About the author: Besides being the publisher of The Compleat Mother, Catherine is also the chair of the Friends of Breastfeeding Society, and raspberry tea plantation owner of the The Mother Tea Company, all at RR#3 Clifford, Ontario, Canada N0G 1M0 and the mother of three grown children. "Irrelevant!" originally appeared in The Compleat Mother.
Irrelevant!
by Catherine Young
A year ago, a brave Cambridge, Ontario woman picked up the telephone and asked a Mead Johnson employee what would go on at a Baby Step Seminar advertised in her community. Pregnant women would get formula samples, she was told. Ruth-Anne Andrew asked about the World Health Organization code that emphatically states pregnant and lactating women are not to be the focus of such aggressive advertising. She spoke to managers and supervisors and finally a nutritionist running the Baby Step Seminar invited her to be a breastfeeding advocate at the Holiday Inn.
It was winter and she was six months pregnant, but Ruth-Anne volunteered her time and with a box of breastfeeding posters and World Health Code sheets, set up a modest display on a tiny table, next to a gift wrapped door prize with a can of formula in the centre.
During intermission, Ruth-Anne explained the code and distributed her literature, until Mead Johnson's nutritionist Cathy Raven ordered her out into the snow. Ruth-Anne asked why she was being made to leave. "Handing out information about the WHO code," said Mead Johnson's Raven, as if it were a naughty deed. Later, Ruth-Anne wrote about the appalling treatment and the Baby-Steps formula push in an article for The Compleat Mother Magazine, Spring 98, called Baby Steps for Formula; Giant Steps for Profit.
It was read by then president of The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada, Dr. Robert Reid, who wrote to Mead Johnson's category director Allen Lalonde. Lalonde wrote back:
"When Ms Young refers to our activities as in violation of the (World Health Organization) code, she is incorrect with this statement."
"Allegations of providing a $50 gift which turns out to be formula is completely wrong."
"We do not provide samples at these seminars; the gift contains no formula samples."
"Ms Young makes statements what could be extremely misleading if not completely inaccurate."
Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, Director General of the World Health Organization, sent us a
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