Shah
Anti-formula activists and development officials often claim that millions of
infants die every year because they are not breastfed (this is probably based on
the fact that millions of infants die of diarrhea from contaminated water every
year–which they could ingest in a number of ways.) Even if a woman is
privileged enough to have access to safe water, breastfeeding gives infants "the
best start," write Baumslag and co-author Dia L. Michels.
Plus,
UNICEF claims, breastmilk is "free" and "always available." This is debatable,
especially for poorer women in the global economy. Producing human milk requires
extra food–about 500 calories more a day. It requires time–anywhere from two
to eight hours a day when babies are put to breast. And unfortunately it is not
always available for babies when their mothers must work outside their homes, in
factories and other people’s homes.
This
proselytizing about breastfeeding is primarily an intervention in formula
manufacturers’ relentless marketing of their factory-produced powders. In 1977,
a coalition of 35 groups led by Infant Formula Action Coalition (INFACT), led a
10-country boycott of Nestlé’s aggressive marketing of infant formula, which as
Time magazine wrote in 1984 "contributed to poor health in less-developed
nations by encouraging mothers to give up breast feeding." In 1981, the World
Health Organization and UNICEF drafted a code on the international marketing of
breast-milk substitutes; Nestle signed on, although the United States did not
until 1994. But activists found that the manufacturers were not abiding by WHO’s
ethical code, which prohibits advertising and free samples, and mandates
labeling heralding the superiority of breastmilk. In 1988, a new boycott against
Nestle and other infant-formula manufacturers (whose sales were estimated at $8
billion worldwide in 1998 ) was launched by Action for Corporate Accountability
and the International Baby Food Action Network (a group of NGO leaders that won
the 1998 Right Livelihood Award). According to Action, these manufacturers’
deceptive marketing techniques contributed to the deaths of "more than 1 million
infants worldwide each year by undermining natural breast-feeding."
It is
all well and good to attempt to crimp the profit margins of multinational
companies, particularly when these companies are interfering in the crucial
first 6 months of an infant’s life (some manufacturers have even gone so far as
to lobby against bills that would allow mothers to room-in with their
breastfeeding infants in maternity wards) . Development agencies’ claim that
these companies were actually killing babies, however, rested on one crucial
argument: that women living in poverty would be convinced to forego
breastfeeding their infants by formula-advertising and free samples (or that
their milk would dry up while using free formula from the hospital) and later
on, would dilute the formula with contaminated water. Yet, around the world,
researchers have found that women have fed their infants a combination of their
own milk, animal’s milk when it was available, and other local foods and drinks,
particularly sweetened water, for centuries. "The effort to circumvent
breastfeeding, to shrug off the mammalian mantle, long predates Nestle Corp.,
Ross Laboratories, and the formulas they hawk," writes journalist Natalie Angier
in her 1999 book, Woman: An Intimate Geography. Any of these supplementary foods
could, especially in poorer regions, be contaminated. In other words, formula
makers didn’t invent supplementary feedings, nor did they introduce water into
babies’ diets. (Most babies, in any case, require foods other than milk to keep
growing after 6 months of age.) The risks associated with new foods for infants
exist in poor conditions whether formula is added into the equation or not. The
real threat, of course, is poverty itself.
Indeed, most women living in poor conditions cannot afford to buy formula for
their infants. In Uganda, the average annual cost of formula for one baby is
more than the average annual income of a village family; in Peru, the cost
exceeds the household income of over half of the country’s population. The
effort to, as Baumslag and Michels put it, "put an end to free and low-cost
supplies of infant formula," while done in the name of poor traditional women,
is really aimed at the elite women who could afford formula to begin with and
the denizens of the urban, industrial global factory–dislocated women under
increasingly larger burdens. If the water these women have access to is
contaminated, it is possible that their use of formula would endanger their
infants–if formula were the only venue in which women would give their infants
water in the first place. Yet advocating fewer options for these women, without
revolutionary changes in the way they must work and help their families survive,
seems cruelly shortsighted. Finally, the elite women who can afford formula have
better chances of also having the decent health care, support, and clean water
that makes formula-feeding safe for babies.
In
the end, the various pieties about breastfeeding and how women should mother
their infants suffer from the same problem of viewing the baby in isolation and
ignoring the mother’s needs. UNICEF and the WHO urge poor women in the
developing world to breastfeed for 2 years. Never mind that forced globalization
and industrialization is shattering indigenous cultures and economies in service
of the global factory, with especially dire burdens placed on women in the
developing world. Development agencies and anti-formula activists have solutions
for the babies and the babies only. On the other hand, rich women in the
developed world are meant to keep their breasts as men’s sexual playthings. We
may acceptably use them to feed babies, but only for a year or less–after that
time our breasts are meant to serve men’s sexual needs and therefore anything we
do with them must be about sex (or about serving our own needs: wrong wrong
wrong!)
These
curious politics of milk were brought into sharp relief on a recent visit to a
local dairy barn. My four-year-old was weaned a few years ago, and he wanted to
see the creatures that made his "big kid milk," that is, cow’s milk. The sight
of hundreds of silently munching cows with their huge, swollen, vein-crossed
udders shut him up fast. So that was where his milk came from, as opposed to his
little brother’s milk, which came from me. It must have been unnerving. Quietly,
we left the barn. Outside in the cold wind we spied a skinny little calf, alone
and chained to a gate. So close and yet so far.
Sonia Shah Editor/Writer Editor, DRAGON LADIES: ASIAN AMERICAN FEMINISTS
BREATHE FIRE (1997)