Baby milk rationing: Chinese fears spark global restrictions

Pretty interesting considering most of the consumer and partly industrial products around the world are imported from China. I guess there is no substitute for good baby formula. Traditionally milk is not consumed at the level as it is in certain countries due to the dietary habits. Certainly somethings do come at a price and at a cost of chemicals and hormones. No doubt we have this issue in the foods we consume in US and other parts of the world but we still have a choice (organic vs non-organic vs own farm). I thought we had it bad in US with certain types of foods and crops including baby foods but I guess not.

Worried mothers in China are going to great lengths to get their hands on imported milk, causing retailers in the UK and elsewhere to ration sales.

When a child is born in China, anxious new parents often prize one gift above all others: imported formula baby milk, usually hand-carried from overseas to ensure it's the real thing.

Fearful of the dangerous levels of hormones and chemicals sometimes found in Chinese baby formula, parents in mainland China often go to great lengths to secure foreign brands.

"My child only drank formula that was posted from Japan by my cousin who was studying there," explains Liu Fang in Beijing, the mother of a three-year-old boy.


Ms Fang says she imported baby formula from Japan and the US for her son "When the Japanese nuclear power plant leaked, my son drank American formula which was mailed from the US."

Long-term breastfeeding is rare among Chinese mothers, who often doubt the quality of their breast milk.

Those who can afford it choose to buy imported formula over Chinese brands.

The result? China's so-called "4-2-1 families", made up of four grandparents and two parents doting on a single child, pool their money and scour the globe for safe sources of food.

Some buy imported baby formula from online stores, which regularly post photos displaying walls of baby formula amassed from overseas.

"My warehouse is full of baby formula!" posted one online seller who calls herself Sunshine Grass.

"My husband purchased it in Canada and packed it himself, so it's definitely not fake."

One common brand of milk powder, Enfrapro, costs approximately $22 (£14) per tin in Canada but re-sells for an average of $44 on Taobao, a popular online retailer in China.

SOURCE

We have scares in america about all that baby formula imported from china that was found to contain lead. No wonder chineese moms are looking outside their country for milk. But then, there's always breast milk. That can't be beat, and it's free. Why aren't more of them just breast feeding?? Maybe they should change that practice.

Maybe there trying to tell us something seeing as how we get everything from China. They won't even use their own products!

I understand that some moms have difficulty breastfeeding, but, if they are this worried, why not consider it? I also know there are a lot of hangups about it, but, making milk is the biological purpose of breasts. Nothing is more natural and beneficial for babies.

Its fresh, natural, already the perfect temperature, it gives the baby your antibodies, you always have it with you, and it is customized to your baby and where they are in their development. The makeup of the milk constantly changes with the baby.

Another benefit: You don't have to buy it.

I must presume the reasoning for new mothers not breastfeeding their own babies is because the mothers themselves are not producing healthy milk. Probably because their food and environment are badly polluted.

reply to post by yourignoranceisbliss


I was just thinking that myself =]

reply to post by daryllyn


Breastfeeding your baby is all very well when it works. With my first child I tried and tried to breastfeed with absolutely no success for over 12 hours after my baby's birth, to the point where the health of my baby was threatened. The physiology of my boobs will not let me breastfeed, and it felt like I had about 100 people manhandling them trying to change that. I therefore had to switch to formula or my baby would have starved to death. With my second, I went straight on to formula. Mothers are demonised for making this decision, but it is often a necessity. And once you've made that decision, you can't just switch back, as your milk dries up.

As for the rationing, the only milk that suits my second is ready mixed, and he therefore gets through a bottle a day. People are limited to buying two bottles a day, which, when you live at the end of the country in the middle of nowhere, is a real problem. When we heard of the rationing we did a 200 mile round trip stopping at every shop that stocked it in order to get enough milk to keep my child going for three weeks, with only one more delivery to shops expected this month. Rationing has caused a run on the products and is severely limiting people's ability to keep their children healthy and fed.

