Mother of all milk

14/03/2005

Mother of all milk the Food Safety and Standards Bill, 2005, in its Schedule 1 will break all safety nets created in the country to prevent the promotion of infant milk substitutes over breast milk. The Infant Milk Substitues, Feeding Bottle and Milk Food Act, 1992, had restricted advertising and promoting infant milk substitutes. Its most important directive forbade "any person' to create an "impression or create a belief in any manner that feeding of infant milk substitutes is equivalent to, or better than, mother's milk'. The repeal of this act will undoubtedly undermine the years of hard work done by numerous women's and social groups.

Omega-3 is a fat present in mother's milk that helps develop a child's brain. The people pushing through the repeal most likely grew up on it. Thus, they are not dumb. But this is where the danger lies. The fight between corporate imperative and social good has always been unequal. In a recent us directive on food safety, government refused to curb consumption of sugar, leaving it to the consumer to choose. But the fact remains that the sugar industry will promote their products with multi-million dollar campaigns. There will be nothing to counter that, and so promote best health practices. The curb on advertising on infant milk substitute was a rational one, creating a level playing field. But no more.

The history of promoting infant milk substitute is no different from other multinational dirty businesses. The creator of the product, Nestle, have long been at war with public health activists. The misinformation campaigns launched by marketeers and profiteers actually claimed their products to be better than breast milk. The way infant formula was promoted by the us in post-earthquake Armenia in 1988 by way of relief has always been questionable. Experts maintain the

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