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As a result of such practices, a world-wide boycott was organized in 1977 against the Swiss-based Nestlé company, which accounts for 50% of formula sales to the Third World. Three U.S. firms—Abbott Laboratories, American Home Products and Bristol-Myers—together share 20% of that market. Two years later, Nestlé and the U.S. firms agreed to voluntary guidelines that banned such marketing abuses in developing nations. Antiformula activists say those rules were widely violated, so they pressed the WHO, an agency of the United Nations, to draw up the code adopted last week. Though they are not binding on any nation, the new guidelines apply to infant-formula promotion in industrialized countries as well. Strictly following the code, all nations would prohibit company incentives for doctors to promote formula, free samples for mothers, and consumer advertising generally.
At first, U.S. officials found the guidelines acceptable. Then, after months of lobbying by the three U.S. formula makers and the Grocery Manufacturers of America, an interagency task force recommended that the U.S. discreetly abstain on the WHO code. Yet days before the ballot, word came down from the White House to vote no. Elliott Abrams, Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, declared that U.S. aid programs would continue to encourage breast feeding, but that the WHO limit on infant-formula advertising "has grave constitutional problems for us—we couldn't adopt it here at home, and we couldn't recommend it for anyone else." Furthermore, claims Abrams, the code could so restrict availability of infant formula that "the health of children may actually suffer." Legal scholars might disagree about the gravity of those constitutional problems, but the decision is consistent with the Administration's zealous support for American business, and its antagonism toward economic regulation.
The battle is far from settled. Iowa Democrat Thomas Harkin last week promised to introduce a bill in the House that would turn the WHO recommendations into law. And the National Council of Churches next month will publish a report claiming that powdered formula is not strictly a Third World concern: they found that increased use of baby formula among poor families accounts for infant illnesses in the U.S. Vows John Pedrotti, an antiformula activist: "We want the WHO code to be adopted in this country as well." —By Kurt Andersen. Reported by Bruce van Voorst/Geneva and Barbara Dolan/New York