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Formula for Disaster: Weighing the Impact of Formula Feeding Vs Breastfeeding on Environment

BPNI / IBFAN Asia’s latest publication “Formula for Disaster: weighing the impact of formula feeding Vs breastfeeding on environment” is out now. The path breaking publication aims to raise awareness of the positive impact of breastfeeding on our environment and throws light on the negative impact of formula feeding. This publication positions formula feeding as […]

Written contribution to the Committee on the Rights of the Child 2014 Day of General Discussion – Digital Media and Children’s Rights

Enshrined in the article 24 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, breastfeeding is protected against undermining marketing practices by the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes. However, the misconduct of baby food companies continues to be a key cause for poor breastfeeding practices. Recently, the report Breaking the Rules 2014 highlighted the new trend […]

Letter from Director of UN corporate accountability initiative reveals its lack of integrity – Baby Milk Action, 15 July 2014

Baby Milk Action, a campaign group that monitors the baby food industry against United Nations marketing standards, says it has received a letter (dated 9 July 2014) from the Executive Director of the UN Global Compact, Mr Georg Kell, that confirms its view that the corporate accountability initiative is ‘worse than useless and lacking in integrity’. Link […]

Corporate Influence on the Business and Human Rights Agenda of the United Nations Working (2014)

This working paper gives an overview of the debate from the early efforts to formulate the UN Code of Conduct to the current initiative for a binding Treaty on Business and Human Rights. It particularly focuses on the responses by TNCs and their leading interest groups to the various UN initiatives, specifies the key actors and their objectives, and describes how many of their demands were ultimately reflected in governmental positions and UN decisions. The working paper ends with remarks on what could be done to counteract and reverse corporate influence on the UN human rights agenda.

Protecting infant health through implementation of the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes – Written statement, Human Rights Council, 26th Session/June 2014

Infant and children mortality is still a major concern globally. Breastfeeding has proven to be one of the most effective, low-cost interventions to save children’s lives. In order to protect breastfeeding, in 1981, the World Health Assembly (WHA) adopted the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes (the Code), to date completed and extended by fifteen subsequent relevant WHA resolutions. The Code aims to ensure that parents can make fully informed decisions about infant and young child feeding by banning marketing practices that undermine breastfeeding. […] However, since 1981, only 35 countries have fully implemented the Code. In absence of effective marketing regulation, and notwithstanding their obligation under human rights law, baby food companies are systematically violating the Code provisions by malevolent marketing practices and tactics that mislead consumers and health professionals. […]

Breaking the rules – Stretching the rules 2014

The new ‘Breaking the Rules 2014’ report, published in January 2014 by IBFAN-ICDC (IBFAN International Code Documentation Centre), details global marketing trends by baby food manufacturers and exposes violations of the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes and subsequent relevant World Health Assembly resolutions, between 2011 and 2013. Read the Press release Breaking the […]

Guidelines for the safe preparation of infant formula (2007)

Powdered infant formula (PIF) has been linked to cases of serious illness and death in infants due to Enterobacter sakazakii infections. PPNs can be contaminated with dangerous bacteria such as Enterobacter sakazakii and Salmonella enterica during the manufacturing process. Current manufacturing techniques do not allow the production of sterile PPN. During the preparation of these […]