A Bill and its import A new piece of legislation the government plans is a threat to the existing law that guarantees all measures to encourage breast-feeding, which is important in checking infant mortality

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Title
A Bill and its import A new piece of legislation the government plans is a threat to the
existing law that guarantees all measures to encourage
breast-feeding, which is important in checking infant mortality
extracted text
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SDA-RF-CH-1.62
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York Times that (he corporation should
nor have ro take responsibility for the safe­
ty of its food products. “Our interest is in
selling as much of it as possible. Assuring
irs safety is the FDA's job." he said.
However, die U.S. government regu­
latory agencies seem to have given Mon­
santo a long rope. The clout Monsanto
enjoys in the U.S. government is by no
means incidental. According to the Orga­
nic Consumers Association, Clarence
Thomas, before being the Supreme Court
Judge who put George W. Bush in office
(in his first term), was a Monsanto lawyer,
Anne Veneman, the U.S. Secretary of
Agriculture, was on the board of directors
of Monsanto’s Calgene Corporation; Do­
nald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defence,
was on the board of directors of Monsan­
to’s Searle Pharmaceuticals; Secretary of
Health Tommy Thompson received
550,000 in donations from Monsanto
during his winning campaign for Wiscon­
sin’s governorship; and the two Congress­
men who received the most donations
from Monsanto during the last election
were Larry Combest (Chairman of the
House Agricultural Committee) and John
Ashcroft (the Attorney-General).
According to the Organic Consumers
Association, for the FDA to determine if
Monsanto’s growth hormones were safe or
not, the MNC was required to submit a
scientific report on that topic. Margaret
Miller, one of Monsanto’s researchers, put
the report together. Shortly before the re­
port’s submission, Miller left Monsanto
and was hired by the FDA. Her first job at
the FDA was to determine whether or not
to approve die report she wrote for Mon­
santo. In short, Monsanto approved its
own report. In January, Martha Scott, a
former Director of Government Relations
for Monsanto, was appointed Staff Direc­
tor for the U.S. Senate Committee on
Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.
Philip Matrera, in his extensively re­
searched recent paper, “USDA Inc.: How
Agribusiness has Hijacked Regulatory Pol­
icy ar the U.S. Department of Agricul­
ture”, (initiated by the U.S.-based
Agribusiness Accountability Initiative),
concludes: “Big agribusinesses such as
Monsanto have packed the USDA with
people who have been working, lobbying
or researching for them. These appointees
have helped to implement policies that
undermine the regulatory' mission in the
interests of the MNCs, severely compro­
mising public health and livelihoods.’’ Ac­
cording to him, with the deep-rooted and
pervasive clour that MNCs have carefully
built over the years, they seem to get away
with anything. ■
128

I PUBLIC HEALTH

A Bill and its import
A new piece of legislation the government plans is a threat to the
existing law that guarantees all measures to encourage
breast-feeding, which is important in checking infant mortality.

In Hyderabad, a woman with her baby and the pictures she sells.
It is accepted the world over that breast-feeding is the best way
to check malnourishment in children up to two years of age.
T.K. RAJALAKSHMI

in New Delhi.

HE proposed integrated food law, the
Food Safety and Standards Bill, 2005,
a brainchild of the Ministry of Food Proc­
essing Industries (MoFPI), of which Subodh Kant Sahai holds independent charge
as a Minister of State involves the repealing
of the Infant Milk Food Substitutes, Feed­
ing Bortles and Infant Feeds (Regulation of
Production, Supply and Distribution)
Amendment Act, 2003 (IMS Act, 2003).
This has resulted in a lot of anxiety both
within and outside the country as the deci­
sion will not only have a serious impact on

T

the promotion of breastfeeding but will in­
crease infant mortality drastically.
The Human Resource Development
Ministry, under Arjun Singh, in particular,
has raised objections to the Bill. In separate
communications, Arjun Singh and Reva
Nayyar, Secretary, Women and Child De­
partment, have requested the MoFPI to
keep the IMS Act out of die purview of the
new Bill. One reason they have is that die
IMS Act cannot be seen as just another
Food Law. Arjun Singh, as Human Re­
source Development Minister, had taken a
keen interest in the enactment of the Act in
1992. As Chairman of the Joint parliamen­
tary Committee, he also saw to its successful
FRONTLINE, MARCH 11, 2005

