The WHO reveals the shocking scale of the exploitative marketing of formula milk

Milk formula companies pay social media platforms and influential people to gain direct access to pregnant women and mothers in some of the most vulnerable moments in their lives. The global formula milk industry, estimated at about $ 55 billion, targets new mothers with personalized content on social media that is often not recognizable as advertising.

A new report from the World Health Organization (WHO) entitled The scope and impact of digital marketing strategies to promote breast milk substitutes has outlined digital marketing techniques designed to influence the decisions that new families make about how to feed their babies.

Through tools such as apps, virtual support groups or ‘baby clubs’, paid social media influences, promotions and competitions, and advisory forums or services, formula companies can buy or collect personal information and send personalized promotions to new pregnant women and mothers. .

The report summarizes the findings of a new study that sampled and analyzed 4 million social media posts on infant feeding published between January and June 2021 using a commercial social listening platform. These posts reached 2.47 billion people and generated more than 12 million likes, shares or comments.

Dairy companies post content on their social media accounts about 90 times a day, reaching 229 million users; represents three times more people than was achieved by informative announcements about breastfeeding from non-commercial accounts.

This pervasive marketing increases the purchase of breastmilk substitutes and therefore discourages mothers from breastfeeding exclusively as recommended by the WHO.

“The promotion of commercial milk formulas should have been discontinued decades ago,” said Dr. Francesco Branca, director of the WHO’s Department of Nutrition and Food Safety. “The fact that formula companies are now using even more powerful and insidious marketing techniques to increase their sales is unforgivable and must be stopped.”

The report gathered evidence from a public listening survey on public online communication and country reports on research that monitors breast milk substitution promotions, as well as relying on a recent multi-country study on the experiences of mothers and health professionals in formula marketing. Studies show that deceptive marketing reinforces the myths of breastfeeding and breast milk and undermines women’s confidence in their ability to breastfeed successfully.

The proliferation of global digital marketing of formula is clearly in violation of the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes (Code), adopted by the World Health Assembly in 1981. The Code is a significant public health agreement designed to protect the general public and mothers from aggressive marketing practices in the baby food industry that negatively affect breastfeeding practices.

Despite clear evidence that exclusive and continuous breastfeeding are key determinants of improved lifelong health for children, women and communities, too few children are breastfed as recommended. If existing formula milk marketing strategies continue, that share could fall even more, which would increase companies ’profits.

The fact that these forms of digital marketing can avoid the oversight of national supervisory and health authorities means that new approaches to the regulation and implementation of the Code are needed. At present, national legislation can be avoided by marketing that originates outside borders.

WHO called the baby food industry to end the exploitative marketing of formula milk, and to governments to protect new children and families by passing, monitoring and enforcing laws to end any advertising or other promotion of formula milk.

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