Unbelievable: U.S. Opposition to Breast-Feeding Resolution Stuns World Health Officials

[Alam_dar]

Unbelievable. 

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/08/health/world-health-breastfeeding-ecuador-trump.html

 

U.S. Opposition to Breast-Feeding Resolution Stuns World Health Officials

Image

A Brooklyn mother unable to nurse fed her child donated breast milk. The $70 billion infant formula industry has seen sales flatten in wealthy countries in recent years.CreditJames Estrin/The New York Times

By Andrew Jacobs

July 8, 2018

A resolution to encourage breast-feeding was expected to be approved quickly and easily by the hundreds of government delegates who gathered this spring in Geneva for the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly.

Based on decades of research, the resolution says that mother’s milk is healthiest for children and countries should strive to limit the inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes.

Then the United States delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upended the deliberations.

American officials sought to water down the resolution by removing language that called on governments to “protect, promote and support breast-feeding” and another passage that called on policymakers to restrict the promotion of food products that many experts say can have deleterious effects on young children.

 

When that failed, they turned to threats, according to diplomats and government officials who took part in the discussions. Ecuador, which had planned to introduce the measure, was the first to find itself in the cross hairs.

The Americans were blunt: If Ecuador refused to drop the resolution, Washington would unleash punishing trade measures and withdraw crucial military aid. The Ecuadorean government quickly acquiesced.

 

The showdown over the issue was recounted by more than a dozen participants from several countries, many of whom requested anonymity because they feared retaliation from the United States.

 

Health advocates scrambled to find another sponsor for the resolution, but at least a dozen countries, most of them poor nations in Africa and Latin America, backed off, citing fears of retaliation, according to officials from Uruguay, Mexico and the United States.

 

“We were astonished, appalled and also saddened,” said Patti Rundall, the policy director of the British advocacy group Baby Milk Action, who has attended meetings of the assembly, the decision-making body of the World Health Organization, since the late 1980s.

 

Edited July 9, 2018 by Alam_dar

[beetle]

Encourage guns but discourage breast feeding.

[Stradlater]

Developed countries.

[Tibarn]

This is because one of the formula milk producers, I think Nestle, is one of the donors to President Trump's campaign.  

[Alam_dar]

3 hours ago, Tibarn said:

This is because one of the formula milk producers, I think Nestle, is one of the donors to President Trump's campaign.  

Thank you.

 

Opposition to mother's milk is first Evil. And then threatening the others with sanctions is the 2nd Evil, which is a very dangerous attitude. I am afraid it is going to become a norm under Trump. 

[Clarke]

Sold out to the "job creators", in this case the baby food industry.