Cape Town - A group of academics from the DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence for Food Security (CoE-FS) and UWC have stepped up to address the “insidious and aggressive” marketing tactics of the formula industry.
The news comes at the start of World Breast-feeding Week (WBW), which is celebrated by countries across the world from August 1. The WBW campaign was started in 1992 by the World Alliance for Breastfeeding and “aims to inform, anchor, engage and galvanise action on breast-feeding and related issues”.
Their research, which will be housed under the Infant and Young Child Feeding Advocacy (IYCF) project within the CoE-FS, will address how misinformation and misrepresentation of infant formula undermine mothers’ feeding decisions.
In South Africa, even with a legal instrument like the 2012 Regulations Relating to Foodstuffs for Infants and Young Children (R991), which prohibits “advertising and promotion in any form, and on all media platforms”, infant formula companies are finding ways to reach mothers when they are at their most vulnerable. Most notably, as reported by another UWC/CoE-FS-funded researcher in the School of Public Health, Catherine Pereira-Kotze, through social media and digital platforms.
“The formula industry has eroded women’s confidence in their ability to breast-feed, not only through its aggressive social media marketing strategies, but with the support of medical and health-care professionals as well as academics who are targeted and influenced by the formula industry,” said Dr Chantell Witten, the project lead of the IYCF.
“If South Africa – a country with the lowest breast-feeding rates in Africa – is to meet the United Nations’ nutrition target of 50% exclusive breast-feeding by 2025, accelerated efforts are needed, and dedicated investments from multiple sources will be needed. Perhaps even a tax such as the sugar tax will be warranted.”
Researchers say women are also targeted through marketing on pregnancy-tracking apps, baby clubs and through competition give-aways used to promote formula feeding information to mothers.
Whether mothers are forced to stop breast-feeding due to circumstances or choose to formula feed for convenience, the impact on their children’s health remains the same, they say.
“Children who are fed formula suffer many health challenges such as obesity, allergies, poor growth and compromised cognitive development. Right now, the infant formula companies are skirting on ‘fake news’. The long-held belief that infant formula claims to be close to mother’s milk is not true,” said Witten, who is also a member of the National Department of Health Ministerial Committee on the Morbidity and Mortality in Children under 5 years (CoMMiC).
Witten is supported in the project by Dr Nazeeia Sayed, who is the project liaison, with institutional oversight from the director of the CoE-FS, Professor Julian May. The IYCF is also governed by a steering committee, with representatives from UWC, the project funder, and the World Health Organization.
Cape Times