FAO in the dock
ASHA KRISHNAKUMAR

AST year, 650 civil society orga­
nisations and 800 individuals from
over 80 countries sent an open letter to
the United Nations Food and Agricul­
ture Organisation (FAO), strongly con­
demning its annual State of Food and
Agriculture report, “Agricultural bio­
technology: Meeting the needs of the
poor”, as highly biased against the poor,
the environment and food production.
The letter accused the report of ignoring
available evidence of the adverse impact
of genetically modified (GM) crops.
The letter acknowledged that die
FAO report had mentioned that the de­
velopment of GM crops was dominated
by corporations, but blamed the orga­
nisation for not mentioning the fact
that seeds of only one company - Mon­
santo - covered over 90 per cent of the
total world area under transgenic seeds.
The letter states: “We believe that
FAO has broken its commitment to civ­
il society and peasants’ organisations....
The report turns FAO away from food
sovereignty and the real needs of the
world’s farmers, and is a stab in the back
to the farmers and the rural poor FAO is
meant to support.”
The authors of the letter are sure
that genetically engineered crops do not
help fight hunger in the world. Says the
letter: “History demonstrates that struc­
tural changes in access to land, food,
and political power - combined with
robust, ecological technologies via farm­
er-led research - reduce hunger and
poverty. The ‘gene revolution’ promises
to take us in die opposite direction.”
The letter says: “The report, sadly,
raises serious questions about the inde­
pendence and intellectual integrity of an
important United Nations agency. This
amounts to FAO’s support for corpo­
rate biopiracy since the genetic re­
sources that corporations seek to patent
result from the collective breeding work
of formers over thousands of years.”
The Director of FAO, Jacques
Diouf, responded thus: “While this re­
port emphasises biotechnology, it is not
meant to represent all components of
FAO’s broad mandate and commit­
ment to promote agricultural develop­
ment and alleviate hunger.” He stressed
the importance for developing countries
to “[enhance] their scientific capacity

L

FRONTLINE. MARCH 11, 2005

and master the necessary expertise and
techniques so that they can understand
the implications and make independent
choices in order to reach an internation­
al consensus on issues that concern all of
humanity”.
The civil society organisations,
however, intend to reconsider their rela­
tionship with FAO.
In the early 1960s, most nations
were self-sufficient in food; now only a
few are. In the period 1950-1984, the
introduction of high-yielding crops and
technology-intensive farming ushered
in the Green Revolution, leading to in­
creased crop production. World grain
output expanded by a factor of 2.6 in
this period. Except for parts of Africa,
food production exceeded population
growth throughout the world. But now,
the per capita grain production has
slowed and even appears to be declin­
ing.
In the mid-1970s, a major effort
was made to turn food production into
a corporate business by policy-makers in
the United States after multinational
companies discovered the opportunity
offered by die hunger, misery and star­
vation in developing countries.
In 1974, the U.N. General Assemb­
ly convened its first “political” meet on
hunger - as the World Food Confer­
ence came to be known. The U.S. dele­
gation stressed that the real solution to
world hunger lay in agribusiness. “In­
dustry would grow the food and get it to
market for everyone,” it said. This
marked a turning point for the agribusi­
ness industry, which surged ahead.
With corporate influence growing,
last year FAO released its report, which
paints a positive picture of GM crops
and recommends that more resources be
committed for the development of GM
technologies for developing countries.
Not surprisingly, the report has been
received enthusiastically by the indus­
try, which is pushing the GM technol­
ogy, projecting it as the panacea for
world hunger.
The main feature of the report is its
analysis of farmers’ experiences with Bt
cotton around the world. FAO thinks
that resource-poor smallholders in de­
veloping countries can gain significant
benefits from the adoption of transgenic
crops in terms of higher and more stable
effective yields, lower pesticide costs and

reduced health risks from chemical pes­
ticide exposure.
But the FAO report ignores what is
actually happening on the ground. Two
studies on Bt cotton in India and West
Africa belie the claim of the success of
GM cotton. The Indian study, con­
ducted by the Andhra Pradesh (A.P.)
Coalition in Defence of Diversity, pro­
vides evidence of Bt cotton’s failure on
die field and FAO’s inability to defend
the interests of small farmers. For the
report “Did Bt cotton foil A.P. again in
2003-2004?”, the A.P. Coalition sur­
veyed 164 small Bt cotton farmers from
three districts of the State in the 200304 season. It found that while Bt cotton
marginally reduced pesticide use and in­
creased yields, rhe overall profits for
formers growing Bt cotton were 9 per
cent lower.
This directly contradicts the results
of a study put out by a marketing agen­
cy on behalf of Monsanto, which claims
that farmer profits increased by 92 per
cent. But the FAO report does not even
mention the results of the studies, leave
alone trying to put at rest the confusion
that is bound to occur among the form­
ers.
But, the FAO report says: “The
FAO recognises that genetic engineer­
ing has the potential to help increase
production and productivity in agricul­
ture, forestry and fisheries. It could lead
to higher yields on marginal lands in
countries that today cannot grow
enough food to feed their people. There
are already examples where genetic engi­
neering is helping to reduce the trans­
mission of human and animal diseases
through new vaccines. Rice has been ge­
netically engineered to contain pro-vita­
min A (beta carotene) and iron, which
could improve the health of many lowincome communities.”
The report also professes awareness
of the potential risks posed by certain
aspects of biotechnology - the effects on
human and animal health and the envi­
ronment. The report adds that caution
must be exercised to reduce the risks of
transferring toxins from one life form to
another, of creating new toxins or of
transferring allergenic compounds from
one species to another, which could re­
sult in unexpected allergic reactions.
But, according to the open letter,
genetic contamination is polluting the
very heart of the world’s centres of crop
diversity. FAO brushes this aside with
hardly a comment. ■

