Infant mortality/morbidity is related to dairy milk baby formula, and another lesser known issue, Neglected Tropical Diseases 

Spring 2022

The World Health Organization (WHO), and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) published a report on baby milk formula which outlines baby formula manufacturer abuses.

The 55 billion dollar a year baby milk formula industry’s unethical and aggressive marketing practices violate international regulations.  In addition, there are serious negative impacts of baby milk formula on the health and well-being of infants and young children.  Baby formulas have been responsible for bacterial infections including cronobacter, sakazakii and salmonella which have caused infant morbidity and mortality.

The WHO / UNICEF report included 8,500 parents, and 300 health workers in Bangladesh, China, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa, the United Kingdom and Viet Nam.  In all countries surveyed, women expressed a strong desire to breastfeed exclusively.

The report details how misleading marketing messages reinforce myths about breastfeeding and breast milk and undermines women’s confidence in their ability to breastfeed successfully.  Breastfeeding offers a powerful defense against child malnutrition, including wasting and obesity, and acts as babies’ first vaccine, protecting them against many common childhood illnesses.  Breastfeeding also reduces women’s future risk of diabetes, obesity and some forms of cancer.

According to WHO and UNICEF, milk from cows is designed by nature to be the perfect food for baby calves, not baby humans.

Baby formula ingredients include whey and casein as a protein source. These are milk proteins are associated with type one diabetes, obesity, allergies, and autoimmune disease.  Baby formula also includes a blend of vegetable oils as a fat source, and lactose as a carbohydrate source.  Lactose is a milk sugar associated with lactose intolerance.  Also included are a vitamin-mineral mix from undisclosed sources, and other miscellaneous ingredients depending on the manufacturer.

Clearly the winners in this scenario are the manufactures who benefit financially from their aggressive and unethical marketing practices against accepted regulations, not the human parents and babies, and certainly not the exploited mother cows, and their own baby calves.

Nestle is the most famous and infamous brand in child nutrition products.  Nestle formulas include NAN, Good Start Essentials and Good Start Supreme.  According to a Nestlé Investor Seminar, the infant nutrition market is expected to expand to more than $92 billion globally by 2023.  Clearly the focus is on the health of the financial bottom line, not on human health, and definitely not on the exploited cows and their baby calves, who should have this milk.

Other companies with large market shares in the baby food manufacturing industry include Abbott Laboratories, which makes Similac, Alimetum and EleCare brands, Mead Johnson, and Beechnut.  Other baby formula manufacturers include Danone, a multinational food product company headquartered in Paris, France, Reckitt Benckiser, Abbott Nutrition, Friesland Campina, Bellamy’s Organic, Kraft, Heinz, and HiPP.

Nature has provided the best nutrition for human babies in human breast milk.  Although there are some circumstances that require nutritional alternatives, such as mortality or morbidity of the mother, or baby adoption, it is best to avoid manufactured baby formulas.  Baby formulas only enrich those individuals who place their own financial greed above the well-being of Mothers, Babies, and the unjustly exploited Mother Cows and their own babies.

WHO, UNICEF and partners are calling on governments, health workers, and the baby food industry to end exploitative formula milk marketing and fully implement and abide by the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitute requirements.  Formula milk and tobacco are the only two products for which international prohibitions on marketing exist.

In challenging times, those who are already vulnerable and neglected are the first to be further forgotten.

Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) cause illness and disability for more than one billion people globally. These people are the world’s most economically challenged therefore they are the most overlooked.  Additionally, NTDs are more likely to affect women and children who are even more vulnerable. 

Neglected Tropical Diseases are painful and debilitating, they impair child development, and cause 170,000 deaths worldwide annually, usually to women and children.  NTDs cause deformed legs, blindness, and social isolation.  Children suffer from malnutrition, cognitive impairment, stunted growth, and cannot attend school.  Resulting disabilities makes working extremely difficult, resulting in unavoidable poverty.

The heart-breaking part of Neglected Tropical Diseases is that they are relatively easy and inexpensive to prevent and treat.  Some NTDs can be eliminated with safe and effective medicines administered annually or biannually.  With a little less neglect and a little more attention, lives can be saved, and permanent disabilities can be prevented.

Simultaneously, while individuals in developing nations experience death and permanent disability from lack of funds to treat the Neglected Tropical Diseases, individuals in the developed nations are suffering from, and expensively medicating, the preventable Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) of heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and some cancers.  Eliminating the very expensive to treat Non-Communicable Diseases  (NCDs) with an inexpensive plant-based diet will not only save lives but would allow the medical and economic focus to shift to the Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs).

In addition, moving away from the unsustainable and unhealthy meat and dairy diet would not only eliminate the Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs), and accompanying expense, but would also eliminate deforestation, reduce pollution, free up financial resources and reduce climate change.   Methane from animals raised for food holds heat in the atmosphere more effectively than carbon dioxide.

All zoonotic disease, including Covid-19, HIV AIDS, Ebola, Sars, Mers, Avian (Bird) Flu, Swine (Pig) Flu, Black Flu, Spanish Flu, the deadliest disease in the history of the planet, all originated from the unjust exploitation of innocent individuals of other species. 

“As long as humans continue to be ruthless destroyers of lower living beings, they will never know health or peace.  For as long as humans massacre animals, they will kill each other.  Indeed, people who sow the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap joy, love, and peace.”  (adapted from) Pythagoras, considered the first Vegan, and ancient Ionian Greek philosopher who made important developments in mathematics, astronomy, and the theory of music.  

World Health Organization Director-General’s Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at the Munich Security Conference on February 18, 2022, “Excellencies, colleagues, friends, let me return to the question I asked at the beginning. When will the pandemic end?  It will end when we choose to end it.  Because ultimately, it’s not a matter of chance, it’s a matter of choice.  I thank you. Vielen dank.”

Make the choice to end all zoonotic pandemics, the non communicable diseases, environmental disasters, exploitation, the origin of wars, and focus on neglected issues.  Stop exploiting animals!