The Baby-Formula Crime Ring - The New York Times

Health advocates scrambled to find another sponsor for the resolution, but at least a dozen countries, most of them poor nations in Africa and Latin America, backed off, citing fears of retaliation, according to officials from Uruguay, Mexico and the United States.

Breastfeeding: achieving the new normal - The Lancet
▻https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)00210-5/abstract

The deaths of 823 000 children and 20 000 mothers each year could be averted through universal breastfeeding, along with economic savings of US$300 billion. The Series confirms the benefits of breastfeeding in fewer infections, increased intelligence, probable protection against overweight and diabetes, and cancer prevention for mothers.

Via @AndrewAlbertson sur twitter.

The Baby-Formula #Crime Ring - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/02/magazine/money-issue-baby-formula-crime-ring.html

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SOME $4.3 BILLION worth of infant formula was sold in the United States last year, a vast majority of it in powdered form. Between factory and baby aisle, its cheap ingredients (dehydrated milk and vitamins) become steeply, even mysteriously expensive. Basic types run about $15 for a 12.5-ounce can, amounting to perhaps $150 a month for a fully formula-fed infant. Specialty recipes like EleCare can cost two or three times as much. Strict Food and Drug Administration regulations govern formula production, and three companies dominate. Abbott Laboratories, which makes Similac, and Mead Johnson, which makes Enfamil, each control about 40 percent of the market. The Nestlé-owned brand Gerber holds a roughly 15-percent share.

A market with so little competition is bound to have generous margins, and formula makers have grown richer still because a single buyer accounts for roughly half of all domestic sales: the United States government. The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, commonly known as WIC, provides needy mothers with cash assistance for certain foods, including powdered formula. When it began, in 1972, WIC represented a fresh, lush source of inelastic demand, by effectively eliminating from the formula market those customers most sensitive to price. During the ’80s, formula prices rose by more than 150 percent, vastly outpacing increases in milk costs. By the middle of that decade, formula was absorbing 40 percent of WIC’s food budget, prompting shortfalls that shunted many eligible families to a waiting list.

Allaitement maternel : Trump défend le lait en poudre | États-Unis
▻http://www.lapresse.ca/international/etats-unis/201807/09/01-5188885-allaitement-maternel-trump-defend-le-lait-en-poudre.php

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Attitude criminelle des Etats-Unis : ils défendent les intérêts des fabricants du lait en poudre au détriment de la santé des enfants,

L’article, paru dans le New York Times, affirme que les délégués américains à une réunion annuelle de l’OMS à Genève en mai ont cherché à supprimer un passage d’une résolution sur l’alimentation du nourrisson et du jeune enfant qui invitait les États membres à « protéger, promouvoir et soutenir » l’allaitement maternel.

Les Américains auraient fait pression sur l’Équateur afin que le pays renonce à proposer la résolution, et c’est la Russie qui aurait pris le relais. La phrase a finalement été approuvée et figure dans le document disponible aujourd’hui en ligne.

« L’article du New York Times sur l’allaitement doit être dénoncé. Les États-Unis soutiennent fortement l’allaitement, mais nous pensons que les femmes ne doivent pas se voir interdire l’accès au lait en poudre. De nombreuses femmes ont besoin de cette option à cause de la malnutrition et de la pauvreté », a tweeté Donald Trump.