127

HE Infant Milk Substitutes,
Feeding Bottles and Infant
Foods (Regulation of Production,
Supply and Distribution) Act, 1992,
as amended in 2003, provides for the
regulation of the production, supply
and distribution of infant milk sub­
stitutes, feeding bottles and infant
foods, with a view to protecting and
promoting breast-feeding and ensur­
ing the proper use of infant foods.
Under the Act, “infant food”
means any food that is marketed or
otherwise represented as a comple­
ment to mother’s milk to meet the
needs of the infant after the age of six
months and up to the age of two
years. “Infant milk substitute” refers
to any food being marketed or other­
wise represented as a partial or total
replacement for mother’s milk for the
infant up to the age of two years.
The Act prohibits persons from
advertising, or taking part in the pub­
lication of any advertisement, for the
distribution, sale or supply of infant
milk substitutes, feeding bottles or
infant foods, or giving an impression
or creating a belief in any manner
that the feeding of infant milk sub­
stitutes and infant foods is equivalent
to, or better than, feeding mother’s
milk, or taking part in the promotion
of infant milk substitutes, feeding
bottles or infant foods. Similarly, it
expressly prohibits persons from sup­
plying or distributing samples of in­
fant milk substitutes or feeding

bottles of infant foods or gifts of
utensils or other articles, or contact­
ing any pregnant woman or the
mother of an infant, or offering in­
ducement of any other kind for the
purpose of promoting the use or sale
of infant milk substitutes or feeding
bottles or infant foods.
The Act lays down standards and
quality control requirements, where
it prohibits all persons from produc­
ing, selling or distributing any infant
milk substitutes, feeding bottles or
infant foods unless they confirm to
the standards specified under the Pre­
vention of Food Adulteration Act,
1954. All such containers should bear
the standard mark specified by the
Bureau of Indian Standards Act,
1986.
The IMS Act bans direct or in­
direct benefits to health workers or
their associations, bans commissions
offered by companies to achieve sales
targets, bans promotions and displays
in hospitals, clinics and chemists’
shops and prohibits the dissemina­
tion of incorrect information peddled
by companies in the form of booklets,
flash cards, films, slides, magazines or
newspapers.
It prescribes guidelines for labell­
ing where rhe label “Important No­
tice: Mother’s Milk is best for the
baby” has to be in capital letters of
5mm size and placed visibly on the
centre panel of the container or label.
Violations of the provisions of the
Act are cognisable offences but are
bailable under the Criminal Proce-

dure Code.
In 1992, while introducing the
IMS Bill in Parliament, Arjun Singh,
the then Human Resource Develop­
ment Minister, made a statement of
objectives and reasons. He stated:
“Inappropriate feeding practices lead
to malnutrition, morbidity and mor­
tality in our children. The promotion
of infant milk substitutes and related
products like feeding bottles and teats
does constitute a health hazard. The
Promotion of infant milk substitutes
and related products has been more
pervasive and extensive than the dis­
semination of information concern­
ing the advantages of mother’s milk
and breast-feeding and contributes to
a decline in breast-feeding. In the ab­
sence of strong interventions de­
signed to protect, promote and
support breast-feeding, this decline
can assume dangerous proportions,
subjecting millions of infants to grea­
ter risks of infections, malnutrition
and death....”
In 2003, when the Act was
amended, it was given a wider ambit
to control advertisements in the elec­
tronic media as audio or visual trans­
mission. It defined infant foods more
clearly as foods that can be intro­
duced after six months of age up to
two years. This was clearly intended
to promote exclusive breast-feeding
for the first six months and continued
breast-feeding for two years or be­
yond. Almost all the clauses pertain­
ing to infant foods in particular were
strengthened and prohibitory clauses
introduced in matters relating to pro­
motion, distribution, donation and
inducements. ■

