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Can business help tackle malnutrition?

Guardian's online Q&A  sponsored by DSM  

CLICK HERE FOR THE TEXT of the Q&A

6th June 2013 - 1pm-2.30

Some of us joined this online discussion this afternoon.  

First a Note about DSM:  DSM is the largest vitamin manufacturer in Europe - with sales close to 10billion.   It  makes many of the  optional  ingredients that go into baby formulas   It is a Business Alliance member of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN). It slips under the radar because it doesn't advertise direct to parents.   

See this excerpt from the World Public Health Nutrition editorial on micronutrients - Go Forth and Multiply
       "In Europe, the biggest manufacturer of vitamins is DSM. In 1902, the company started out as Dutch State Mines. In the 1980s and 1990s the Dutch government sold off its shares in the company, then already into chemicals. In its third phase Royal DSM, as now known, is a multinational corporation with 23,500 employees in 200 locations, with annual sales close to Є10 billion. In 2002 the Swiss-based pharmaceutical company Hoffman-la Roche, until then the biggest manufacturer in the vitamin business, sold its vitamin business for Є2.5 billion to DSM, whose positioning is as ‘a global, science-based company active in health, nutrition and materials’. Its slogan is ‘Brighter science, brighter living™’. ‘Health’ and ‘nutrition’ is mostly synthetic fortificants. DSM corporate promotion states ‘Every day half a billion people take DSM vitamins; but there are still 6.5 billion who never take any’. Annual sales in China are planned to double from a current Є1.5 billion, to Є3 billion in 2015. The two appealing pictures above, of children in Latin America and Asia with bowls in hand, are from DSM promotional literature.
"

Along with two other IBFANers I attended the launch of World Vision's new partnership  with DSM during the WHA last month.  Nestle, Danone and many baby food companies were there.  At the end of the meeting  a DSM representative  tried to say it was private,  and another said it was covered by the Chatham House Rule. This means you can refer to what was said but not who said it.  It is nonsense to announce this at the END of a meeting or to say that it was private.

CLICK HERE for  the text f the Questions and Answers: