New from The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute:
The World Health Organization, UNICEF, the U.S. Department of Health, even First Lady Michelle Obama are sold on the benefits of breastfeeding infants until they’re six months old. A host of scientific studies show that mother’s milk is best for infants, linked to both improved immunity and brain development. But one federal agency, WIC, still distributes more than half of all infant formula sold in the United States, funneling $627 million to formula makers each year.
WIC, formally known as the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, provides extra nutrition to nearly half of the nation’s infants and pregnant mothers, including vouchers for infant formula. While WIC officially promotes breastfeeding, its counselors are up against a PR juggernaut from formula makers. These companies, including Abbott Labs and Nestle, target low-income communities with ads claiming their formula, enhanced by chemical additives, is as good as or better than breast milk. But such claims are substantiated mostly by company-funded studies. Members of Congress with ties to the formula industry, led by notorious lobbyist Lanny Davis, succeeded in blocking government study of popular additives like DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) and ARA (arachidonic acid) when WIC was reauthorized in 2010.
Molly Ginty’s investigation, “Infant Formula Companies Milk U.S. Food Program,” was reported in partnership with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute and published by Women’s eNews. It is available online.
“ On the one hand, WIC was the first U.S. agency to join the global consensus on breastfeeding in 1997–far ahead of the Health Department or any White House programs. That year, it joined the American Academy of Pediatrics in formally recommending six months’ exclusive nursing. In 2004, WIC also began hiring breastfeeding peer counselors and in 2009, it began distributing more food to enrollees who breastfeed than those who do not. On the other hand, WIC, which provides formula to low-income mothers who need it for health reasons or who choose not to breastfeed their babies, continues to funnel what critics say is too much money to infant-formula makers, propping up products its own counselors call second-best. This contradiction is partly due to an extremely effective press blitz by formula companies, which have met official U.S. breastfeeding promotion with a barrage of ads and in-hospital promotions that health advocates have been unable, politically, to do much about. Touting new chemical ingredients in their products, formula makers target many of the neighborhoods that WIC serves–low income communities of color–with ads claiming that their new, enhanced formulas offer the nutritional equivalent of mother’s milk. Manufacturers also offer mothers free hospital discharge packs, free product shipments to their doorsteps, and discount shopping coupons. “Formulas containing [common additives] DHA and ARA have been shown to provide visual and mental development similar to that of the breastfed infant,” assert promotional materials from the International Formula Council, an industry trade group in Washington, D.C. The group describes these ingredients as backed by “years of research studying the clinical effects…in infants.” Most of that promising research, the council neglects to point out, was industry funded.”The full article is well worth reading and it is here – http://www.womensenews.org/story/reproductive-health/111106/infant-formula-companies-milk-us-food-program
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