It comes as no surprise that the American public interest group, Action for Corporate Accountability (ACTION), and the International Nestle Boycott Committee for Europe have decided to boycott Nestle and Wyeth, the International Organization of Consumers Unions said.
Anwar Fazal, Director of lOCU's office for Asia and the Pacific and one of the founders of the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN) states: "The renewed Nestle Boycott and pressure on Wyeth is indeed timely and necessary. They had it coming to them. They have been dragging their feet too long."
Survey findings published in May 1988 by lOCU and IBFAN show Nestle, and Wyeth which makes S-26, to be among six of the worst violators of the WHO/UNICEF International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes. The others were Milupa, Boots/Farley, Meiji and Namyang.
The WHO/UNICEF Code, adopted in 1981 by the World Health Assembly, requires all milk companies and manufacturers of feeding bottles and teats to have adequate labels, no direct advertising and no inappropriate marketing of soft foods or follow-up milks for infants.
It also stipulates that there should be no promotion in health care systems, no promotion to health workers and no free samples or supplies.
Monitoring of company marketing practices by lOCU/IBFAN have shown that Nestle and Wyeth, a subsidiary of American Home Products, have continued to dump supplies of baby milk in hospitals.
In Singapore, it was found that almost all newborns were fed on donated milk and mothers left with free samples of Nestle and Wyeth formula. In Thailand, hospitals were given enough free supplies to fully bottle-feed 110 per cent of the newborns.
A statement by Nestle Malaysia in the New Straits Times (October 7, 1988), however, said that its "infant formula marketing practices in developing countries complied with the WHO Code and that donations of infant formula to hospitals were allowed by article 6.6 of the WHO Code." This article has been the subject of considerable confusion.
When this article was drafted, the intention was to allow for charitable donations to orphanages and similar social welfare institutions, not to provide a loophole for promotion in ordinary health care facilities. The controversy led WHO to issue an official clarification in 1986 disallowing companies to give free or subsidized supplies to maternity hospitals.
In fact, WHO estimates that well over 95% of mothers are perfectly able to breastfeed. Baby food companies, however, have been supplying practically unlimited quantities of free breastmilk substitutes to maternity hospitals and clinics, knowing full well that this would encourage routine bottle feeding of newborns as well as handing samples to mothers at discharge.
Last October 12 was the ninth anniversary of IBFAN, a coalition of consumer and citizen groups, which works for better child health through the promotion of breastfeeding and the elimination of irresponsible marketing of commercial infant foods, feeding bottles and teats.
IBFAN has over 150 affiliated groups in 70 countries and it has become one of the most important forces behind the WHO Code. As a founding member, lOCU supports IBFAN and its work on the protection and promotion of breastfeeding.
For more information, contact:
Fauziah Vumsay IBFAN/IOCU P.O. Box 1045 10830 Penang Malaysia