Breaking the rules: What can be done
 What Canada's government can do
It is essential that Canada's infant feeding policies as recommended in
Nutrition for Healthy Term Infants be revised.
Criteria must be established to ensure that those with receive economic
benefits from the infant formula and infant foods industries are prohibited
from participating in the setting of infant feeding policies for Canada.
Provisions of the International Code of Marketing of Breast-Milk
Substitutes must be integrated into any infant feeding policies for Canada.
Requirements for the protection, promotion and support of breastfeeding are
integral to the establishment of optimal infant feeding practices and the
achievement of breastfeeding practices as recommended by the World Health
Organization (WHO).
Infant feeding and breastfeeding practices are influenced by a multitude
of factors -- social, scientific, economic and cultural. Thus consultations
and contributions from a wide sector of those working on infant feeding
should be included in the development of national policy and
recommendations.
The global standards as set out by the WHO Expert Consultation on the
recommended duration of exclusive breastfeeding must be included in Canada's
infant feeding policies.
Canada must use its capacity to make exemptions under the free trade
provisions for health. Abundant scientific evidence exists to assure
Canada's right to establish marketing restrictions that are protective of
infant and young child health. Such restrictions can be made under the
sanitary and phytosanitary exemptions of trade agreements.
The Government of Canada must recognize that the right of optimal health
for children and women supersedes the rights of the pharmaceutical-infant
foods industries to undermine breastfeeding and subvert optimal infant
feeding practices in Canada.
The provisions of the International Code are not superseded by trade
agreements as the government claims. Scientific evidence overwhelmingly
demonstrates the harm of artificial feeding both for children and for their
mothers; harm both in the short term -- infectious diseases, atopy, allergy
-- and in long term health -- chronic diseases, autoimmune diseases.
Health Canada can incorporate several provisions of the International
Code into the Food and Drugs Act -- labelling provisions, marketing
regulations; how hospitals relate to the infant formula/infant feeding
products industries can be made a requirement of the Canada Health Act. The
Canadian Food Inspection Agency can do much more to monitor and enforce
existing regulations such as no health and nutrition claims for infant
foods. Industry Canada can be much more proactive in enforcing regulations
that prohibit misleading advertising claims.
What health professional
associations can do
Health professional associations carry a special responsibility to ensure
their practices and recommendations are independent and free of commercial
influence. The International Code of Marketing makes it very clear that
health care professionals have a special role in the protection of
breastfeeding and should not be used as a vehicle for the marketing of
products that come under its scope.
The professional associations must stop endorsement by association of
products and practices that promote inferior infant feeding practices. They
must stop accepting funds for conferences, social events, meals,
publications, brochures, research, and any other perks that compromise their
independence. Instead they must become proactive in eliminating these
practices from their professional associations -- educate on the
International Code; integrate provisions of the Code into their standards
for practice and monitor their professional practices to ensure that they
are in compliance.
What health care institutions
can do
Hospitals -- maternity and birthing centres -- are uniquely recognized by
the WHO as having major influence on infant feeding practices. It is in
recognition of their unique role in the establishment and successful
continuation of breastfeeding that WHO, UNICEF and international
non-governmental partners such as the International Baby Food Action Network
(IBFAN) and the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA) developed the
Ten Steps for the Protection, Promotion and Support of Breastfeeding, known
as the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI). Underlying the success of
the BFHI is the need for Code compliance by maternity services in order to
establish breastfeeding without the intervention of supplementary feeding,
the mixed messages of artificial feeding, the free samples to create
insecurity, and interference, and in the case of many Canadian hospitals the
financial links of "donations" for the right to exclusive product
arrangements and the rights to market to new mothers birthing in that
institution. Although institutional practices have improved to support new
mothers -- rooming-in, breastfeeding immediately after birth and no free
samples -- much work still needs to be done to achieve full BFHI status.
What the public can do
Of importance is the need for public awareness and watchfulness of the
practices of the infant foods industries. We all benefit from a healthier
population when breastfeeding is optimally practised. Health care costs
decline and we have a healthier, more cognitively able and more productive
society. Members of the public can monitor, lobby, support and advocate for
their communities and their governments to institute policies and practices
and initiate programmes that create supportive environments.
What the infant foods industry
must do
The International Code requires the manufacturers and distributors of the
products that are covered -- infant formulas, teats and bottles,
complementary foods when marketed before the age of six months -- to comply
with its provisions regardless of measures taken by governments, and to
monitor its practices to ensure that they are in compliance. Enough said! |
