The Infant Formula Controversy at Center Stage

Abstract

It was 8:00 A.M. on Thursday morning, October 4, 1984, in Washington, D.C. Nestle and the International Nestle Boycott Committee (INBC) had scheduled a joint press conference for 9 A.M. at the Mayflower Hotel. Both Nestle and INBC were to announce the termination of the latter’s worldwide boycott of Nestle products. It had all started almost ten years ago, in 1974, when the infant formula controversy first entered the public consciousness in a major way with the publication of Mike Muller’s The Baby Killer. ¹In the interim decade, a coalition of activist groups, Third World governments, and religious organizations had succeeded in having the World Health Organization (WHO), an agency of the United Nations, to enact for the first time an International Code of Breast-Milk Substitutes (the WHO Code) in 1981.² The coalition had also launched a worldwide boycott against Nestle’s products and engaged in a host of other pressure tactics, to influence public opinion against Nestle and other infant formula manufacturers, to implement the provisions of the WHO Code in their marketing of infant formula products, and to accept INBC as a legitimate and important spokesperson for the affected people of the Third World.