots of different fields, the wider context of donated goods being offered within an otherwise commercial market can affect the take-up by the recipients of the donation. A predominately commercial context can affect how recipients value the donated goods vs paid-for goods, and also extremely crucially, the issues of value, earning potential and potential exploitation coming from a predominantly commercial market can also affect the willingness of donors to donate whatever it is that is needed by the charity to make the altruistic system work. And wider public support for the principle of donation.

Obviously these wider context questions are key for the Trustees or charities leadership teams to get involved with. All forms of donations and receiving donated goods/services are ‘political’ in some way so it’s really important that they don’t shy away from that, as some charities seem to do. Legally, charities can call for Parliament to make legal changes where needed so if they wanted to, they can campaign on this or ask the public to do so on their behalf. Obviously for all I know, the Trustees here are already working on these areas so that’s just a general comment really. Good luck with your charitable work and with scaling it up!

I can't reconcile women donating it and then a company selling it at such a high price

Yes, this doesn't make any sense

It wants the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines changed

Also, what's with the use of wants. Surely guidelines are there for a reason and should be changed after thorough reassessment, peer reviewed studies, etc

A niche market for a very expensive product

Then donors should charge for their milk

@PickUpAPepper

And it's never been unusual for a woman to feed another woman's baby if she can't for some reason/ has died etc. Yes, but not for some unaffected middle man - specifically man I expect too - to make money out of it. I stick with what I said - organised co operative groups of women helping each other is one thing: a private company making money out of it for shareholders is slavery.

Not really, back when there were wet nurses all the money paid to a wet nurse belonged to her husband. Married women’s earnings did not belong to them. So there was a middle man profiting by hiring out his wife as a wet nurse.

I don’t think breastmilk should be sold for a profit.
However, I have no objection to it being sold by a charity or not for profit.
I don’t think the price of £45 for 300ml is too high. It may be too low considering they are not paying the women. I do think the women providing the milk should be paid fairly.
A company taking donations and then selling for profit is wrong ethically on both those points.

Not really, back when there were wet nurses all the money paid to a wet nurse belonged to her husband. Married women’s earnings did not belong to them. So there was a middle man profiting by hiring out his wife as a wet nurse.

It's not really conceptualized in the same way though. A private employer or contractor in the modern sense is quite different than a spouse - the former is a much more limited arrangements with fewer responsibilities. In a way you could say that a family was understood as a single entity. There isn't a disinterested middle-man.

@LobsterNapkin
True, but mostly I was objecting to the implication that wet nurses in centuries past were not being exploited by a man because money exchanged hands...the wet nurses were exploited too. I agree it is conceptually different if the middle man is a company instead of a spouse. But the end result is the same, a woman is exploited for her breastmilk and doesn’t own the financial rewards of its sale.

[quote PlanDeRaccordement]@LobsterNapkin
True, but mostly I was objecting to the implication that wet nurses in centuries past were not being exploited by a man because money exchanged hands...the wet nurses were exploited too. I agree it is conceptually different if the middle man is a company instead of a spouse. But the end result is the same, a woman is exploited for her breastmilk and doesn’t own the financial rewards of its sale.[/quote]
I would have said that generally, when an arrangement like this involved exploitation, it would be by the employer mostly. So still exploitation, but not by an unrelated middle-man.

Although it's interesting - in general our society now completely accepts the idea that people should work for wages in enterprises that primarily benefit the employer's interests, and that employers have extremely minimal responsibilities towards employees. A viewpoint that was not particularly dominant in the pre-modern period, which is why they really looked askance at merchants and middle-men in a way that we don't.

Although it's interesting - in general our society now completely accepts the idea that people should work for wages in enterprises that primarily benefit the employer's interests, and that employers have extremely minimal responsibilities towards employees. A viewpoint that was not particularly dominant in the pre-modern period, which is why they really looked askance at merchants and middle-men in a way that we don't.

Not sure about this. I think that today’s attitude regarding employer rights vs employee rights is better than it ever has been. The further back you go, the less rights the workers had and the more of them are actual serfs or slaves. In most cases, even when they were free the workers would be paid only enough for meagre food and shelter. There was no sick pay, or holiday pay. No injury compensation. No pensions for old age. Frequently wages were cut or docked for spurious reasons.

The only exception I can think of were servants of the aristocracy that under noblesse oblige would benefit from philanthropy...ie lord pays for village priest and school, lord pays for physician to attend sick steward.

I think employees’ power (for men) maybe peaked a couple of decades ago. Now we have work casualisation, a globalised marketplace, degraded pension responsibilities from employers. Rising costs of basics like housing and utilities mean that more employees feel more insecure. Brexit and leaving EU workers’ legal rights behind. All adds up to the balance tipping in favour of employer.
Women haven’t ever even achieved wages parity so that’s a whole other story. But it’s got to be better for all workers than it was back in the days of hiring wet nurses, now. Which is why selling womens breastmilk commercially is very unwelcome, to the UK in my view. Too much risk of exploitation.

@ChattyLion
Yes, working is better for women now compared to the past when we were prohibited from it, or if lower class able and expected to work but not in control of our earnings if we had a husband or father. True,we are not yet equal. However, in the past child labour was much more prevalent and accepted. Now it’s only few parts of the world that think child labour is acceptable.

I think you have a point about workers power having hit a peak awhile ago and not being as strong now. It is true that progress is not linear and there are generations that have it better, only for that progress to be lost the next generation. So while overall trend is positive looking at time scales of a century or centuries, there are generations of backsliding. Clearly Millennial and Gen X have been born in a period of backsliding.

I noted with interest though that Amazon and Walmart in the US have announced that they will pay the university fees for over a million US workers....which is encouraging news.

There is also the issue of employee power based on class. Middle class workers have always had more power and better working conditions than working class workers. This pandemic has really highlighted that. The lower class workers in insecure, casual work were just left to go on UC when industries shut down and now are having to find a new job. Middle class got their jobs protected by the government paying their employer 80% of their wages or by being able to work from home.