Nestle's donation

BMJ 1994;309:1585 (10 December)

Letters

Nestle's donation

EDITOR,--The letter from the Honorary Secretary of the BritishPaediatric Association states that the Nestle donation was acceptedunder the policy of taking money from companies "whose productsare not harmful and whose marketing practices obey the ethicalstandards set by the codes of the countries in which they operate."Recent monitoring of Nestle's activities shows that the BritishPaediatric Association has contravened its own policy.

A new report, Breaking the Rules 1994,² compares the activitiesof 74 manufacturers of breast milk substitutes with the requirementsof a World Health Organisation marketing code.³ Every countryin the world has voted to support this code, and many have adoptedall or part of it as national legislation. Information from62 countries shows that all companies violate the code and indicatesthat Nestle' violates it more than twice as often as its closestcompetitor. On the issue of giving free or subsidised . . . [Full text of this article]