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Pfizer/Wyeth breaks Saudi law

Pfizer/Wyeth ‘Breastfeeding Educators’ continue to turn up at breastfeeding events in Saudi Arabia distributing booklets containing bad information which have not been approved. Saudi law states: “The health care institutes are prohibited from using the employees of the producers, importers and distributors for mother’s milk substitutes and their staff to work in the field of child and maternity care.”

Nestlé’s noble mission

Nestlé’s Creating Shared Value forum in London on 27 May, aimed to reposition the company as a leader in sustainability, healthy food and education. Niels Christiansen was in full flow:

“We now reach about five million children...and we’re going to be expanding this to about eighty countries...We’ve started a programme to educate teenage girls on good nutrition before they get married and become pregnant, because that’s where we think we have to start, really - before the woman even becomes pregnant.”

No mention of the International Code or that this is a conflict of interest. Our questions to the online event were ignored but a vote at the end showed that less people believed sustainability was embedded in business than at the beginning!

• Nestlé also sponsored the Women’s Forum Global Meeting in France in October. Nestlé CEO, Paul Bulcke, spoke on global health and malnutrition and overcoming  “political, social, environmental and ethical obstacles” in Africa. Urban Jonsson, a former chief of nutrition at UNICEF, commented:

"The business of Nestlé is to make money, selling processed foods, notably infant formula, weaning products, and products for young children. It is absurd that they should now be acting as if they are in the business of saving Africa. Public health is the responsibility of the public sector, including the UN system."

www.wphna.org/doorrevolves_nov2010.asp

For coming events see: http://info.babymilkaction.org/diarydates  

Tacking Obesity: How companies use Education to build Trust:  
http://info.babymilkaction.org/news/policyblog120310

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