amendment in 2003.
In her letter to her counterpan in the
MoFPI, Nayyar said that the Women and
Child Department, being the nodal depart­
ment for nutrition, had been striving hard
to address the widespread problem of mal­
nutrition afflicting children under three
years of age. She referred to a previous letter
dated September 1, 2004, wherein she had
made a similar request to the Ministry to
keep the IMS Act out of the integrated food
law. On December 21 Nayyar wrote: “I
wish to reiterate that the IMS Act is not a
general food law but is basically a special
legislation to address marketing issues con­
cerning the production, supply and distri­
bution of infant milk substitutes, feeding
hordes and infant foods so that these do not

harm the sound practice of breastfeeding,
most essential for ensuring child survival,
nutrition and health.”
Nayyar also referred to the global pub­
lic health recommendations given by the
World Health Assembly (WHA) in 2001
and 2002. She wrote: “India has made his­
tory by enacting the IMS Act in 1992 and
its Amendment incorporating the mandate
of World Health Assembly resolutions, in
June 2003.”
In the same letter, Nayyar called upon
her counterpan to “appreciate the fact diat
government efforts for promoting breast­
feeding can never match die aggressive cam­
paign of the multinationals... it is dierefore
extremely important that we keep this Act
out of the purview of the integrated food

law, basically because it is more of a market­
ing legislation than a general food law.”
Arjun Singh, too, wrote to his counter­
part in the MoFPI, referring to Nayyar’s
previous communications: “All the efforts
of the Department at national and interna­
tional levels for protecting die traditional
and sound practice of breastfeeding will go
waste if we foil at this stage to keep diis Act
out of the purview of the integrated food
law. Incidentally, recent scientific studies al­
so reveal that breastfeeding alone can reduce
infant mortality by 13 per cent (Lancet,
2003.) I, therefore, request you to kindly
look into the matter and keep the IMS Act
out of the purview of the integrated food
law.” It is also quite intriguing that the
Group of Ministers that deliberated over

For the infant’s health
T.K. RAJALAKSHMI

T

FRONTLINE, MARCH 11, 2005

129

the integrated food law, did not include the
HRD Ministry’, especially when this Bill
has a definite design to do away with the
IMS Act. Though the Ministry' of Health
was represented, it did not rake up with the
MoFPI the issue of repealing.
It is well-documented that India had
taken the leadership, with one of the stron­
gest pieces of legislation in the world, to
protect breastfeeding from commercial in­
fluences and bad marketing practices. Little
wonder that international organisations too
have expressed concern at the attempt to
repeal the IMS Act. In a letter to Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh, Anwar Fazal,
Chairman Emeritus and Director of the
World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action
(WABA), wrote that he was shocked to
learn that “such a wonderful and landmark
legislation may be repealed....” The WA­
BA director also stated that the breast-feed­
ing community from all over the world
often looked to India as an example, where
the IMS Act, 2003, had managed to widen
its scope to include any infant foods, com­
mercial health drinks and food products
promoted for the consumption of babies
under the age of two years, and also to
include sensitive areas such as the sponsor­
ship of the medical profession.
The Malaysia-based International
Code Documentation Centre (ICDC),
which keeps track of global efforts to imple­
ment the International Code of Marketing
of Breastmilk Substitutes, stated that it was
jubilant when India became one of the few
countries in Asia to implement fully the
international code with the enactment of
the IMS Act. In a letter to the MoFPI, the
ICDC’s legal adviser wrote: “When the Act
was amended in 2003, it widened its scope
to a full range of baby foods and delved into
sensitive areas such as sponsorship of the
medical profession; it was seen as an exam­
ple of an innovative and progressive legisla­
tion and India was heralded as a leader in
the area of legislation on infant and young
child health.”

