The WHO recommends exclusive breastfeeding for newborns, where possible, as the healthier option.
This goes both for babies, their mothers and also the planet, as breastfeeding is a much more sustainable and ‘clean’ way to feed an infant.
However, heavy and directed marketing by formula companies is doing little to improve breastfeeding rates globally, with parents in many countries, including the UK, China and Vietnam claiming they have been exposed to “aggressive” formula milk marketing campaigns.
According to a new report from the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF and M&C Saatchi , methods used by many formula companies today breach global rules set up more than 40 years ago, and the marketing techniques can push women away from breastfeeding and include everything from giving free samples, to executives setting up or joining “mums’ groups” on popular messaging apps.
Even more shocking?
Health workers are also targeted by the formula companies, with gifts, funding for research and even commission from sales, all practices that are banned under international guidelines for the marketing of formula milk.
Greedy industry
In 1981, the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes was set up by the WHO in a bid to regulate the industry after scandals in the 1970s when Nestle was accused of discouraging mothers, particularly in developing countries, from breastfeeding.
In fact, formula milk and tobacco are the only two products for which there are international guidelines to prevent marketing.
However, only 25 countries have fully implemented the code into legislation, and over the last four decades, sales of formula milk have more than doubled, while breastfeeding rates have only slightly increased, the WHO said. The formula milk industry is now worth around €50bn annually.
The report found that more than half of the 8,500 parents across the eight countries surveyed reported exposure to marketing, much of which was in breach of the code.
In China, 97 percent of women surveyed had been exposed to formula milk marketing; in the UK it was 84 percent, and more than a third of women across all of the countries said that health workers had recommended a specific brand of formula to them.
Titled “How marketing of formula milk influences our decisions on infant feeding”, the report is the largest of its kind, and also included interviews with marketing executives and 300 health workers.
The report’s authors and several external experts said it was time to reform the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes.
Formula advertising leads to low breastfeeding rates
While the code allows factual information about formula to be provided, and the authors acknowledged the importance of formula milk for women who cannot or do not want to breastfeed, they said the marketing practices were a key reason for low breastfeeding rates worldwide.
The WHO recommends exclusive breastfeeding for at least the first six months of life, but currently, it is estimated that only 44 percent of babies this age are fed this way, despite a major 2016 study suggesting more than 800,000 babies’ lives could be saved annually if breastfeeding rates improved to reach this milestone.
“False and misleading messages about formula feeding are a substantial barrier to breastfeeding, which we know is best for babies and mothers,” said UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell in a statement.
President Michael D Higgins and Sabina Higgins also welcomed the new report, and issued a statement last week upon learning of its content.
“The issue of intense and manipulative marketing around the use of formula milk for babies is an issue that we have often highlighted with great concern,” they wrote.
“Unable to demolish the science and research that shows that breast milk is best, an abuse of advertising seeks to confuse with slogans that speak of ‘follow-on’ products that are in reality contradictory to what breastfeeding principles envisage or stand for.
“Each year in Áras an Uachtaráin we host an event in support of National Breastfeeding Week. We do this to restore, respect and encourage breastfeeding, to place it at the heart of national and international policy, in our development and poverty elimination policies, and in our health strategies.
“Breastfeeding is a basic component of sustainability. It makes sense – even in the economics of public health.
“Our hope is that honest and factual representations on the benefits of breastfeeding will be assisted by the publication of this report and it is for this reason that it must be wholeheartedly welcomed.”
Experts agree tougher punishments are needed for formula companies who break or skirt the rules.
“We need to rethink how to actually make it (the code) work, so that it can be enforced much more strongly,” says Gerard Hastings, emeritus professor of marketing at the University of Stirling, Scotland.
He adds that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should be more involved.
“These agencies really need to go back to the drawing board and think of infant formula products in the same way as you would think of drugs.”
