Saturday August 19, 2006
Milking the infant mart
JOHOR BARU: Eight of 12 multinational companies producing milk for infants have violated the Health Ministry’s Infant Formula Code of Ethics last year, prompting the ministry to consider shaming them in the newspapers.
Health Minister Datuk Dr Chua Soi Lek said the offences included promoting and advertising without approval from the ministry, giving incentives to suppliers and traders to market powdered milk, and acquiring the details of pregnant women with a view to making them customers.
He said fining the companies did not deter them from breaching the code of ethics. If this continues, the ministry may publish their names in the newspapers.
“What is more important to them is their reputation, but we have not reached the stage where we need to do that yet,” he told newsmen after launching the First Asean Congress of Paediatric Surgery and the 28th Malaysian Paediatric Association's Annual Scientific Congress yesterday.
He said only four companies abided by the code: Snow, Nestle, Meiji and Takaso.
“The rest were in violation, some up to three times, in different ways,” he said, adding that they were subsequently banned from advertising or introducing new products into the market for a year.
Dr Chua hoped that multinational companies would respect the code.
Targeting new mothers to purchase their products after delivery hampered the ministry’s efforts to promote mother’s milk as the best nutrition for newborns, and its campaign to get women to breastfeed exclusively in the first six months, he said.
“In Malaysia, only 29% of mothers do that, while the rest only breastfeed for a week or a month,” he lamented.
He said one of the reasons for this was that infant formula companies conducted promotions that led mothers to believe that their products were good enough to replace breast milk.
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