Cow&Gate getting mums to promote follow on milk.

By Lisa Lactivist, on August 28th, 2011

Cow&Gate want mummy bloggers to do their marketing for them. They’re promoting a product – follow-on milk for 1 yr olds – in order to increase brand visibility of all their milks including infant formula.

It is illegal to promote infant formula (for babies under 6 months) but follow on formula has been created to get around that loophole. There is no need for the stuff at all. The world health organisation recommends exclusive breastfeeding to 6 months then continuing breastfeeding until at least the age of 2 while introducing solids. It doesn’t recommend fake milk.

This campaign kicks off with the UK’s first ‘Toddler Census’, aiming to explore what life is like for British toddlers, from the contents of their wardrobes to their diets and lifestyles and it focuses on Growing Up Milk, a milk specially made for toddlers.It is thought that the growing ‘mummy blogger’ community has been identified as a key target, given its growing importance as an information source for parents. The campaign will blend traditional media relations with digital, SEO and social media activity, as well as a ‘mum’ word-of-mouth campaign. The Baby Milk Action website says that Mothers with problems are more likely to phone Cow & Gate for advice than La Leche League or the National Childbirth Trust.

www.prweek.com/uk/news/1085214/Cow—Gate-shifts-entire-consumer-PR-work-Frank-PR/

What is wrong with Cow and Gate?

“Cow & Gate are among a number of babymilk companies who regularly violate the WHO code of conduct which was produced to regulate the marketing of babymilk formulas in developing countries.

Unigate associate company Nutricia is listed as a frequent violator of the WHO Code by promoting baby milk in healthcare facilities and to health workers, and giving free samples or supplies.

Their Cow & Gate Plus products used pictures of babies on labelling in Sierra Leone in 1990, and carried no health warning or reference to advice from health workers.”

(from http://www.mcspotlight.org/beyond/companies/cow_gate.html)

You can see more recent violations of the code here – http://www.babyfeedinglawgroup.org.uk/monitoring/monreportcandg.html

“In 2010 Nestle tried a similar thing by inviting 20 bloggers to become part of the “Nestle Family”. At least one of the bloggers initially invited to the event reportedly declined the invitation based on Nestle’s history as one of the four most boycotted companies in the world. The Nestle boycott began in the 1970′s, fueled in large part by Nestle’s alleged ongoing violations of the WHO International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes. However, many bloggers accepted the Nestle Family invitation, which sparked an intense debate across Twitter and the blogosphere regarding unethical sponsorships and blogger integrity.” (http://sheposts.com/content/blogher-10-picks-nestle-sponsorship-what-will-boycotters-do)

The paragraph above is a direct cut and paste from http://sheposts.com/content/blogher-10-picks-nestle-sponsorship-what-will-boycotters-do

Thank you so much to R who flagged this up to Lactivist.

I agree with her that it would be wonderful if bloggers could make this backfire for Danone who own C&G and are now nearly as big as Nestle worldwide in formula sales.

TheFeministBreeder

August 30, 2011 at 4:05 am · Reply

“In 2010 Nestle tried a similar thing by inviting 20 bloggers to become part of the “Nestle Family”. At least one of the bloggers initially invited to the event reportedly declined the invitation based on Nestle’s history as one of the four most boycotted companies in the world. The Nestle boycott began in the 1970′s, fueled in large part by Nestle’s alleged ongoing violations of the WHO International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes. However, many bloggers accepted the Nestle Family invitation, which sparked an intense debate across Twitter and the blogosphere regarding unethical sponsorships and blogger integrity. (http://sheposts.com/content/blogher-10-picks-nestle-sponsorship-what-will-boycotters-do)”

That entire paragraph was lifted directly from my ShePosts article with no quotes or citation. That’s not cool. Could Lisa Lactivist please edit that to show that it’s a direct copy-and-paste from another website? Otherwise this is simply a copyright violation.

I’m a lactivist, but I don’t appreciate my work being lifted with no credit.

Edited by Lisa Lactivist to reply
really sorry it is not clear but the link to your brilliant website is there – in brackets at the end of the quote and it’s in quote marks but I missed out the end quote mark by accident. I’ve edited the original post to make it clearer that it is your text and not mine but I did credit you.

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