the breast milk trade

[Bindelj]

Dear all, I am investigating the commercial breast milk trade in the UK. I wrote this about the situation in Cambodia 4 years ago (www.truthdig.com/articles/an-example-of-capitalism-literally-milking-the-poor). Horrific. The way things are going we will be seeing desperately poor women in the UK being coerced into selling milk. Does anyone have any knowledge or experience of this issue? If so, I am on [email protected] or please respond here. Many thanks.

@MotherOfCrocodiles

But selling pumped breast milk doesn't give buyers access to your body. I pump milk and would happily sell it. It wouldn't feel any different to selling my poo!

But why? Why does breast milk need to be available commercially?

I've seen often on here that one of the special things about breast milk is it is adapted for the particular baby at its particular stage. So how does that work if it's being sold to be consumed by another baby? And see OhHolyJesus point about consumer law.

Women from poor backgrounds are far less likely to breastfeed

You might, weirdly find, that incentivising breastmilk production as a job would put up breastfeeding rates which could have unintended positive health benefits

Positive health benefits for whom? For the end consumer who wouldn't otherwise have been breast fed?

That consumer will be the child of a well to do middle class family , probably with a mother who didn't drink or smoke during pregnancy and had a healthy diet and decent accommodation. Taking all the benefits which that confers is consuming breast milk really going to make that much difference?

Or do you mean to the person providing the milk? Or as OholyJesus accurately described it the person "being milked"

It doesn't need to be available to buy. I'm just saying I wouldn't feel violated by selling mine.

but if a woman wants to earn a bit of extra money while on maternity leave shouldn’t we help her do that safely?

I'd say she was better off reserving her resources (time, energy, hydration, nutrition) for the baby she has, the one she is raising and nurturing and have other people, who are responsible for their own children, buy formula which is readily available from all good supermarkets and doesn't require her involvement.

OR they can access breast milk from a hospital milk bank, if they meet the criteria. This is already regulated.

I can't see any good coming from a woman selling her milk, taking away from her child so to get an income from selling to the local fetishist or fanatic. She might get a few quid sure, but what she loses is way more, and err...there is also a child involved in this, if we care to remember that the milk is actually for the child.

@MotherOfCrocodiles

It doesn't need to be available to buy. I'm just saying I wouldn't feel violated by selling mine.

Well good for you. Would your baby be ok with it?

I just read an article in the Telegraph about Japan where authorities have made it almost impossible to legally get artificial insemination as a fertility treatment.

This has led to women being scammed by men pretending to have prestigious degrees, no genetic defects, no STIs, even lying about their ethnicity and offering to be “sperm donors” on social media. The women then PAY these men to have sex with them until they fall pregnant.

This one case In the article was about a woman scammed by a Chinese man who had no degrees and had lied to her claiming to be Japanese and a graduate of a prestigious Kyoto university. She paid to have sex with him ten times before she fell pregnant. Then she found out she’d been scammed. The reason this is news is because unlike most women who are scammed and never know or don’t have the resources this woman is suing the man “sperm donor” for fraud and she has put her baby girl up for adoption.

I think those thinking we can just tell women “no you can’t buy breastmilk for your baby” are fucking naive. If breastmilk selling and buying is not regulated in a permissive and safety oriented way, things will go the way they are in Japan with artificial insemination. And the most innocent people suffering will be the infants potentially poisoned by bad breast milk or breast milk adulterated with water or other substances.

Just like the saddest victim in the story from Japan is an unwanted baby girl put up for adoption.

Just like the saddest victim in the story from Japan is an unwanted baby girl put up for adoption.

An example of what happens when you measure and put monetary value on a human.

@OhHolyJesus
I can't see any good coming from a woman selling her milk, taking away from her child so to get an income

You do know that breastmilk is supply and demand? Yes? I have twins in the family successfully breast fed by ONE woman with no harm done. The idea that there is a finite supply of breastmilk and her child must starve in order for a woman to sell any breastmilk is absurd. And you are forgetting this is already happening, women are already buying and selling breastmilk. Just because you think no good can come of it, doesn’t mean it’s not a good thing to the women actually involved in it. I personally think we owe them protection through regulation than some kind of morality police to stop them.

The reason this is news is because unlike most women who are scammed and never know or don’t have the resources this woman is suing the man “sperm donor” for fraud and she has put her baby girl up for adoption

I recommend this podcast on unregulated sperm donors and the issues presented by this relatively new social media phenomenon.

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/m00120sb

@OhHolyJesus

Just like the saddest victim in the story from Japan is an unwanted baby girl put up for adoption.

An example of what happens when you measure and put monetary value on a human.

No it’s an example of how women are exploited and defrauded when authorities make something they want almost impossible to get legally. And how this then affects the infants involved.

If Japan had easily accessible artificial insemination clinics like we do in the U.K., women would not be vulnerable to predatory men getting them to pay them for sex by mis-selling their genetics as good father material biologically.

The same will happen with breastmilk if you close your eyes and think we can just tell these women “no go buy formula”.

My baby does not have an opinion on this, no.

@EmpressCixi

Why was the man's sperm meant to be of more value if he had a degree? Regardless of whether he lied or not, was he expected to charge more because his DNA was of more value?

Why would his sperm be of more value?

@MotherOfCrocodiles

My baby does not have an opinion on this, no.

If your baby was able to express an opinion what would he or she say do you think?

I'd take a guess at "no that's my milk, don't sell it to that deluded body builder", but like I say, I'm just guessing. That's all we can do when it comes to babies, though mothers can usually decipher the meaning of their cries.

You sell your excreted bodily fluids and breast milk to the pervert in the local village if it pleases you, though I'd suggest drop off rather than collection.

