But the health and lives of millions of vulnerable children are at risk from the rapid growth of the market for baby milk formula.
Our report, Don’t Push It, looks at the aggressive marketing activities of six global formula milk companies – RB, Abbott, Kraft Heinz, FrieslandCampina, Danone and Nestlé – that together own more than 50% of the market in breast-milk substitutes.
The report looks at the scale and impact of these marketing activities.
The market for infant formula and follow-on milk formulas is growing at eight times the pace of the global population.
By 2019 that market was estimated to be worth more than $70 billion. This is in spite of an international set of guidelines, adopted nearly 40 years ago by the World Health Assembly, designed to protect babies’ health.
Much of the growth of the formula milk industry stems from powerful marketing campaigns, and in some parts of the world, offer gifts to health care workers as incentives to distribute formula, that lead mothers to limit breastfeeding, or even abandon it completely in favour of formula milk.
