Corporate Carnage: From Big Food to Big Pharma

Exposing the Cost of Corporate Greed on Mothers and Babies

About Breastfeeding

In traditional societies girls grew up watching the women around them successfully breastfeed and support each other through the experience. Breastfeeding was a natural part of motherhood with no formal education required.

In instances where a mother was unable to feed her own child, wet nurses were employed to provide human milk, often from within the family or social circle. Where a wet nurse was unavailable, families resorted to “dry nursing”, the phrase for substituting human milk with animal milk. Those babies not receiving human milk faced much higher rates of infectious disease, malnutrition, physical illness, developmental delay and death than their breastfed counterparts.

The benefits of breastfeeding are infinite and continue to be discovered. Human milk is considered the gold standard of infant nutrition. Mother’s milk provides human- and age-specific proteins, fats, carbohydrates, immunological factors and other nutrients based on her individual baby’s needs.

To establish breastfeeding it is imperative to keep mother and baby in close skin-to-skin contact immediately after the birth. Women should be adequately informed about the importance and benefits of breastfeeding, and provided with basic skills such as how to position baby for an efficient latch and how to recognise baby’s hunger cues.

Physical changes take place after the birth but before the mother's milk production activates, usually at around 2 days after the birth but possibly as late as 8 days, depending on various factors. The more a baby suckles at the breast, the more breastmilk her mother makes, which in turn encourages baby to suckle. This "feedback loop" between baby's suckling reflex and mother's hormonal response regulates milk production and release.

It is common for women to worry that they don't have enough milk. Providing appropriate supports to women so that they can focus on learning to feed their new baby has a significant influence on the success of early breastfeeding because the more (and more efficiently) a baby suckles at the breast, the more milk is produced and released. Learn more at Global Health Media Project’s Breastfeeding in the First Hours After Birth.

Women who cannot, or choose not to, breastfeed need similar support, such as recognising baby's hunger cues, how to choose an appropriate artificial milk powder, how to make formula correctly, appropriate amounts to offer baby based on age and developmental stage, and how to keep bottles and other equipment clean. In poor nations this should always include information about the ongoing and variable cost of artificial milk, as well as the need for access to clean water and facilities for maintaining hygiene.

It is recommended to exclusively breastfeed on demand (or use an appropriate artificial substitute) until the age of six months when babies become developmentally and physically ready to begin trying solid foods. The period between six to twelve months of age is considered a training period for learning about new tastes, smells, textures and feeding skills, such as chewing and holding utensils. By the age of one year, babies get most of their nutrition from a family diet rather than from milk. Breastfeeding is recommended to continue for as long as it suits the mother and baby, to two years old or beyond.

History of Infant Formula

As dairy farming became more efficient in the late 1800s, a market was needed for the excess quantities of cow’s milk being produced. Henri Nestlé, a Swiss confectioner, combined wheat flour with milk and marketed it as “Farine Lactée” (flour milk). Advertised as a life-saving food for infants, it became the first commercialised infant formula. The success of this unethical marketing grew such that by the 1970s, breastfeeding rates across the western world were extremely low and there was a general belief that infant formulas were superior to breastmilk.

Successful commercial sales of Farine Lactée led to the development of the Nestlé company which now calls itself “The world’s leading nutrition, health and wellness company”. The largest food manufacturer in the world, Nestlé has 277,000 employees in 185 countries and produces over 2,000 brands. There are 5,000 employees across the Oceania region, including in New Zealand.

Amongst their various business successes, Nestlé boast of becoming a leading infant formula manufacturer, owning around one quarter of the global market share. This alone is currently valued at over US$90 billion. The New Zealand dairy industry accounts for over US$62 million of this revenue.

There are many reasons that women today turn to artificial milk substitutes in addition to, or replacement of, breastfeeding. These women and their babies deserve to have access to high quality formulas which closely mimic human milk and do not contain unnecessary or potentially harmful components.

As with pharmaceutical products, today's infant formulas are approved by regulatory agencies known to be caught in financial and other conflicts of interest with the industry they purport to regulate. This has resulted in unreliable safety testing and review processes. In March 2025 the new US administration announced Operation Stork Speed, a new review process focused on quality, safety and nutritional adequacy of infant formulas. This was announced by the new Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.

The three multinational corporations of Nestlé (Switzerland), Danone (France) and Reckitt Benckiser (formerly Mead Johnson) (UK) control 45% of the market share of infant formulas.

Blackrock has investment interests in these three companies, all of which participate in the World Economic Forum where governments, corporations and global megaliths are being merged to form global governance under the political system of stakeholder capitalism.

The Baby Killer Scandal

In 1974 a non-profit organisation named War on Want, published a Report titled The Baby Killer, authored by Mike Muller. He described a global epidemic of infant malnutrition and infection, affecting impoverished nations, and he linked this crisis with a growth in unethical commercial promotions of baby formula.

Muller’s Report outlines the range of influences that resulted in mothers abandoning breastfeeding in favour of artificial substitutes, right across poor nations in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. The outcomes were catastrophic, resulting in a vicious cycle of malnutrition and infectious disease causing irreparable damage to the physical, developmental and mental health of infants. It is unknown how many infants died, but that number has likely reached into the millions.

