WUNRN
CONCERNS OVER INFANT FORMULA
ADDITIVES - ANALYSIS
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Photo: Manoocher Deghati/IRIN
Health community says
this is enough for her – industry disagrees.
Lee is now nursing her nine-month-old daughter - a practice rare in
Featuring doe-eyed infants and laughing mothers in newspapers,
magazines, and on billboards, these ads are becoming a fixture in developing
nations’ maternity wards (where nurses sometimes give free formula to new
mothers) and in grocery stores (where saleswomen approach them in the
nappy/diaper aisles).
Health experts have responded with alarm.
“Scientific evidence doesn’t support the industry’s statements about ARA and
DHA,” said James Akre, a former member of the International Board of Lactation
Consultant Examiners (IBLCE), which sets global standards for lactation and
breastfeeding care. “The additives serve primarily, even uniquely, as a
marketing ploy.
Heath campaigners say that for decades, formula has consistently proven to be
less healthy than breastfeeding - boosting the risk of diabetes, infections and
other medical problems, and, when used exclusively, contributes to 21 percent
higher infant mortality. They say that due to the addition of ARA and DHA,
formula is now growing more expensive. And they warn that in developing
nations, formula with additives is often being sold in a way that violates the
recommendations of World Health Organization (WHO).
Additives
ARA (promoted as enhancing "visual acuity") and DHA (touted for
advancing "neurological development") have been added to infant
formula since 1997.
Both these long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids are found in human breast
milk and, in this form, contribute to eye and neurological development. But
over the past five years, WHO and the Cochrane Collaboration, a London-based
research organization, have published policy statements and studies concluding
that ARA and DHA, when used as additives, do not improve infants’ development.
According to the US Food and Drug Administration, the scientific evidence is "mixed"
over the benefits of adding ARA and DHA to baby formula, with no currently
available published studies on the long-term impact.
“Scientists can’t make the same form of ARA and DHA that human breast milk
contains,” said Elizabeth Myler, a spokeswoman for the US-based NGO that
promotes breastfeeding, La Leche League International. “Instead, they extract
it from fermented algae and fungus using a toxic chemical called hexane.”
Mike Brady, a spokesman for the UK-based NGO Baby Milk Action, said some
infants have adverse reactions to plant-derived ARA and DHA, though it is “currently
unclear if this is due to the components themselves, or to the chemicals used
in processing.”
Health advocates charge that studies supporting ARA and DHA supplementation are
conducted primarily by companies profiting from this practice.
Asked by IRIN to provide independent studies proving ARA and DHA benefits to
infants’ health, a spokeswoman from additive-maker Martek Biosciences
responded: “There is no reason to believe that the funding source would have
any undue influence on the outcomes.”
Nestlé declined to comment, and Mead Johnson provided general data about ARA
and DHA consumption, some of it 20 years old. While one 2010 report from the
European Food Safety Authority did hint “small amounts” of DHA supplementation
may help neurological development, that same authority rejected
in 2009 Mead Johnson’s claim of infant health benefits from supplemented
formula.
An independently funded 2010 report from the US-based research
NGO Cornucopia Institute, which supports sustainable agriculture, warned ARA
and DHA additives have been associated with jaundice, sepsis, colitis, and
diarrhoea. The latter is one of the leading causes of infant death in the
developing world.
And then there is the cost. According to the US Food and Drug Administration,
DHA and ARA boost the cost of formula by 6-31 percent in the
HIV-infected
women were discouraged from breastfeeding until recent years - Photo: Charles Akena/IRIN
Mario Tavera, UNICEF’s health officer in Peru, estimated
exclusive formula feeding now costs an average US$575 for the first six months
of life, prompting needy mothers to “over-dilute the formula or use other
milks… thus leading to malnutrition, allergies, and even death,” he warned.
Breast is best
Experts recommend mothers nurse because it lowers their risk of anaemia (mostly
caused by iron deficiency), breast cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, and
postpartum haemorrhaging. Breastfeeding also offers 98 percent protection from
pregnancy during the first six months of an infant’s life, which, as Myler
noted, “helps women in the developing world control the size of their families”.
For infants, breastfeeding is linked to a lowered risk of diabetes, obesity,
respiratory problems, and sudden infant death syndrome, as well as a bolstered
immune system.
