Breastfeeding week: Help protect children from companies who place profits before health

Summary: Improving breastfeeding rates globally could save the lives of 3,900 a day. However companies continue to promote artificial feeding in ways that undermine breastfeeding - putting profits before children's health. This breastfeeding week is the 25th anniversary of the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes.

[LONDON, 28 July 2006] - Breastmilk provides all the energy and nutrients an infant needs, stimulates immune systems and protects them from disease. Breastmilk substitutes, on the other hand, carry a high risk of infection and can be fatal in infants, particularly in places with limited access to sanitation.

Even in the UK, a bottle-fed baby is far more likely to be hospitalised with stomach illness than a breastfed one. They are also at higher risk of respiratory and ear infections. Studies show that breastfed babies are less likely to die of cot death or suffer from allergies or obesity in later life (more on the benefits of breastfeeding).

So why do few of the 129 million babies born each year receive optimal breastfeeding and many not breastfed at all? One of the reasons is that companies continue to promote artificial feeding in ways that undermine breastfeeding - putting profits before children's health in violation of the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes.

This world breastfeeding week (1-7 August), Save the Children is asking people around the world to spot companies breaking the code and report them. The Code states there should be no advertising or any other form of promotion of infant formulas, follow-on milks, feeding bottles or teats.

If you see companies breaking these minimum requirements, please report them in these three easy steps:

• Download this Quick and Easy Monitoring form
• Fill in one form for each violation you find (specifying who, what, when and where!)
• Send the completed forms (together with pictures if you have any) to Jonathan Purchase at Save the Children, 1 St John’s Lane, London EC1M 4AR or by e-mail to [email protected]

What is a violation?

Companies may not:
- Promote their products to the public
- Use baby pictures or other idealising picture or text on their baby milk and bottle and teat labels
- Give gifts or free samples to mothers or health workers or free supplies of baby milk to hospitals
- Seek direct or indirect contact with pregnant women or mothers of young children
- Promote baby foods or drinks for babies under 6 months old.

Also Labels must include a prominent health warning in a language understood by the mother and companies are limited to providing scientific and factual information to health workers, who are responsible under the Code for advising parents. 

Further information

• World Breasfeeding Week website
• International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes
• Declaration on Protection, Promotion and Support of Breastfeeding, 1990
• Innocenti Declaration 2005 pamphlet
• Innocenti: 1990-2005 Celebrating the Innocenti Declaration on Protection, Promotion and Support of Breastfeeding
• WHO: Promoting proper feeding for infants and young children
• WHO: More on breastfeedingMore information about monitoring hte Code
• International Baby Food Action Network website