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Markets in Mothers’ Milk: Virtue or Vice, Promise or Problem?
Abstract
Breastfeeding exemplifies the need to properly account for women’s unpaid caring
and reproductive work in economic statistics, and for the households’ creation of human
capital. Although all commodities including human milk are within the scope of GDP as
defined by international agreement since 1993,1 standard national accounting practices
exclude measurement of human milk production. An important reservation by national
accountants is about whether “economic pricing” is important for demand and supply in
these markets, that is, whether breastfeeding and trade in human milk meets the test of
“sensitivity to economic rewards” (Kravis 1957).
This chapter explores the potential for the contemporary emergence of markets in
breastmilk and breastfeeding to improve the recognition of women’s unpaid breastfeeding
work, by reviewing whether economic rewards influence breastfeeding, and using
contemporary market prices for breastmilk to compare the economic value of breastmilk
and milk formula for selected countries in Asia, Europe, and North America.
... Studies conducted during the 1980's and 1990's in Indonesia and India demonstrated that this was a substantial national food resource (43,44) . A study calculated human milk production in sub-Saharan African countries in 1997 (45) , and further studies of human milk supply at the national level have since been published for India (46) as well as for Bolivia (47) , Francophone west Africa (48) and China (49) , and four high-income countries (USA, UK, and Australia, and Norway) (37) . ...
... Per capita annual production of around 64-67 l in China (49,50) during the period 2001 and 2008 is similar to the levels in the above high-income countries. In India, it rose from around 72 in 1992-93 to 84 l in 1998 (43) : more recent estimates are for production of around 137 l per child per year (46) . Estimates for Bolivia in 2001 suggest around 110 l per child per year (47) and comparably 100 l for The Philippines in 2008. ...
... In some studies, the assumed daily intake implied during a 0-24 month lactation period ranged from around 290 (44) to around 310 (37,46,50) l. This aligns with the 306 l used for official estimates in Norway (16) . ...
Objective
The mother-child breastfeeding dyad is a powerful force for achieving healthy, secure and sustainable food systems. However, food systems reports exclude breastfeeding and mother’s milk. To help correct this omission and give breastfeeding women greater visibility in food systems dialogue and action, we illustrate how to estimate mother’s milk production and incorporate this into food surveillance systems, drawing on the pioneering experience of Norway to show the potential value of such analysis.
Design
The estimates use data on the proportion of children who are breastfed at each month of age (0-24 months), annual number of live births, and assumptions on daily human milk intake at each month. New indicators for temporal and cross-country comparisons are considered.
Setting
It is assumed that a breastfeeding mother on average produces 306 litres of milk during 24 months of lactation.
Participants
The annual number of live births is from Statistics Norway. Data for any breastfeeding at each month of age, between 0-24 months, are from official surveys in 1993, 1998-99, 2006-07, 2013 and 2018-19.
Results
Estimated total production of milk by Norwegian mothers increased from 8.2 to 10.1 million litres per year between 1993 and 2018-19. Annual per capita production increased from 69 to 91 litres per child aged 0-24 months.
Conclusions
This study shows it is feasible and useful to include human milk production in food surveillance systems as an indicator of infant and young child food security and dietary quality. It also demonstrates significant potential for greater milk production.
... 131,146 Likewise, no countries have implemented the practice of measuring breastmilk production in GDP. Arguments, such as disruption to statistical collections, or the priority focus of macroeconomic policy being the market sector, 147 have been made against doing so. 148 The scarcity of political priority given to documenting women's care work is further illustrated by the shortage of timely and accurate data on breastfeeding practices, especially in high-income countries, and of time-use surveys documenting the intense demands of infant and young child care. ...
Despite increasing evidence about the value and importance of breastfeeding, less than half of the world's infants and young children (aged 0–36 months) are breastfed as recommended. This Series paper examines the social, political, and economic reasons for this problem. First, this paper highlights the power of the commercial milk formula (CMF) industry to commodify the feeding of infants and young children; influence policy at both national and international levels in ways that grow and sustain CMF markets; and externalise the social, environmental, and economic costs of CMF. Second, this paper examines how breastfeeding is undermined by economic policies and systems that ignore the value of care work by women, including breastfeeding, and by the inadequacy of maternity rights protection across the world, especially for poorer women. Third, this paper presents three reasons why health systems often do not provide adequate breastfeeding protection, promotion, and support. These reasons are the gendered and biomedical power systems that deny women-centred and culturally appropriate care; the economic and ideological factors that accept, and even encourage, commercial influence and conflicts of interest; and the fiscal and economic policies that leave governments with insufficient funds to adequately protect, promote, and support breastfeeding. We outline six sets of wide-ranging social, political, and economic reforms required to overcome these deeply embedded commercial and structural barriers to breastfeeding.
... Miller only seems to explore natural foods as it pertains to people growing and selling food, and only briefly hints at how this turns into organized protest by referring to the rise of trade groups and certification programs. A large body of research exists on the relationship between capitalism and food movements (Carolan, 2018;Dauvergne & Lister, 2013;Raynolds, Murray, & Wilkinson, 2007;Smith, 2017;Torres, 2006;Winders & Nibert, 2004), but very little of this discourse is mentioned in the book. Instead, the author is primarily committed to engaging general social movement theory and its failure to embrace industry as an agent of change and an oft-ignored movement participant. ...
