Friday, October 12, 2007 Seares: Breasts and baby milk ads By Pachico A. Seares News Sense
THE health department and the United Nations children's agency want to strengthen the national milk code, which bans formula companies from advertising products for less-than-a-year-old babies. They want to expand the ban to cover formula for kids up to the age of two years.
Formula firms have been screaming in protest all the way to the Supreme Court. And guess what, the High Court, in a ruling published yesterday, agreed with formula producers---and gave more: It lifted the year-old ban on formula ads.
One can understand the concern of formula companies over losses in changing labels and destroying milk products. But the cost ($290 million they claim) has long been wiped out by years of windfall profit.
Free speech
What bothers me more is the free speech line. "The advertisement of milk products which are merely informative cuts deep on free speech," Chief Justice Reynato Puno said.
Those ads, Sir Puno must know, don't merely inform. They deceive because they make consumers believe that artificial baby food is as good as breast milk.
A messenger, a story goes, was sent to find out about Marie Antoinette, who was to marry Louis XV's grandson. The first thing the French king asked the courier: "Has she any bosom?"
Male preoccupation with female breast has since gone beyond the sensual. Future husband checks out future wife's bosom also to find out her capacity to breastfeed future child.
Science has ample evidence of the danger of formula milk to baby's health. Ads for formula milk may be run but that threat must be clear in the message.
