Save the Children's new report on marketing practices of formula-milk companies: what do you think?

[RowanMumsnet]

As some of you may have seen from press coverage over the weekend and this morning, Save the Children is today launching a report into the marketing practices of formula milk manufacturers.

The report focuses specifically on marketing in developing countries - where a lack of good sanitation and public health awareness can make formula-feeding precarious - and on the importance of colostrum to a baby's long-term health. You can read more about the campaign and see the petition here.

We've been asked to get behind this campaign - and as ever, in these situations, we need to know what you think!

Is this something MNers would like us to support? As many of you will know, we have long refused advertising from Nestle and its majority-owned subsidiaries. Save the Children's report is also critical of Danone, the second-largest formula manufacturer.

We'd be really interested to hear your views.

I support this. I am the 2%

"The formula companies cannot advertise milk for under 1's"

No - it is milk for under 6 mths that cannot be advertised direct to consumers.

I think the formula companies can advertise follow-on milk for over 6 mths old in UK can't they ?
It certainly looks that way from the TV ad where mother breastfeeding her baby in dingy near black and white winter scene "moves on" to bottle feeding her child in the spring sunshine who is then seen crawling outside into summer garden through the open patio doors ! You know the one !

I think the invention of follow-on milk is absolutely a way to get round the ban on formula advertising for the under 6 mth baby. As well as playing on concerns that breast-milk may not be nutritionally "enough" after 6 months. They're always trying to get you to think there could be some problem with breast-feeding and specifically your milk ! And anyway you'd be beginning to introduce solids at that stage !

Natural is best all round, the companies are only interested in profit, how can fake milk be anything like human milk...common sense or wit...;)

Yes MN please support this campaign, including warnings on formula packets in the UK and Europe.
There is too much misinformation around formula entirely. I think I have seen two women ever make up a bottle 'correctly', health visitors and midwives themselves tell them its ok to add powder to boiled and cooled water.
And as for the situation in the third world, I agree the formula companies should not be there in the first place.

ICBINEG I think we heard the same thing, 1 in 8 children in that area live to the age of 5. 1 in 8!

I had to pull over I was in floods listening to it.

ProudNestleBoycotterTiggaxx

I think MN does need to support this campaign to continue to make the point that formula companies do very nasty things in the third world, but I don't know how much the proposals would actually achieve. I agree with all the comments of dreamingbohemian.

What actually needs to happen in my view:

• campaign to ban formula samples being given to new mothers
• ban on formula milk advertising full stop
• in Europe there needs to be a price ceiling placed on formula eg no more than ?5 a tub
• NO MORE FUCKING BREAST IS BEST POSTERS, SPEND THE MONEY ON POSTNATAL SUPPORT INSTEAD And give mothers information on how to safely make up formula whether they ask for it or not.

Also on the making up formula there is not consistent international advice on the making up of formula. The advice I have been given by UK, Irish and New Zealand health authorities (in the past 4 months!!) has all been different. In New Zealand (where I'm from, which has fantastic bf rates and personally I believe has a much better quality health system to the UK and Ireland so I tend to believe what I'm told by that country) it's advised to make up bottles with cooled boiled water and that you don't have to sterilise bottles after the baby is 3 months old. When I told a paediatrician about the 70 degree thing etc and sterilising to one year he said "good grief, what a lot of over the top nonsense. We're hardly living in a third world ghetto". I also constantly see people on MN shrieking that you have to make each formula feed up fresh, even though the WHO says it's ok to make up feeds and keep in fridge for no more than 24 hours.

Maybe your paed isn't aware that powedered formula sometimes contains e-sakazakii and that babies in Europe have died from drinking formula milk contaminated by it.

Should add - formula companies are involved in unethical marketing practices in the UK too you know.

Erm that bacteria isn't that the one where there have only been 120 cases worldwide since 1953 and it can be found elsewhere,in the kitchen so hard to pin point actually on formula.

Zara, I have never seen anyone 'shrieking' on mumsnet that you have to make up each feed fresh. I have seen people link to guidelines that describe how to do this, and also which describe a 'work round' for this, involving pre-preparation and storage.

Powdered formula milk often contains salmonella and chronobacter as well as other bacteria. cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/46/2/268.full, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17805457, www.foodsafetynews.com/2009/11/bacteria-in-formula-poses-risk-for-infants/#.USO7jOizMn4. This is an issue worldwide and not just in 'third world ghettos'. In the UK, where water can be boiled easily and quickly, and where the water is clean, the risk can be reduced effectively by making up the powder according to guidance - and this is standard public health guidance across Europe, and in other parts of the developed world. This does not mean that every paediatrician is aware of it, but if your paed asked his/her infection control colleagues, he/she might be enlightened.

Polka, the evidence that powdered infant formula has bacteria in it is not controversial or over-fussy.

Every time samples of formula are tested, these risks reveal themselves.

I expect these bacteria do live in kitchens as well - but the studies which led to the current guidance are based on what was found when the formula itself was tested.

I agree that this is a worthwhile campain to support.
Breastfeeding is free therefore there isn't any money to be made in marketing it!
As a midwife , it saddens me that women look to the 'educated' western world and see us formula feeding and think it should be held in high esteem.I have looked after African women who have breast fed their older children and are considering formula feeding this baby because that is what they see so much of here!

The reason this gets difficult is because FF mums feel guilty and judged as inadequate for not BF and SOME BF mums can be aloof, snooty and smug about the fact they are BFeeding. Please note the SOME as in small minority as opposed to all!