First paragraph:
Miller’s (2017) Building Nature’s Market introduces the American natural foods movement to social movement studies, highlighting its challenge to the prevailing social order related to food, consumption, health, state authority, and individualism. This movement is concerned with more than just food; it tackles no less than society’s values about progress as it is generally tied to industrialization and technical innovation. The book’s primary thesis is the argument that the natural foods movement has been propelled not only by activist altruism and perseverance, but also through the innovativeness of savvy capitalist entrepreneurs and corporations....
The Mothers' Milk Tool was developed to make more visible the economic value contributed to society by women's unpaid care work through breastfeeding infants and young children. This manuscript describes the development and display key features of the tool, and reports results for selected countries. For the development, we used five steps: (1) defining the tool by reviewing existing tools and scholarly literature to identify uses, approaches, design features, and required data characteristics for a suitable product; (2) specifying the best open-access data available for measurement and easy updating; (3) analyzing development options; (4) testing predictive models to fill identified breastfeeding data gaps; and (5) validating the tool with prospective users and against previous research. We developed an Excel-based tool that allows working offline, displaying preloaded data, imputing data, and inputting users' data. It calculates annual quantities of milk produced by breastfeeding women for children aged 0–35.9 months, and the quantities lost compared to a defined biologically feasible level. It supports calculations for an individual mother, for countries, and global level. Breastfeeding women globally produce around 35.6 billion liters of milk annually, but 38.2% is currently “lost” due to cultural barriers and structural impediments to breastfeeding. The tool can also attribute a monetary value to the production. In conclusion, the Mothers' Milk Tool shows what is at risk economically if women's important capacity for breastfeeding is not protected, promoted, and supported by effective national policies, programs, and investments. The tool is of value to food and health policymakers, public officials, advocates, researchers, national accountants and statisticians, and individual mother/baby dyads, and will assist consideration of breastfeeding in food balance sheets and economic production statistics. The tool supports the 2015 Call to Action by the Global Breastfeeding Collective by facilitating the tracking of progress on breastfeeding targets.
Background
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, billions of people were asked by their state and local governments not to go to work and not leave the house unless they had to. The goal of this qualitative study was to collect the lived experiences of a small group of parents and lactation professionals in the United States about what it was like to feed babies human milk under these conditions of quarantine.
Methods
This project is a social constructionist analysis of lactation narratives of 24 parents feeding their children human milk and 13 lactation professionals. They were interviewed remotely in 2020–21 via videoconferencing about their experiences and perspectives on the pandemic’s effect on lactation. Additionally, photographs of 16 of the parents are provided to visualize their practices and how they chose to represent them.
Results
Four interrelated themes were identified in participants’ narratives about how they experienced and made sense of human milk feeding during the pandemic: the loneliness of lactation during the pandemic, the construction of human milk as a resource to cope with the crisis, the (in)visibility of lactation amidst heightened multitasking, and the sense of connection created by human milk feeding at a time of unprecedented solitude.
Conclusions
While the pandemic may have had both positive and negative effects on lactation, it exposed continuing inequities in infant feeding, generating new forms of (in)visibility for lactating labor. Going forward, one lesson for policy and lawmakers may be that to adequately support lactation, they should take cues from the families who had positive experiences during the crisis. This would call for systemically overhauling of US laws and policies by guaranteeing: universal basic income, paid parental leave for at least six months, paid lactation leaves and breaks, affordable housing, universal health care, subsidized childcare programs, and equal access to high-quality, non-discriminatory, and culturally appropriate medical care—including lactation counseling—, among other initiatives.
Tropes of 'effeminized' masculinity have long been bound up with a plant-based diet, dating back to the 'effeminate rice eater' stereotype used to justify 19th-century colonialism in Asia to the altright's use of the term 'soy boy' on Twitter and other social media today to call out men they perceive to be weak, effeminate, and politically correct (Gambert and Linné). This article explores tropes of 'plant food masculinity' throughout history, focusing on how while they have embodied different social, cultural, and political identities, they all serve as a tool to construct an archetypal masculine ideal. The analysis draws on a wide range of material from the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as a qualitative media analysis of #SoyBoy tweets posted between October 2010 and August 2018. It argues that, given that we live in a world steeped in 'coloniality' (Grosfoguel), it is no wonder that sexist and racist colonial-era tropes are alive and well today, packaged in a 21st-century digital culture form. In the digital politics of the alt-right, dairy milk has become a symbol for racial purity, connecting pseudo-scientific claims about milk, lactose tolerance, race, and masculinity. The term 'soy boy' provides a discursive counterpoint, relying heavily on colonial-era stereotypes of so-called 'effeminate' plant eating, often linked to Asian and other non-white cultures. The article concludes by arguing that for those working to reframe centuries-old norms and tropes related to race, sex, and humankind's relationship to other animals, part of that work may take place online using the tools of social media and reappropriation of derogatory language. However, ultimately the power of social media to change norms and minds depends on the power of the social movements driving those changes; success is likely to only come through a robust anti-racist, color-conscious, and gender-conscious vegan movement (Harper) Abstract: Tropes of 'effeminized' masculinity have long been bound up with a plant-based diet, dating back to the 'effeminate rice eater' stereotype used to justify 19th-century colonialism in Asia to the alt
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