Peer-reviewed / Literature review, opinion / People
- Fewer than half of infants globally are breastfed as recommended by WHO [1], with formula milk sales on the rise despite formula feeding failing to offer the same nutrition, health and development benefits as breastfeeding.
- The Lancet 2023 Series on Breastfeeding argues that formula milk companies exploit parent's emotions and manipulate scientific information to generate sales at the expense of the health and rights of families, women, and children.
- The Series highlights the economic and political power of the dominant formula milk companies and the public policy failures which mean millions of women are prevented from breastfeeding as recommended.
- The authors stress that breastfeeding is a collective responsibility of society and call for more effective promotion, support and protection for breastfeeding, including a much better trained healthcare workforce and an international legal treaty to end exploitative formula milk marketing and prohibit political lobbying.
Formula milk marketing tactics are exploitative, and regulations need to be urgently strengthened and properly implemented according to a new three paper Series publish in The Lancet. Experts call for an international legal treaty to end irresponsible formula milk marketing and political lobbying, accompanied by more effective breastfeeding support worldwide.
Series co-author, Professor Nigel Rollins, WHO, says "The sale of commercial milk formula is a multi-billion-dollar industry which uses political lobbying alongside a sophisticated and highly effective marketing playbook to turn the care and concern of parents and caregivers into a business opportunity. It is time for this to end. Women should be empowered to make choices about infant feeding which are informed by accurate information free from industry influence."
He continues, "Our Series finds society, politics, and economics all contribute to why fewer than half of infants globally are breastfed as recommended [1]. Breastfeeding should be considered society's collective responsibility, not the sole concern of women. We need to see wide-ranging actions across different areas of society to better support mothers to breastfeed for as long as they want." [2]
"Babies are most likely to survive and grow to their full potential when breastfed. [3] Breastfeeding promotes brain development, protects infants against malnutrition, infectious diseases, and death, while also reducing risks of obesity and chronic diseases in later life. Yet, globally, many women who wish to breastfeed face multiple barriers, including insufficient parental leave and lack of support in healthcare systems and at the workplace, in the context of exploitative marketing tactics of the commercial milk formula industry", says Series co-author Professor Rafael Pérez-Escamilla, Yale University School of Public Health, US. [2]
In a novel analysis, the Series describes how profits made by the formula milk industry benefit companies located in high-income countries while the social, economic and environmental harms are widely distributed and most harmful in low and middle income countries.
An exploitative marketing playbook
Triggered by The Baby Killer investigative report into Nestle's marketing of formula milk in the Global South in the 1970s, the World Health Assembly developed the voluntary International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes and subsequent resolutions (the Code) in 1981 [4]. However, the powerful influence of the milk formula industry and the marketing of their products in violation of the Code continues, with sales from commercial formula milk having rapidly increased over the past twenty years and now at more than $55 billion a year.
The Series outlines the exploitative tactics used by formula milk companies to sell their products, including taking advantage of parents' worries about their child's health and development. One common reason women introduce formula milk is interpretating unsettled baby behaviour, especially disrupted sleep and persistent crying, as a sign that breast milk is insufficient. [5,6] However, sleep patterns of babies are not the same as for adults and unsettled baby behaviours are common. When mothers are appropriately supported, concerns can be addressed successfully without the use of formula milk.