I understand hard for some to BF and some mums preservere through the hardest of knocks to do it and I applaud that. However, don't think that others just haven't tried as hard!

Oh and how u feed your baby in the first few months of their life is ONE part of parenting - in famine ridden countries there is a lot more we should be doing in terms of education. To ensure children grown up happy, healthy and educated !!

One last question - how many babies IN THIS COUNTRY die due to being formula fed ????????

Hmm, tough one. I think that Munsnet should support whatever makes food giants like Nestlé and Danone stick to the spirit as well as the letter of the WHO guidance.

However I'm not sure that cigarette style warnings would have any effect whatsoever (especially if they are not printed in the language of the country where the parent buys the formula milk). In European countries such labelling would have the depressing effects already mentioned so I won't rehash those comments.

MNHQ: having made the ethical decision not to have anything to do with Nestlé, will you extend that policy to cover Danone as they have now been found to be engaging in similarly objectionable marketing behaviour?

Apologies for typos - on iPhone on a train!

I'd like to see a ban on adverts for 'growing up milk' too. After 12 months old, a child can have any sort of milk whether it comes in a bottle from the milkman, or a carton from a supermarket.

I hate marketing - it used to be quite amusing, now it's just way over the top.

This is the story of what happened to dh's cousin:

The baby's mother, dh's aunt, (who is from, and still lives near, the Syrian/Turkish border) was told, when she had the baby, that formula was best and that breast-feeding was something you only did if you were really really poor, and that you definitely didn't want to be seen breast-feeding if you could possibly help it, because status was very important. So she began formula feeding. Unfortunately, they found they couldn't actually afford the formula after a while, but by now, the baby was totally uninterested in the breast, and this was 35 years ago, and I'm guessing they didn't know about expressing or breast pumps even if they'd been able to get hold of one.

So she fed the baby with flour and water mixed together.

The baby died.

I am, because of this, very much in favour of this campaign - I do think the campaign needs to somehow have spokeswomen that these mothers will look up to though. Medical advice is fine, but social pressure for other reasons can be very strong.

That's awful taketheribbon :(
Formula companies should not be allowed to advertise - especially in third world countries.

Ionnika - babies who are formula fed in this country are more likely to be hospitalised due to gastroenteritis and breast milk obviously offers antibodies that formula does not provide, as well as being far better for a babies digestive system and a whole host of other long term benefits - these factors should surely be enough to persevere with breastfeeding.

I thought that "best practice" with HIV was to breastfeed exclusively - absolutely exclusively, nothing else, not even water, for 6 months and then abrubtly wean onto formula when the first solids were introduced - I'm sure I read this in The Politics of Breastfeeding.

That is so sad taketheribbon

Thank you for sharing it here.

Hearing the personal story of one baby that died can be just as sad as hearing that 830,000 babies die every year because of this. It is hard to take in the meaning of such big numbers, but I guess each one would have a tragic story of their own. So heartbreaking for so many families.

I think prevent evidence has changed so now they say to bfeed for 12mths, according to the links tiktok posted.

And lonnika babies have died in Europe, america and Australia from formula milk, if you mean the UK I don't know but surely it doesn't matter what country the baby is in, the point is that babies ARE dying because of the unethical practises of formula companies. All babies are important.

"One last question - how many babies IN THIS COUNTRY die due to being formula fed ????????"

If 75% of babies from neonatal units were being bf on discharge from hospital thre would be 361 fewer cases of NEC, which is a very serious illness, sometimes fatal.

According to Unicef, a 'very modest' increase in exclusive breastfeeding rates would result in 3 fewer deaths a year from SIDS.

If half of those mothers who don't breastfeed at all breastfed for 18 months over their lifetime (not impossible - I've done 5 years bf across 3 children, while working and studying) there would be 865 fewer cases of breast cancer in mothers.

And cost savings to the NHS from just a handful of illnesses under current assessment, of about £40million quid. That's not taking into account those illnesses where more research into links with ff are needed - like diabetes and childhood obesity, cardiovascular disease, ovarian cancer, leukaemia and neonatal sepsis where money (and suffering) may well be saved.

From the US Food and Drug Administration 'Alerts and Safety' - an open letter to health professionals dating back 10 years.

"The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is writing to inform you about a growing body of information pertaining to Enterobacter sakazakii infections in neonates fed milk-based powdered infant formulas. Clusters of E. sakazakii infections have been reported in a variety of locations over the past several years among infants fed milk-based powdered infant formula products from various manufacturers. One study tested milk-based powdered infant formula products obtained from a number of different countries and found that E. sakazakii could be recovered from 20 (14%) of 141 samples (1).

Enterobacter sakazakii is a gram-negative rod-shaped bacterium within the familyEnterobacteriaceae. The organism was called "yellow-pigmented Enterobacter cloacae" until 1980 when it was renamed Enterobacter sakazakii (2). The majority of cases of E. sakazakii infection reported in the peer-reviewed literature have described neonates with sepsis, meningitis, or necrotizing enterocolitis (3-5) as a consequence of the infection, and the case-fatality rate among infected neonates has been reported to be as high as 33%. "

Haven't read thread - as an ff-ing mum I can't stomach another one that tells me I'm feeding my child poison tbh...

But - a FB friend linked to the Save the Children petition to the two companies and the basic sentence, the premise of the petition, was something like 'we ask these companies to cease activities that undermine breastfeeding' - I didn't sign. I know exactly what's wrong with how they market, I've educated myself pre-kids about it, but ffs in this country it ain't bf that's undermined on a daily basis. Not on this particular website anyway.

Off to flagellate self and read thread...