UN blasts 'aggressive' formula milk marketing

GENEVA • The United Nations yesterday slammed baby formula makers for "unethical" marketing strategies, accusing them of aggressively targeting expecting parents and health workers.

It is widely recognised that breastfeeding carries huge health benefits. But countries' failure to crack down on the marketing of breast milk substitutes means far too many children are still being reared on formula, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and United Nations children's agency Unicef warned in a new report.

It found that the US$55 billion (S$74 billion) formula milk industry systematically uses aggressive marketing tactics, spending up to US$5 billion a year to sway parents over how to feed their infants.

Unicef chief Catherine Russell called for "robust policies, legislation and investments in breastfeeding to ensure that women are protected from unethical marketing practices".

Experts have long extolled the benefits of breastfeeding, saying that breastfed children are healthier, do better on intelligence tests and are less likely to be overweight or suffer from diabetes later in life.

Women who breastfeed also have a reduced risk of breast and ovarian cancer, research shows.

But despite the known benefits, only 44 per cent of babies under six months old are exclusively breastfed, as recommended by WHO and Unicef.

And while global breastfeeding rates have grown little in the past 20 years, the sale of formula milk has more than doubled over the same period, the latest report said.

Lead report author Nigel Rollins, of WHO's maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health division, blamed the industry's aggressive marketing practices.

He pointed to targeted digital messaging, promotional gifts to new parents, and even efforts to turn health workers into a "conduit for messages about formula".

The report, which polled 8,500 parents and pregnant women as well as 300 health workers across eight countries in various regions of the world, found that more than half of the parents and pregnant women said they had been targeted with formula marketing.

In Britain, 84 per cent of women polled said they had been exposed to such marketing, while 97 per cent in China had such exposure, "increasing their likelihood of choosing formula feeding".

Dr Rollins pointed to how companies use pseudoscience to suggest that breast milk is not enough on its own or that formula milk does a better job of helping babies to sleep through the night.

The report voiced particular concern about marketing that targets healthcare professionals with free samples, promotional gifts, research grants and paid conferences. More than a third of the women surveyed said a health worker had recommended a specific brand of formula to them.

Dr Rollins stressed that the goal was not to clear store shelves of formula, noting that breastfeeding is not an option for all parents. But he said far more needed to be done to ensure adherence to a 1981 international code of conduct demanding that formula not be marketed in a way that interferes with the promotion of breastfeeding.

The report did not name specific firms, painting the problem as an industry-wide issue.

Nestle, the world's biggest formula maker, said it was "highly compliant with the WHO Code". The Switzerland-based firm said it was "voluntarily stopping promoting formula" for infants from zero to six months old across the world by the year end, including in the United States, Canada and Japan, countries with no regulation on the issue.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE