I’ve ranted before about advertisements normalising and idealising artificial infant feeding. You can read more about the World Health Organisation Code on the marketing of breastmilk substitutes here at IBFAN (the International Baby Food Action Network), INFACT (Infant Feeding Action Coalition) Canada, and the Boycott Nestle Blog. And you could poke back through the “breastfeeding” category here.
Today’s “WTF?” ad comes courtesy of the Organic Trading Co in New South Wales. From their “About” page?
We quickly realised that many of the things in most high street stores and supermarkets were one, or all, of the following; environmentally unfriendly, contained harmful ingredients, took advantage of consumers through misleading advertising and/or exploited other human beings.
Here’s one of their current front-page ads. I got nothing else to say.
[via Joyous Birth.]
Categories: culture wars, gender & feminism, health
DUFC #69 
Hoyden About Town 
Wow! It’s like the deception is complete and the bottle has totally replaced nature’s choice for breast feeding.
Have you ever seen the response of bottle fed children when they see another child being breast fed? They are fascinated by breast feeding and appear to be quite envious. It’s like they know they have missed out on something special.
Even though breast feeding is recommended beyond the age of two our society is totally unsupportive of this activity, in fact some people are actually offended by the sight of a woman breast feeding.
How incredibly disconnected we have become!
They just don’t get it do they?
Maybe they should call the pillow the “nursing pillow” I hate to think of the offence caused by the unnecessary use of the word “Breast” in their product.
; )
Hi Lauredhel
Perhaps it would be more helpful to actually contact the company and let them know about this rather than poking fun at them. I know this company intimately and they are very quick to address such issues and actually campaign strongly locally for breastfeeding and advise all their customers to breastfeed and to contact lactation specialists should they have any problems breastfeeding.
The ‘blog’ media should be used to assist rather than provoke.
Sorry it has caused offence to you (and to others). I suggest you contact the manufacturer (www.fertilemind.com.au) to let them know about the misleading direction the advert gives.
I can assure you we’re very passionate about breastfeeding in every way.
Tim
…
that is all.
Tim, so long as you have WHO Code violations on your site (and there are multiple ones, as bottles and teats fall within the scope of the Code), you’re not supporting breastfeeding – you’re suckling on the contaminated teat of the artificial feeding profit machine.
If this isn’t the impression you want your website to give, the way to fix that is to fix your Code violations and apologise. As you know, I’m more than happy to post an update to this post once that’s done.
I have this conversation over and over and over again. In all the Code violation letters I’ve sent, NOT ONE has ever fixed all their violations. Typically, there is also no real apology; just an “Oh, well, I’m sorry you’re offended”. Well, I’m not “offended”, I’m rightfully angry and a bit disgusted, and you don’t get to apologise for that. You can apologise for the cause – and fix it – or you can go about your merry, Codebreaking way.
And every single response I’ve had has whined about how niiiiiiiiiiiice they are, and don’t they get points for being nice? A draft Hoyden blog post in the wings, about how you don’t get a Code offset trading scheme. You’re in compliance or you’re not. This is your chance to make that choice. I’ve sent you all the info you need to educate yourself on the Code. I await further developments.