Breastfeeding has proven health benefits for both mothers and babies in high-income and low-income settings, yet according to WHO, less than half of newborns worldwide are breastfed

The commercial milk formula industry preys on parents’ fears and concerns to turn the feeding of infants and young children into a multibillion-dollar business—generating revenues of about $55 billion each year at the cost of breast feeding.

Breastfeeding has proven health benefits for both mothers and babies in high-income and low-income settings. Yet, less than 50 percent of babies worldwide are breastfed, according to WHO.

A new three-paper series published in The Lancet on February 8 says misleading marketing claims and strategic lobbying from the dairy and formula milk industries increase anxiety around breastfeeding and infant care. The report terms the formula milk industry’s “marketing tactics exploitative” and calls for “urgent clampdowns” to address its misleading claims and political interference.

Industry influence – which includes lobbying against vital breastfeeding support measures – seriously jeopardizes the health and rights of women and children, the papers point out..

The papers argue that the milk formula industry’s dubious marketing practices – in breach of the breastfeeding code – ”are compounded by lobbying of governments, often covertly via trade associations and front groups, against strengthening breastfeeding protection laws and challenging food standard regulations.”

“This new research highlights the vast economic and political power of the big formula milk companies, as well as serious public policy failures that prevent millions of women from breastfeeding their children,” says Professor Nigel Rollins, Scientist at WHO and author of a paper on formula milk marketing. “Actions are needed across different areas of society to better support mothers to breastfeed for as long as they want, alongside efforts to tackle exploitative formula milk marketing once and for all.”

Given the significant contributions of breastfeeding to people’s health, the Lancet series recommends much greater support for breastfeeding within healthcare and social protection systems – including guaranteeing sufficient paid maternity leave.

Exploitative marketing playbook

The World Health Assembly developed the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes (the Code) in 1981 and several subsequent resolutions in reaction to an investigative report into Nestle’s marketing of formula milk in low and middle-income countries in the 1970s, However, intensive marketing of infant formula continues largely unabated.

The first paper in the Lancet series documents how misleading marketing claims directly exploit parental anxieties around normal infant behaviours, claiming that commercial milk products alleviate fussiness or crying, help with colic and prolong night-time sleep. The authors stress that such parental concerns can be managed successfully with exclusive breastfeeding.

“The formula milk industry uses poor science to suggest, with little supporting evidence, that their products are solutions to common infant health and developmental challenges,” writes Professor Linda Richter from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. “This marketing technique clearly violates the 1981 Code, which says labels should not idealise the use of formula to sell more product.”

The series explains how formula milk marketing exploits the lack of support for breastfeeding by governments and society, while misusing gender politics to sell its products. This includes framing breastfeeding advocacy as a moralistic judgment, while presenting milk formula as a convenient and empowering solution for working mothers.