Page 1 of
2 Spilled corporate milk in the
Philippines By Cher S Jimenez
MANILA - United Nations agencies,
Philippine health authorities and multinational
milk companies are in a heated legal battle for
the hearts, minds and breast-feeding habits of
Filipino mothers. How the Philippine Supreme Court
finally decides the case will set an important
regional precedent adjudicating developing-world
public-health concerns up against developed-world
corporate profits.
Infant milk formula is
among the top three consumer products in
the
Philippines. Last July, the Philippine Health
Department imposed a ban on the advertisement and
promotion of breast-milk substitutes.
Multinational milk companies responded by
requesting a temporary restraining order on the
policy's implementation and have challenged the
constitutionality of the move in a complaint
against the Health Department now being heard by
the Supreme Court.
The case is being
widely viewed as a crucial test of corporate
social responsibility toward developing-country
consumers. At issue is the United Nations
Children's Fund (UNICEF) recommendation that
mothers should breast-feed their newborns
exclusively for the first six months and continue
to breast-feed for two years or more with
appropriate complementary solid foods.
UNICEF also cites scientific studies that
found that bottle-fed infants in disease-ridden
and unhygienic conditions are between six and 25
times as likely to die of diarrhea and four times
as likely to die of pneumonia as breast-fed
infants - statistics based on the disastrous
public-health experiences witnessed in some poor
African countries where strong marketing campaigns
persuaded mothers to opt for infant formula over
breast-feeding.
In Asia, the Philippines
is one of the largest markets for infant formula,
and the likes of Nestle USA, Abbot, Wyeth and Mead
Johnson all have significant sales in the country.
Filipino mothers spend about US$469 million
annually on infant formula, while multinational
milk companies spent nearly $89 million on
advertising - not inclusive of the travel,
sponsorship and other perks they often provide to
health professionals who promote their products.
Statistics show the milk companies'
advertisements have trumped UNICEF's
public-service announcements. As of 2003, only 16%
of the 2 million babies born in the country were
exclusively breast-fed for at least four to five
months. More recently, the Philippines had the
lowest breast-feeding rate among 56 countries in a
demographic health survey monitoring behaviors
over the past 10 years.
Health experts,
including UNICEF, the World Health Organization
(WHO) and the Philippine Health Department,
attribute as many as 16,000 infant mortalities per
year in the Philippines from infections and
diseases associated with using breast-milk
substitutes rather than breast-feeding during an
infant's first six months. Under both Philippine
law and the International Code of Marketing of
Breast-Milk Substitutes, health service providers
are banned from promoting infant formula.
Government health authorities, UNICEF and
the WHO have all blamed aggressive and sometimes
false advertising messages by milk companies for
the extraordinarily low levels of breast-feeding
in the Philippines. In countries where consumer
spending power is lower, such as Cambodia,
breast-feeding rates are higher because of the
absence of aggressive milk-company advertisements,
according to a UNICEF representative.
In
Thailand, where consumer spending power is
comparatively high, fewer than 5% of mothers
breast-fed their infants in the first six months.
Breast-feeding rates are also falling in Indonesia
and Vietnam, as both countries become more
prosperous and targeted by milk companies,
according to UNICEF statistics.
Formulaic response In response,
the Philippine Health Department last year
implemented the so-called Revised Implementing
Rules and Regulations (RIRR) of the 1986 Milk
Code, which already regulated the promotion and
advertisement of infant formula but was never
fully implemented and was loosely enforced. The
RIRR aims to ban formally the use of text and
images of babies and adults in the promotion of
infant formula and also looks to impose sanctions
on health professionals who receive perks from
milk companies to promote their products to new
mothers.
When milk companies represented
by the Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Association
of the Philippines (PHAP) balked against the move,
the Supreme Court at first refused a petition the
lobby group submitted last July to restrain the
implementation of the RIRR temporarily. At the
time, the decision was cheered by the Health
Department, UNICEF and the WHO, as well as other
non-government organizations advocating child
rights and breast-feeding.
Soon
thereafter, however, the US Chamber of Commerce of
the Philippines wrote a scathing letter to
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, expressing the
group's broad concern about the RIRR, which it
alleged would put "at risk" the country's
"reputation as a stable and viable destination for
investment".
"We know you would want to
avoid such a situation occurring," Thomas Donohue,
president and chief executive officer of the US
Chamber of Commerce wrote in the letter, dated
August 11, and reviewed by Asia Times Online. He
requested that Arroyo's government "re-examine"
the regulation and even offered the help of
chamber members in drafting new regulations for
the industry.
Around the same time, US
Trade Representative officer David Katz paid a
private visit to Health Department Undersecretary
Alexander Padilla to express his reservations
about the imposition of the RIRR, Padilla said in
a recent Asia Times Online interview.
Four
days later, the Supreme Court backtracked and
granted the PHAP the temporary restraining order
it had originally requested. The justices
apparently took into consideration the milk
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