Can govt share values with repeat offenders among corporates?

Rema Nagarajan
22 February 2013, 01:40 PM IST

A few days back, a report from Indonesia in the Guardian newspaper explained how the baby-formula making company, Danone, in the name of running training for midwives, was distributing gifts for midwives who in turn sold formula to the mothers of new-born babies. Formula feeding is never as good as breast feeding and formula kills babies in parts of the world where mothers have no access to clean water or sanitation which is why most countries have strong laws restricting sale and marketing of formula. The World Health Organisation's (WHO) International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes that regulates corporate selling of formula goes back to 1981. "But this is big business for big companies – two thirds of their growth comes from Asia-Pacific. The Indonesia market alone is worth $1.1bn (£708m)," says the Guardian article.

Last month, Nestle was caught spying on a protest group in Switzerland. It was found that Nestle had paid Securitas AG, a Swiss security firm to infiltrate the anti-free market group Attac just as it was putting together a book on the "Nestle Empire". The case filed by Attac against Nestle for illegal surveillance dragged on for four years since 2008, before Nestle and Securitas were fined $29,000. Nestle feigned ignorance pretending it is a problem of one or some rogue employees by stating: "Incitement to infiltration is against Nestle's business principles," and that "appropriate action" would be taken if a Nestle employee has acted "negligently."

In March 2012, the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) wrote to Nestle regarding information it had received from the Indian Academy of Paediatrics that the "Nestle Nutrition Institute, a front organisation of Nestle had organised some seminars for paediatricians and medical practitioners in various cities of India".

The ministry letter pointed out that it had clearly stated in its earlier letter in August 2010 that "such activities are violative of section (9) of the Infant Milk Substitutes Feeding Bottles and Infant Foods (Regulation of Production, Supply and Distribution) Act 1992, and Amendment Act 2003."

It also pointed out that in yet another letter sent by the Health Ministry to Nestle in December 2010, it had told Nestle that "IMS Act clearly prohibits sponsorship of health workers or their associations directly or indirectly by the Infant Food Manufacturing companies". State governments were told to take action against such programmes and also those who attended such programmes.

In January 2011, Nestle had been criticized for inking "confidential pacts" with four national universities --Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana; National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal, Haryana; University of Mysore in Karnataka; and the GB Pant University for Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar, Uttarakhand--for nutrition awareness programmes for adolescent school-going girls in government-run village schools. In July 2011, the WCD ministry had written to the department of education of the Human Resource Development Ministry to avoid conducting nutrition awareness programmes engaging infant food manufacturing companies and cautioned them against collaborating with such companies as it was against the law. As is obvious from the above instances, there is repeated violation of the IMS Act by Nestle despite warnings from the ministry, which shows the company's scant respect for the law of the land.

Another prominent Indian food company, Britannia, too has been lobbying for years to sell their iron fortified biscuits for the school lunch programme. The only thing standing between a captive market of millions of school lunches and Britannia is a Supreme Court ruling that states that the midday meal programme has to be hot cooked meals and not packaged snacks like biscuits. Yet, they have managed to get the "iron-fortified" biscuits into the school lunch programme in Hyderabad, Secunderabad and a few other places as an add-on to the hot cooked meals.

In December 2012, Veena Rao former bureaucrat and member of the Advisory Board of the Britannia Nutrition Foundation,(BNF), claimed in an article in the British Medical Journal that the Indian law that bars marketing of complementary foods for children over 6 months is one of the main causes of acute under nutrition among young children. When her statement was challenged by nutrition experts and activists, Rao claimed that the article was her "considered and personal view as an administrator who has worked on the subject in government" and that neither Britannia nor BNF, were involved. However, her article raised questions about Britannia's interest in running down an Indian law that protected children from the adverse effects of aggressive marketing of complementary foods to them. After all, one of the stated reasons for BNF's existence is to "enable Britannia Industries Limited to reach vulnerable sections of society with products/solutions of public health relevance", or in plain speak, to enable the company to find a new market for their products in the name of addressing malnutrition.

Despite such numerous examples of how food companies subvert the law, the government talks about partnership with the corporate sector to address child survival issues without any mention of how conflict of interest arising from such partnerships would be addressed. After the recent Call to Action for Child Survival conference organised by UNICEF and USAID along with the Health Ministry, a 12-page document came out of the conference called "India's Call to Action: Child Survival and Development -Strategic Approaches for Private Sector Engagement.

The document suggests market-based approaches that give "sustainable and long-term solution". No, they are not talking about food security and access to basic health services, the true long term and sustainable solutions to ensure child survival.

The document is all about products companies could develop to address child survival problems and social marketing to help "increase demand, access to and use" of such products, in other words, strategies for penetration and creation of new markets.

While the strengths of the corporate sector such as distribution network or technical knowledge could be leveraged, any partnership without adequate regulation could only be a recipe for disaster considering the repeat offender profile of many companies that have been caught violating the law innumerable times both here and abroad. The talk about "creating shared value" in the document makes one wonder what value could be shared by the government if there is repeated violation of law both in letter and in spirit.

Perhaps the corporate sector ought to stick to the two roles envisaged for them in WHO's Global Strategy for Infant and Young Child feeding—to manufacture food that is safe and meets quality standards and to refrain from violating the law of the land and the international code on marketing of breast-milk substitutes.