As pro boob as I am I deeply sympathise with mothers both here and China with this. Can we not just up production? We could then supply to China without scared new mothers there getting ripped off and our own mothers sweating about getting theirs, or would that involved actually making more jobs in this withered husk we dare call a country these days?. Or is it a case that China wouldn't like their money going elsewhere, which I can't see is a problem since the money is already going elsewhere.

reply to post by whichwitch


Notice that first line in my post said that 'some moms have difficulty breastfeeding'.

I in no way meant to make anyone feel bad about the decisions they have made. I was only suggesting that if these particular women are this worried about the quality of the formula, or the ability to obtain it, that maybe they should consider breastfeeding as an option.

I know that it isn't always possible, or right for everyone.

Neither decision is right or wrong, the most important thing is that the baby is fed.

Originally posted by yourignoranceisbliss
I must presume the reasoning for new mothers not breastfeeding their own babies is because the mothers themselves are not producing healthy milk. Probably because their food and environment are badly polluted.

The environment is very polluted, probably almost everywhere. It would stand to reason, that it would also be in the formula. Whether it is derived from cow's milk or soybeans, those things would have also picked up some pollution during their growth and production.

As for the diet, it doesn't have to be perfect to still be able to create a great source of nutrition for the baby.

The short answer to this question is NO – you do not need to maintain a perfect diet in order to provide quality milk for your baby. In fact, research tells us that the quality of a mother’s diet has little influence on her milk. Nature is very forgiving – mother’s milk is designed to provide for and protect baby even in times of hardship and famine. A poor diet is more likely to affect the mother than her breastfed baby.

According to Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D., breastfeeding researcher and anthropologist, women throughout the world make ample amounts of quality milk while eating diets composed almost entirely of rice (or millet or sorghum) with a tiny amount of vegetables and occasional meat.

Source

Pretty sure that the Chinese government has a if its not made here you cant sell it here law. If it is foreign made its tarrifed so heavily its out of reach of the common consumer. A law i would love to see here! Our children were breastfed for the first couple of months so they would get the colostrum and antibodies and then we switched to formula if nothing more than convienence. If a mother has a condition well theres not much they can do.

Bill

Originally posted by yourignoranceisbliss
I must presume the reasoning for new mothers not breastfeeding their own babies is because the mothers themselves are not producing healthy milk. Probably because their food and environment are badly polluted.

Nope not really, China is full of selfish people, most mothers just handball their newborn to the parents in law and arm with them imported milk powder, it's about 'keeping their figure and having 'someone else do the work', after living in China for the past 6 years, these are my findings.That is if it's a boy, girls are the opposite with parents in laws abandoning them, again the complete selfishness of people and expectations here.

I think last month a NZ company imported bulk raw powder and they had it packaged here, turned out the local distributor was only adding 60-70% of the real stuff and replacing the rest with crap material which caused a massive rebelling against milk power with a Chinese name on it, hence the frenzy for pure imported ones.

Ones you buy online through a Chinese style ebay are the same too, they use an imported tin and the contents are swapped out for local stuff.

My wife (Chinese) breastfeed our son for a good length of time, did my son the world of good, he towers over 95% of the kids in his class, rarely gets sick and is more smarter.

You gotta understand there's always scandals here about food safety EVERY WEEK. Chinese companies have little regard to safety and quality plus there was KFC (in China) which just breached a whole bunch of safety audits some months ago (their suppliers are Chinese companies), and you're thinking "What about the food safety certificates?" from all the international standards companies, guess what! A large majority are FAKED maybe 2 to 3 days a 'consulting' company and prep any type of certification that is required, the government inspectors simply just don't check enough suppliers and don;t have the correct control needed dealing with bent factories.

i am sure alot of this came from a few years ago when 13 or more babies died because the Chinese baby formula they were being given was just white powder with no nutritional qualities. when its your babies help better to be safe than sorry and they really should consider breast milk.

Last I checked there's no shortage of women on this planet... we couldn't possibly use natural breast milk to feed babies though.

reply to post by daryllyn


Some people say is also good to prevent breast cancer , but looks like Chinese people is gathering all from the world ... That's creepy....

About the only thing safe to consume that's made in China are cats and dogs!