How to explain that women breastfeed so little, even though the benefits of breast milk for health are well established? Worldwide, only 48% of babies are exclusively breastfed until six months of age, as recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). If the causes and circumstances of this reality are multiple, a group of international experts denounces, in a body of publications published on Wednesday February 8 by the medical journal The Lancetthe major influencing role exercised by manufacturers of breast-milk substitutes.
“For decades, the commercial infant formula industry has employed underhanded marketing strategies designed to take advantage of parents’ fears and concerns at a time when they are vulnerable, in order to feed young kids a multi-billion dollar businesscastigates the journal in an editorial accompanying the series of three articles. Manufacturers have garnered immense economic power, which they deploy politically to ensure under-regulation of the industry while limiting resources to services that support breastfeeding. »
“They influence us all”
“What you have to understand is that we are not saying that all women should breastfeed – some cannot or do not want to – nor that the sale of infant formula should be banned., warns Professor Nigel Rollins, expert for this series of Lancet and pediatrician at WHO. Our criticism is aimed at corporate marketing strategies, not women. »
The researchers’ analysis reveals that to promote their products – whose sales have increased from 1.5 billion dollars in 1978 to 55 billion in 2019 – manufacturers in the artificial milk sector invest massively, in the order of 3, $5 billion a year. “This makes them very powerful… especially since this amount does not take into account lobbying, actions on social networks or the sponsorship of healthcare professionals.points out Nigel Rollins. I believe that we do not measure how much they influence all of us, parents, caregivers and politicians. »
The experts describe their tactics, which range from using poor quality scientific data to instil the idea that substitutes are essential – to compensate for a low production of breast milk, to improve the well-being of the baby (sleep, digestion… ) or even fostering their intellectual abilities – from financing learned societies and pediatric associations, medical conferences and research work, to lobbying actions to, for example, limit the adoption of measures favorable to breastfeeding, such as the extension of parental leave.
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