Suboptimal breastfeeding accounts for one million infant deaths annually, and
10 percent of the disease burden in children, reported the
For these reasons, UNICEF, WHO and other authorities advocate exclusive
breastfeeding - no other liquids or foods - during the first six months of
life, followed by continued breastfeeding until age two.
In the past, authorities recommended infant formula for the children of women
infected by HIV. But in the last five years, researchers discovered that in the
developing world, where HIV rates are highest, infants are more likely to die
of diarrhoea if they are not breastfed than they are to contract the virus from an infected
mother’s breast milk.
Studies also show the risk of transmission from breast milk is just 2 percent
if the mother receives antiretroviral (ARV) drugs. As result of these
findings, WHO is now recommending HIV-positive mothers breastfeed for
six months, and the UN is urging developing countries to offer ARV drugs to all
HIV-infected mothers. In 2009, about 53 percent of women diagnosed with HIV
receive ARVs worldwide.
Though well-meaning donors often give formula in camps for refugees and displaced persons, health campaigners are working
to change this practice, too, noting that even if women are malnourished, their
breast milk is probably healthier than formula, and that breastfeeding promotes
bonding and a sense of security vital for women and children facing upheaval.
To add
or not to add? - Photo: Oneshotcam/Flikr
Heath experts warn that in unsanitary conditions, formula can
kill infants if mothers prepare it with contaminated water, or if they fail to
sterilize equipment properly.
Policy pushback?
After commercial infant formula was introduced in the developing world in the
early 1900s, cases of lethal diarrhoea spiked (and anti-formula sentiment
mounted) leading to the penning by WHO in 1981 of its International Code of Marketing of Breast-Milk Substitutes.
Endorsed by UNICEF and quickly adopted by 150 of 194 WHO member nations (with
the US, home to two leading infant-formula makers, voting against it), the code
stipulated manufacturers should not distribute free samples to promote their
products, that advertising should not “idealize the use of breastmilk substitutes”,
and that packaging should include information on the benefits of breastfeeding.
Despite the code’s longstanding existence, Yi Lee still sees images of babies
(initially Caucasian and now mostly Asian) in TV ads for formulas with ARA and
DHA in Shenzhen.
Infant-formula-division sales at Martek Biosciences (based in
“The code is a recommendation, and not a treaty,” said George Kent, a professor
at the
Limited progress is being made to implement the WHO code. In 2011, the Pan
American Health Organization released a report showing
In May 2012, the World Health Assembly (a WHO decision-making body) passed
a resolution to establish “adequate mechanisms” to deal with
conflicts of interest in this realm. And in June 2012, the Archives of Disease
in Childhood reported that
“Developments like these offer hope,” said Akre, former IBLCE member and author
of the book The Problem with Breastfeeding. “But progress is difficult because
this is a case of shoestring-budget NGOs battling large, deep-pocket commercial
interests and their unfettered merchandising.”
Leading manufacturers (Nestlé, in
Fuelled by profits from the baby-foods market (which includes but is not
limited to infant formula and generates $30 billion in global sales annually,
with growth projected to reach $35 billion in 2016), these companies have
funnelled money to projects like the Singapore-based Asia Pacific Infant and
Young Child Nutrition Association (APIYCNA). Presented as an NGO, its membership actually
includes seven infant-formula industry companies, including the four
manufacturers listed above.
According to IBFAN, APIYCNA’s main aim is to foster sales in Asia, where infant formula sales are projected to
grow the most by 2016, from the current $6 billion to an estimated $10 billion
annually.
Health experts told IRIN they are concerned that in the developing world,
formula makers’ marketing push may succeed just as well as it has in developed
countries.
In 2004, just two years after DHA and ARA were introduced in the US, government surveys there showed the percentage of people who
believed formula and breast milk were “equally healthy” had suddenly doubled.
And in 2011, in the wake of heavy lobbying by infant-formula makers, the
European Parliament fell short of the vote needed to prevent a disputed DHA
claim from being made on formula labels.
“Formula makers have a powerful, pervasive influence,” said Myler from La Leche
League. “But it doesn’t bode well for the world’s neediest mothers and infants,
whose health is literally on the line.”