Let's fight back!

I have posed questions both to Aptamil and Cow & Gate asking why they don't display the health risks of using their products on their tins/cartons as cigarette companies have to do.  I have also asked why they don't print ALL of the ingredients on their tins/cartons.  Suffice it to say that I have subsequently been blocked from both Aptamil and Cow & Gate pages on facebook.  Whether this is due to the questions I was asking or because of the arguments that ensued from righteous (albeit rather ignorant) mothers, or both. 

I have since taken steps in obtaining both UK health statistics and global health statistics on the use of infant formula as well as approaching someone about starting an international petition to have the law changed so that formula companies HAVE to print the risks of using their products on their tins.  This could take YEARS to accomplish but if it saves just one baby's life, surely it is a very worthy cause? 

In the wise words of the Alpha Parent, "breastfeeding should be EVERY baby's human right". 

We need to educate those mothers that are too blinded by the cunning marketing web that has been spun around them.  We need to re-educate the health professionals who offer formula as an easy alternative all too often.  We need to impress upon mothers that they need to do their own research instead of just believing everything they hear.  The government needs to spend more on breastfeeding and limit the amount that is spent advertising on formula.  Unfortunately, I think there is a link somehow between governments and the formula companies, whether the formula companies sponsor politicians, or the government makes a hell of a profit on VAT income from the sale of formula I'm not sure.  It could be both. 

KNOWLEDGE is FREEDOM.  We are all pulled into marketing traps every day of our lives.  60 years ago Camel cigarettes were advertised as the 'healthy' option of cigarettes.  If such an advert displayed on our television screens these days, complaints would be made by the thousands to Ofcom et al.  The same approach needs to be taken with formula.  We need to be horrified that formula is marketed as 'healthy' or as an 'acceptable alternative' to breast milk. 

The sad truth is that we are victimised and our health is compromised by formula.  We are subjecting our babies to suffering from the day they are born to the day they die.  It's not fair.  We need to fight back!  We need to prove to these people that we CAN think for ourselves, that we are HUMAN beings, not lab rats!  No one can deny that formula has saved children's lives, but it was created for the sole use in cases of maternal death or physical inability to breastfeed.  The formula companies got greedy so they sexualised breasts and made us doubt our own abilities as mothers.  Why do women buy into the biggest lie, but not only that, the biggest lie run by MEN.