N January', the MoFPI put out a notice
in some newspapers, tided “Draft Mod­
em Integrated Food Law.” Among other
things, the notice explained that the Gov­
ernment of India had constituted a Group
of Ministers to propose legislative and other
changes considered necessary for finalising
the integrated food law and related regu­
lations. It said: “A draft ‘integrated food
law’ has been prepared, which is intended
to be contemporary, comprehensive and
ensure better consumer safety through food
safety management systems and setting
standards based on science and transpar­
ency as also meet the dynamic requirements

I

130

of international trade and die Indian food
trade and industry.”
The Bill was put on the Web site of the
Ministry and all stakeholders were in­
formed to send their suggestions to the
Joint Secretary in the Ministry by February
15. rXmong other features in the Bill, several
existing Acts, including the IMS Act, were
included in the list of Acts to be repealed
under Section 108, Schedule I of the Bill.
And despite die stated transparency in die
government notice inviting suggestions,
when a delegation of the Breastfeeding Pro­
motion Network of India (BPNI) went and
expressed its concerns to the Ministry over
the proposed repeal of the IMS Act, it was
first told that it had exactly five minutes to
explain its objections and after that was in­
formed blundy by the Joint Secretary that
everything had been decided.
Given the non-responsive stance of die
Ministry, the BPNI has now roped in odier
concerned organisations to mobilise opin­
ion on the issue. Under the aegis of the Jan
Swasthya Abhiyan, the Voluntary Health
Association of India, the India Alliance for
Child Rights and the BPNI, a people’s pet­
ition was drafted. At that meeting, Plan­
ning Commission member Syeda Hameed
was also present. She expressed concern
over die move to repeal the IMS Act. Other
networks such as the Indian Medical Asso­
ciation, the Indian Academy of Paediatrics,
the Federation of Obstetrics and Gynaec­
ological Societies of India, the National
Neonatology Forum and the Trained
Nurses Association of India have also sup­
ported the petition, which has aitegorically
stated that the IMS Act should not be re­
pealed.
The detailed petition has been sent to
die President, the Prime Minister, and all
major political parties. The petition states
that either there “has been a gross error in
including the IMS Act in the list of repealed
Acts or there is a deliberate effort by vested
interests to repeal it.”
The IMS Act is a unique piece of legis­
lation. It has more to do with promoting
and protecting the health of infants rather
than regulating food products. Repealing it
would also affect the Tenth Plan goals of
increasing the current levels of breast-feed­
ing. Moreover, India being a signatory to
several international covenants on children,
including the Convention on the Rights of
the Child, any step taken that negates the
interests of children would go against treaty
obligations.
In 1981, the WHA adopted the In­
ternational Code of Marketing of Breast­
milk Substitutes with the aim of protecting,
promoting and supporting breast-feeding,
and prohibiting unethical and dangerous

marketing practices. The Indian govern­
ment voted in favour of the adoption of this
Code. In fact, Prime Minister Indira Gand­
hi made a strong supporting statement for
the adoption of this code at die WHA.
India became die lOdi country to enact the
Code into a law in 1992.
India has endorsed the 2002 Global
Strategy on Infant and Young Child Feed­
ing, which calls on governments to take
action to implement or strengdien the In­
ternational Code and subsequent WHA
resolutions, which the IMS Act encapsu­
lates. The law was further strengthened in
2003 to plug the loopholes and also to har­
monise widi recent WHA resolutions.
According to the United Nations Chil­
dren’s Fund (UNICEF), more dian 10 mil­
lion children die yearly, mainly from
preventable diseases such as diarrhoea,
pneumonia, measles and malaria. It is esti­
mated that if every baby is exclusively
breast-fed from birth to six mondis, an esti­
mated 3,500 chidren’s lives can be saved
each day. India has the highest number of
under-5 child deaths in the world, and ex­
clusive breast-feeding is considered the best
intervention possible to reduce mortality
rates.
Arun Gupta, national co-ordinator,
BPNI, says that the Food Safety and Stan­
dards Bill is a general Act dealing with all
sorts of foods, processed and unprocessed; it
has nothing to do with breast-feeding or the
health and the well-being of the woman
and the child. “Only one of the nine oper­
ative sections in the IMS Act deals with
food standards, and this section makes it
clear diat these standards shall continue to
be governed by the PFA [Prevention of
Food Adulteration Act, 1954] Act. All that
is required is an amendment to provide that
this will now be governed by the Food Act
without repealing the IMS Act,” says Gup­
ta. He adds that the proposed Food Bill
does not cover feeding botdes, but the IMS
Act had banned its promotion. Incidental­
ly, the PFA Act also stands to be repealed
under the new legislation.
This is a test for die United Progressive
Alliance government. It is a choice between
trade and die country’s future, which will
be secure if infant survival is ensured. The
IMS Act is a comprehensive piece of legisla­
tion; it is marked by a deep sense of equity,
and it is educative in its role. Its objectives
have been to ensure proper information to
families on optimal infant feeding and
young child feeding and to control die mar­
keting of baby foods with the aim to con­
tribute to a reduction in child malnutrition
and infant mortality. The protection to
breast-feeding is vital for saving the lives of
millions of children in India every year. ■
FRONTLINE. MARCH 11, 2005
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