The formula industry’s marketing tactics are exploitative and drastic measures are urgently needed to address misleading claims and political interference, according to a new series of three papers published in the lancet today. Industry influence, including lobbying against vital measures to support breastfeeding, seriously jeopardizes the health and rights of women and children, the documents show.
“This new research highlights the enormous economic and political power of big formula companies, as well as the serious public policy failures that prevent millions of women from breastfeeding their children,” she said. Professor Nigel Rollins, WHO scientist and author of an article on the marketing of formula milk. “Action is needed in different areas of society to better help mothers breastfeed for as long as they want, along with efforts to tackle the commercialization of exploitative formula once and for all.”
Breastfeeding provides immense and irreplaceable benefits to infants and young children. It helps children survive and develop to their full potential by providing great nutritional benefits, reducing the risks of infection, and lowering rates of obesity and chronic disease in adulthood. Yet globally, only about 1 in 2 newborns are breastfed within the first hour of life, while less than half of babies under 6 months are exclusively breastfed, according to WHO recommendations. .
Given the important contributions of breastfeeding to people’s health, the Lancet The series recommends much greater support for breastfeeding within health and social protection systems, including ensuring sufficient paid maternity leave. Currently, around 650 million women lack adequate maternity protections, the documents note. Misleading marketing claims and strategic lobbying by the dairy and formula industries add to the challenges parents face, increasing anxiety around breastfeeding and child care.
An Exploitative Marketing Playbook
triggered by the baby killer research report on the marketing of Nestlé formula milk in low- and middle-income countries in the 1970s, the World Health Assembly developed the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes (the Code) in 1981 and various subsequent resolutions. However, the intensive marketing of infant formulas continues largely unabated, with sales of these products now approaching US$55 billion per year.
The first role in Lancet The series documents how misleading marketing claims directly exploit parents’ anxieties about normal infant behaviors, suggesting that commercial dairy products relieve fussiness or crying, for example, that they help with colic or prolong night sleep. The authors emphasize that when mothers are properly supported, these parental concerns can be successfully managed through exclusive breastfeeding.
“The formula industry uses poor science to suggest, with little supporting evidence, that its products are solutions to common infant health and development challenges,” he says. Professor Linda Richter from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. “This marketing technique clearly violates the 1981 Code, which says that labels should not romanticize the use of formulas to sell more products.”
The series explains how formula milk marketing exploits the lack of support for breastfeeding by governments and society, while misusing gender politics to sell its products. This includes framing the defense of breastfeeding as a moralistic judgment, while presenting formula as a convenient and empowering solution for working mothers.
The series also draws attention to the power of the formula industry to influence national political decisions and interfere with international regulatory processes. In particular, the milk and formula industries have established a network of unaccountable trade associations and front groups that lobby against policy measures to protect breastfeeding or control the quality of infant formula.
Changes are needed throughout society
In addition to ending exploitative marketing tactics and industry influence, broader action is needed in workplaces, healthcare, governments, and communities to effectively support women who want to breastfeed to become a collective social responsibility, the authors say, rather than place responsibility. about women
In particular, the authors highlight the need to ensure that women have adequate maternity protections guaranteed by law, including paid maternity leave that aligns, at a minimum, with the WHO recommended duration of six months for exclusive breastfeeding. . Maternity protections should be further extended to the millions of women working in the informal sector who are currently excluded from these benefits, the documents note.
Beyond parental leave, the authors call for formal recognition of the contribution of women’s unpaid care work to national development. Globally, it is estimated that women perform three quarters of all unpaid care work in the family, more than three times that of men. By some accounts, this contributes to around a third of a country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
“Given the immense benefits of breastfeeding for their families and national development, women who want to breastfeed need much more support so they can achieve their breastfeeding goals,” she said. Professor Rafael Pérez-Escamilla of the Yale School of Public Health. “A vast expansion in breastfeeding training for healthcare professionals, as well as legally paid maternity leave and other protections are vital.”
Expanding the training of health workers on breastfeeding is essential, the documents state, so that they can offer specialized advice to parents before and after delivery.
NOTES TO EDITORS
The series launch is Wednesday 8th February from 12:30 to 14:00 UK time. It will be broadcast live here.
The series contains three articles:
- How infant behaviors are misinterpreted to undermine breastfeeding, the broad health benefits of which can be protected through sustained multisectoral interventions
- How the formula marketing “playbook” targets parents, health professionals and politicians and undermines the health and rights of children and mothers.
- How power imbalances and political and economic structures determine feeding practices, women’s rights and health outcomes.
This series received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for research, but not from the authors for their time or writing. For a full list of researchers, see all three articles.
Reports can be accessed here