Cape Town - Profit chasing food companies continue breaking the law against marketing of baby formula and getting away with it, says a Unicef survey.
Legislation against the marketing of baby formula has been in place in South Africa since December 2012.
Research has found that breast-feeding can reduce infant mortality by 13 percent and that babies who are not breast-fed are 15 times more likely to die from pneumonia and 11 times more likely to die from diarrhoea, but, says Unicef nutrition specialist Chantell Witten, a study has shown that “violations in South Africa are rife”.
“Our baseline survey, which will be released at the end of this month, shows that there are violations taking place. Several health officials, especially paediatricians and dieticians, are blatantly giving recommendations to moms about using formula and which formula to use,” she said.
She said companies that were in direct competition with each other were reporting one another for violation of regulations.
Joe Maila, spokesman for the national Department of Health, said: “All the legislation will have penalty clauses. The key question is to identify transgressions and do something about it. The slogan ‘breast is best’ has a significant amount of evidence to support it. So throughout the world and even in the context of HIV, all government departments are promoting exclusive breast-feeding.”
But, says Witten, the law has no teeth to curb the marketing of formula.
“Companies might receive a strongly-worded letter, but we can’t build up a case without a proper monitoring and evaluation system.”.
Witten said Aspen had recently advertised infant formula in Sawubona magazine, and that chain stores like Clicks and DisChem had also done so in their promotions brochures.
“This is against legislation. We need an independent consumer watchdog to protect the infant-feeding arena from inappropriate marketing of infant formula,” she said, adding that another type of common offence was moms of newborns being given discounted formula vouchers or samples.
Motshidisi Mokwena, spokesman for Nestlé, which is the biggest infant formula producer in the country and has been at the centre of an international boycott for “unethical marketing”, said that “in all countries where the company operates, Nestlé adheres to national governments’ regulations. Nestlé South Africa is therefore compliant with the South African regulations relating to foodstuffs for infant and young children”.
But, says Dr Ingrid le Roux, director of the Philani Child Health and Nutrition Project in Khayelitsha, “it is staggering in this country how we struggle with breast-feeding and the kind of trust in formula that has been ingrained in people”.
“Exclusive breast-feeding for at least the first six months is a priority of our Ministry of Health and breast-feeding takes patience and support.”
Meanwhile, other companies made their profit from conducting research for the companies that produce formula. One report, by Euromonitor International offered information on how “latest breast-feeding rates are impacting retail performance”, and the ways in which “government initiatives to promote breast-feeding are constraining market performance”.
Cape Times