Certain social changes contributed to the crisis, including urban migration from rural areas separating women from their traditional support systems and culture. Significantly however, there was an aggressive marketing campaign by infant formula companies, including Nestlé and a UK company named Cow & Gate, which is now owned by Danone.

The Baby Killer Report stated

“The baby food industry stands accused of promoting their products in communities which cannot use them properly; of using advertising, sales girls dressed up in nurses’ uniforms, give away samples and free gift gimmicks that persuade mothers to give up breast feeding … The results can be seen in the clinics and hospitals, the slums and graveyards of the Third World.”

Too Little, Too Late from the World Health Organization

As a result of The Baby Killer scandal, in 1980 the World Health Organization endorsed an International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes. The Code makes specific recommendations to national governments by way of an attempt to protect women, infants, families and communities from ongoing harm by ruthless corporate marketing.

A raft of literature shows that across the developing world, these recommendations have not been acted upon. This is hardly surprising, given the reliance of poor economies on corrupt and exploitative systems, along with the predictable failure of closing the stable doors after the proverbial horse has bolted.

Women in poor communities continue to be targeted by unethical marketing from infant formula and food companies, resulting in the demise of breastfeeding and the ongoing cycle of infant malnutrition, infectious disease, stunted physical and developmental milestones, and high infant mortality.

United Nations Sustainable Development Goal

Personal observations and experiences as a health professional regularly working on child health programs in South East Asia, with often-illiterate women whose breastfeeding knowledge has dissipated due to modern influences, include:

• women bemoaning the fact that they cannot afford artificial milk substitutes which are believed to be superior to breastmilk;

• women approached by “health professionals” on day one or two after delivery, to be informed they “don’t have enough milk”, before being offered a free can of formula and bottles of clean water to use;

• babies separated from their mother immediately after birth, in maternity clinics with floor-to-ceiling artificial formula products, bottled water, bottles and teats so that the family are lured into purchasing food for their separated and distressed baby;

• women arriving home to makeshift shelters with half-empty cans of formula provided by maternity clinics, who have no way to purchase clean water with which to mix it, no way to replace the can once it is finished, limited literacy to read and understand written instructions, and no information about how to establish breastfeeding after being told they have no milk;

• families entering into long-term and often crushing debt in order to purchase milk substitutes or worse still, inappropriate products, to feed their babies;

• unsuitable milk products marketed to insinuate suitability for babies, leading to women feeding condensed milk, coffee creamers, full strength cow’s milk and other harmful products to young babies whose bodies cannot process the ingredients.

Ongoing Corporate Crimes Against Humanity

Media coverage of The Baby Killer scandal resulted in grassroots boycotts of Nestlé and other Big Food corporations which continue to this day. Nestlé are also notorious for their mercenary involvement in the child slave labor practices of cacao plantations supplying their chocolate brands.

United Nations Sustainable Development Goal

As we have witnessed with Big Pharma, the carnage is easily ignored, denied, obfuscated and even admitted to without accountability, due to the magnitude of the industry’s power. With a significant monopoly on the food industry, product boycotts appear to have little impact on profits and nor, therefore, on the obvious lack of corporate conscience.

In a 2013 article for The Guardian, Mike Muller wrote Nestlé baby milk scandal has grown up but not gone away. Surprisingly, he openly describes being in Davos at the World Economic Forum and approaching then-CEO of Nestlé, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, to give him an original and signed copy of The Baby Killer. He criticises Brabeck-Letmathe for Nestlé’s promotion of bottled water, turning a naturally abundant resource-essential to human life-into an expensive commodity.

Brabeck-Letmathe, Chairman ad interim of the World Economic Forum since Klaus Schwab stepped down in April, remains a controversial figure. This is largely because of statements made in a 2005 Austrian documentary in which he openly declared his goal of commoditising water.

The World Economic Forum share his ideology, In August 2022 a press conference was held in Davos to discuss plans to "transform the economics of water", claiming a need for corporate management of water sources due to the threat of crises. At a "winter Davos" session in June 2024 titled "Understanding Nature's Ledger", Managing Director Gim Huay Neo stated "... beyond carbon let's think about other aspects of nature that are easy to quantify ... what about water. That's possible for us to start integrating systematically into current pricing mechanisms". These blatant plans to put a price on all aspects of Nature including water, can only be described as the largest pillage of the masses, by wealthy robber barons, in human history.

Understanding the amoral and psychopathic nature of the powerful globalist enterprises who continue to plan and execute this pillage, is an important protective factor against what lies ahead.

United Nations Sustainable Development Goal

Learning from history is essential. The Baby Killer Scandal provides an insight into the “net zero” value that human life has to the individuals within this anti-human megastructure.

We should never be so conceited as to believe that what happened to so-called “third world” nations, cannot happen to us. It can. And it will, if these globalist plans come to fruition.

Now is the time to make a stand, together. Millions of us, worldwide.

Here in New Zealand, please join the movement in any way you can. Do what you can to inform those around you who remain unaware. Get involved with Freedom Train International. Remain informed through independent media. And please donate to FreeNZ so that we can continue our work for human freedom everywhere.