If Japan had easily accessible artificial insemination clinics like we do in the U.K., women would not be vulnerable to predatory men getting them to pay them for sex by mis-selling their genetics as good father material biologically.

We have fertility clinics in the U.K. and online groups facilitate the direct and unregulated purchase of sperm online.

I strongly recommend the podcast, to avoid disrespecting the OP and derailing further, I simply direct you to something that is already happening despite the established and legally managed regulation of sperm. Regulating it doesn't stop something going underground no, but when people operate outside of the existing system where the risks aren't managed there are all kinds of consequences as safeguards and controls are removed.

I think those thinking we can just tell women “no you can’t buy breastmilk for your baby” are fucking naive

Why bother having laws against anything then?

We absolutely CAN tell women and men
"no you can't buy breast milk. And if you do we will throw the book at you in the same way we do at any criminal"

So far as your poor exploited Japanese woman who put her baby up for adoption because the father actually didn't have a degree from Kyoto University- the father lied- frankly so what? People big themselves up. The one I have contempt for here is the mother. Her behaviour is vile and indefensible.

I donated 25 litres to the local neo natal unit and was called a 'fucking idiot' by a Body Building friend of DB who heard about it - he'd have paid for it apparently. I called him a fucking pervert

*The same will happen with breastmilk if you close your eyes and think we can just tell these women “no go buy formula”

Why can't we? Billions of babies are formula fed. They're fine.

Her behaviour is vile and indefensible.

I agree - giving your baby up because half of her DNA turned out to be not what she thought it was is, after the time, (terrible sex I imagine) money and the bonding in pregnancy, the labour...well I've heard a lot of reasons why someone has been adopted. That's a new one for me.

What am I missing?

Why - if it's a woman's choice and is well remunerated - is expressing and selling her breastmilk intrinsically more exploitative than her doing a poorly paid manual job?

Formula will never come close to replicating breastmilk because it is modified cow's milk and you can't just lump random ingredients from breastmilk into it and say it's as good. It won't be. Possibly at some point it will be possible to create an actual synthetic replica in a lab in the same way that they are looking at creating lab based meat, that might be closer.

BUT, that doesn't really matter. Formula doesn't need to be exactly like breastmilk. It simply needs to be similar enough to breastmilk to nourish infants, and by and large it is. It works absolutely fine. The risks associated with formula feeding are largely due to the bottle (and can be reduced with some education about how to bottle feed in a more responsive way and education about hygiene). These risks would apply for donor milk fed babies as well. The current "advances" in formula where they are making various biological compounds similar to those in breastmilk and adding them to the formula is basically marketing, they don't add anything much of significant value to the milk itself, and they can't even add all of them if they could make them because not all women's milk contains all of the proteins and they don't really know why.

The other point of course is that no matter what the differences are, the harm caused by commercialisation of breastmilk absolutely has to be taken into account. It's potentially massively exploitative for breastmilk to be bought and sold commercially.

Can you say a bit more about how it's exploitative to sell your breastmilk please?

Sex work is emotionally harmful and physically dangerous.

Egg donation likewise - puts women at risk of hyper stimulation and they have to endure pain during egg collection, not to mention the emotional minefield of having another person gestate, birth and raise a child who is your genetic offspring.

I'm interested in how expressing and selling milk harmful to women if no coercion is involved and if it's well remunerated?

[quote EmpressCixi]@OhHolyJesus
I can't see any good coming from a woman selling her milk, taking away from her child so to get an income

You do know that breastmilk is supply and demand? Yes? I have twins in the family successfully breast fed by ONE woman with no harm done. The idea that there is a finite supply of breastmilk and her child must starve in order for a woman to sell any breastmilk is absurd. And you are forgetting this is already happening, women are already buying and selling breastmilk. Just because you think no good can come of it, doesn’t mean it’s not a good thing to the women actually involved in it. I personally think we owe them protection through regulation than some kind of morality police to stop them.[/quote]
And what is this relative's opinion on women's breastmilk being commoditised?

It would be funny if you were invoking a woman's efforts to breastfeed with zero idea of how difficult it had been for her to establish breastfeeding multiples, how much she'd had to eat (all the breastfeeding mothers of twins I know were starving constantly). Presumably you're unaware that some mothers of twins who successfully establish breastfeeding do need to supplement with formula?

I'm interested in how expressing and selling milk harmful to women if no coercion is involved and if it's well remunerated?

It's harmful like it's harmful to buy and sell human blood.

"It would be funny if you were invoking a woman's efforts to breastfeed with zero idea of how difficult it had been for her to establish breastfeeding multiples, how much she'd had to eat (all the breastfeeding mothers of twins I know were starving constantly). Presumably you're unaware that some mothers of twins who successfully establish breastfeeding do need to supplement with formula?"

What's the relevance of this to the issue of whether women being able to sell their breastmilk is exploitative or not?

@Sabire9

"It would be funny if you were invoking a woman's efforts to breastfeed with zero idea of how difficult it had been for her to establish breastfeeding multiples, how much she'd had to eat (all the breastfeeding mothers of twins I know were starving constantly). Presumably you're unaware that some mothers of twins who successfully establish breastfeeding do need to supplement with formula?"

What's the relevance of this to the issue of whether women being able to sell their breastmilk is exploitative or not?

It is relevant to the matter of someone using a breastfeeding mother of twins in their family to intimate that women can routinely act as one baby's sole source of nutrition and milk themselves to sell milk, without any detriment to their own baby.

"It's harmful like it's harmful to buy and sell human blood"

Giving blood will quickly make you anaemic if you do it too often. And being anaemic is harmful to your health.

Expressing milk every day in the short, medium and long term allows you to eat more/burn off excess fat and may even protect a woman from breast cancer, endometrial and ovarian cancers, hypertension, and type 2 diabetes.

Lactation isn't harmful to health.

Blood letting is.