Ethical Issues in Marketing Infant Formula



Ethical Issues in Marketing Infant Formula

Introduction

This paper intends to expound the ethical concerns in marketing of the infant formula in the developing countries. The infant formula can be extenuated as the nutritious food manufactured and marketed for the feeding of infants under the age of twelve months. This is the complete supplement for the babies that is usually prepared for bottle feeding. It is even considered as the complete or partial substitute for human milk (FFDCA, 2013). During the late 1800s, the formula for substituted infant milk was introduced primarily formulated to save the lives of the infants who could not have the natural human milk. The study aims to reflect the ethical issues integrated with marketing of infant formula which companies are employing just for the sake to promote their brand or increase the sales.

Discussion

The companies such as Nestle primarily started to target the infants who cannot have the natural feeding so they introduced the alternate milk to satisfy the needs of such babies. Afterwards, such companies realized the fact that the percentage of such infants in the societies is relatively quite small consequently they just have very small market for selling their substitute milk. However, the companies tried to pitch their sales and attracted the mothers who cannot feed their infants or even stimulated their interest to get the substitute milk for their infants. This approach provided them much larger market where they even convinced the perfectly capable mothers to go after such substitute. They tried the unfair means to promote their infant formula and persuaded the millions of mothers that human feeding is not as good and healthy for the infants as the bottled feeding.

The extensive promotion of substitute infant formula progressively declined the rate for breast feeding especially in developing countries merely due to the limited literacy rate of women in those countries. According to World Health Organization (WHO) that the knowledge and exposure of such brand names were quite common throughout the economically advantaged countries. The women from poverty driven economies even preferred the formula products for the infants. The companies massively targeted the women of such countries due to their low literacy rates which they tricked by creating the magic belief in the infant formula of milk powder (Corporate Crime and Violence, 1987).

The infant formula companies used the health services as the intermediary in approaching the ...