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Launch of the Breastfeeding Manifesto by UK coalition of health advocacy groups

Press release 16 May 2007

The Baby Feeding Law Group (convened by Baby Milk Action) is a member of the Breastfeeding Manifesto coalition. The Breastfeeding Manifesto is being launched at the UK Parliament today.

The manifesto has seven points, aiming to improve support and acceptance of breastfeeding. Point 7 relates to implementation of marketing requirements for baby foods.

For the launch details and further information click here.

Patti Rundall said on behalf of the Baby Feeding Law Group:

"While working to support parents’ rights to breastfeed their babies, it’s very easy to overlook the impact of the £7.6 million which companies spend on the promotion of artificial feeding. This permeates our health care systems, media and shops and undermines everything that health advocates and governments try to do, dwarfing the UK government breastfeeding promotion budget of £729,011 (Note 1).

"The Baby Feeding Law Group is an ad hoc group of 21 organisations which monitors the baby food industry and advocates that the Government puts an end to any promotion which undermines breastfeeding and misleads parents. Despite promising for decades to implement World Health Assembly marketing requirements the UK Government has so far failed to deliver. No wonder our breastfeeding rates are among the worst in Europe. The fact that a third of mothers believe that formula is the same or almost the same as breastfeeding (note 2) shows how effective the promotion is and why, once mothers leave the supportive environment of a Baby Friendly Hospital, breastfeeding duration rates have not improved (note 3)."

Notes

  1. Figures researched by Save the Children for this week show that the baby food companies spent £7,626,847 on advertising formula and baby food in 2006/07 according to Nielsen Research Multimedia. This is an increase of 36.6% on the previous year. The government spent £729,011 promoting breastfeeding in 2006/07, a decrease on the previous year.

  2. http://www.babyfriendly.org.uk/items/item_detail.asp?item=47

  3. Infant feeding Survey 2005 http://www.ic.nhs.uk/statistics-and-data-
    collections/health-and-lifestyles/infant-feeding/
    infant-feeding-survey-2005

 

 
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