As rising affluence, changing patterns in women's work, and aggressive formula marketing have been driving up formula use (and presumably driving down breastfeeding rates), China is considering new limits on formula marketing for products aimed at babies 0-6 months old.
The government is canvassing public opinion on a draft plan, the ministry said in a statement on its website yesterday. The United Nations Children’s Fund said it supported measures to curb the use of infant formula, whose sales in China more than doubled in four years.
“There is a hyper-aggressive push to get the emerging market hooked on infant formula,” said Dale Rutstein, Unicef’s chief of communications in China. “Our biggest concern is that the advertising of breast-milk substitutes is very aggressive.”
China is a signatory to the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Subsitutes, but enforcement is lax, and formula use is on a steep upward curve. It's not clear to me if this new proposal is to enforce compliance with the Code, or a new effort with different requirements.
Formula use in China was in the news quite a bit a few years ago, when formula contaminated with melamine sickened 53,000 and killed four infants.
On this news, the share price of Mead Johnson, which is described in the article as "expanding city-by-city in China," fell 4.3 percent. China is its biggest market, according to the article.
Interestingly, the share price of breastfeeding...
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