In 1975 a film called Bottle Babies was made (Peter Krieg, Federal Republic of Germany). It vividly documents the increasing malnutrition caused by bottle feeding in the Third World - in countries and communities where neither the means, the knowledge nor the hygienic conditions exist for safe and adequate bottle feeding. The use of such technology and, most importantly, the use of expensive formula foods marketed by Western infant food companies competing for sales, is highly dangerous and in many cases, fatal.
Like many things created in the West, the bottle in the Third World has become a status symbol. For women living in poorer countries or areas, using a bottle implies being more like women in the West - more sophisticated, more privileged. This is particularly horrifying since the bottle is always inferior to breast feeding in any culture.
Some women in the West are beginning to come full circle - back to breast feeding, to learning about nature all over again. The tragic irony is that Third World women are un-learning this same thing at the same time, being persuaded that the bottle (and the products which go with it) is more Western, more modern and therefore "better".
The film is striking in bringing this home, showing the suffering of the children, the poverty and disease which is made worse by the bottle and its contents, promoted so vigorously by Western companies.
This booklet, inspired by the film, has been compiled as an aide-memoire and resource book. It is not intended to cast new light on an already well documented subject, but rather to set out clearly some of the major questions, whose answers (at least in part) are to be found in the collected statements and testimony reproduced here.
The questions here are complex, but can be seen as essentially four interrelated issues:
- The prevalence of protein-energy malnutrition
- The importance of breast milk, not only in preventing malnutrition and disease but also as an important world food resource
- The imposition of male-oriented western culture (cultural imperialism), involving the more complex mechanisms of exploitation by Western multinational corporations
- The fact that these same mechanisms operate in the West as in the Third World, to the particular detriment of both women and children.
Sections 1 and 2 give an overview on these key issues, using material mostly from people who have been writing about the issue for a long time now doctors, sociologists and nutritionists. What is reproduced is extracts from these writings, with editorial headings and emphases added.
Section 3 describes the action being undertaken on this issue in different countries, and a final section gives selected, annotated sources of information (both groups and literature) on this and the related issues.
The Epilogue by Peter Krieg helps to put the issue into political perspective and pinpoints a crucial factor: that we cannot escape taking responsibility for the world in which we live.
