Reacción a "Reactions: report calls for an end to marketing practices employed by the formula milk industry"

In this new report, authors from the World Health Organization and academic and non-governmental organisations around the world highlight the misinformation directed at families by the formula industry, and the political, social and cultural power of the formula industry to reshape parents’ decision-making in order to increase sales. Marketing of formula milk can be very destructive for humanity, because successful formula marketing depends on weakening the bond between a mother and baby in order to undermine breastfeeding.

We know that secure, responsive bonding between mothers and their babies is the foundation of human development and of the societies we live in. By directly and aggressively working to undermine maternal confidence and offer inappropriate nutritional solutions to common worries, formula milk marketing threatens to reshape societies and undermine human development. For many decades this danger has been recognised, but the global response has been inadequate – breastfeeding has been almost eradicated from some cultures, and hundreds of thousands of infants have died unnecessarily as a consequence of allowing formula marketing to systematically undermine women's natural desire to breastfeed their own baby. In recognition of the special dangers associated with formula milk marketing, the authors of this new report call for a new, legally binding international agreement to better protect the world’s infants and their carers.