%@utcsstat.UUCP (06/26/83)
For those who followed the Nestle issue a few weeks ago on the net the following may be of interest from the Toronto Star, June 25, 1983. Free Formula for newborns an immoral practice by Michele Landsberg Here's a homespun paradox. Canadians have been amoung the most alert and dedi- cated of Nestle boycotters around the world. But right here on our doorstep, companies are flagarantly breaking the new international rules for selling baby forumlas. They are flacking their products through our publicly funded health- care system, preying on the insecurities of new mothers in a way that is des- tructive to breast feeding. And who protests? Practically no one. Lets backtrack for a moment. The startling victory of the Nestle boycott move- ment came in 1981, when all the nations of the World Health Organization - except Ronald Reagan's United States - endorsed a strict marketing code for the sale of all baby-feeding products. Canada enthusiastically voted for the code. It had been a 10-year struggle to pressure the huge multi-nationals to curb their salesmanship extravagances in the Third World. Hunting those corporate profits (baby formula is a $1-billion market) as though they were on safari, Nestle and its lesser brothers used all the sophisticated weaponry of the West. Colorful billboards of beaming blonde babies showed dark mothers how their infants would thrive if only they were bottle-fed. Pediatricians and hospital officials were wooed with dinners, gifts, trips, expensive pediatric equipment and cases of free formula. Most devasting of all, saleswomen garbed in medical uniforms were hired to visit new mothers in maternity wards and to press free formula samples upon them. Back in their steamy urban slums or remote villages, where clean water and ade- quate income are as remote as the moon, millions of mothers found that their own breast milk had dried up as a result of early bottle feeding. They had no choice but to stretch and dilute the formula (often with filthy water) to make a week's supply last a month. The results of the hype? Dazzling success for the formula company giants. Breast feeding plummeted in the Third World as it had earlier in the West. For the babies? James Grant, executive director of UNICEF, said in his 1982-83 annual report that up to 1 million babies a year were dying, horribly, from diahhrea and starvation due to improper bottle feeding. Canadians, led by INFACT (the boycott organization), churches, health and consu- mer groups, were amoung those who rose in protest. One INFACT survey showed that a quarter of a million Torontonians were actively boycotting Nestle, the giant of formula sellers. Then the WHO marketing code was passed. It strictly forbids the handing out of free formula samples to mothers anywhere - not just in the Third World. After all, Canada's own Arctic had an epidemic of infant sickness and mortality among native people until crusading doctors and nurses managed to slow the trend to bottle feeding. Ironically, Canadians continue to boycott Nestle because of its Third World rule-breaking - yet we apparently think that we ourselves are immune to advertising. All across Canada, according to a survey compiled this spring by INFACT, doc- tors, nurses and formula companies continue to break the rules here at home. About 70 per cent of breast-feeding mothers are given free formula samples in the hospital. "Listen, I was glad to have it," one new mother who had briefly breast fed her baby told me. "One night the baby cried and cried, and there was a bottle of formula waiting in the kitchen." Exactly. Formula companies don't get rich by being stupid. A National Survey of Infant Feeding Patterns, conducted by Health and Welfare Canada in 1982, said: "Almost three times as many mothers stopped breast feeding in the first month in the 'free formula sample group' compared with the 'no sample' group." The same department has stated publicly that breast feeding is superior emotion- ally, physiologically and immunologically to bottle feeding. Do we allow aspirin salesman into the arthritis wards to hand out freebies? Do pacemaker manufacturers give away free samples in the cardiac department? Why is the wholesome, natural nuture of babies held so cheaply by our hospitals? Why do they allow Wyeth, Ross and SMA, three leading formula manufactures, to shower the maternity wards with pamphlets that may subtly undermine a mother's confidence in her ability to breast feed? We banned TV advertising of cigareettes; we limit alcohol advirtising. We know how powerfully persuasive the flacks can be. But we do not protect valnerable young mothers from outrageous violations of the code. I talked to a senior spokesmen for both the Ontario and the federal governments. Both made it quite clear that they had no intention of enforcing the WHO code. Worse, both insisted that the code infractions in Canada are of no concern to their departments. In the Philippines, a hospital director made a courageous stand against what she called "the friendly stranglehold" that the milk companies have on the hospi- tals. She reorganized her entire maternity wing to promote the natural feeding of newborns. It's sad, and revealing, that few Canadian hospital officials have followed this principled Third World example. Ethically, we must be under- developed.